Welcome to another sparkling edition of Plank of the Week.

These are coming around very, very thick and fast now as we enter the last month of summer.

Good luck if you're away on holiday.

I suspect like most of us you're not away on holiday because there isn't anywhere to go.

But luckily for us, we have got a journalist from The Times with us. He is Ben clapworthy for the first time on Plank of the Week. Ben, a very warm welcome to you. Thank you for

joining us. And I'm hoping it's going to raise the tone to some extent of this particular

weekly broadcast. Although Emma Webb is also here, who always raises the tone.

So welcome back. I think, though, because Ben hasn't been here before, we should give him the first plank of this particular show. What do you think? Should we do it? Oh yeah. Ben,

tell us who your first plankets. Well, it starts on holidays, and it's Dominic Rab, our esteemed foreign secretary.

Yes, of course.

Now, I was going to bring a globe with me, but I couldn't fit it in my bag.

He, within the last week, muddled up to a sort of spectacular extent on why France was given this special elevated status of being on the government's Amber Plusness.

And it's the only country on there so far, isn't it?

It's the only country on there so far. We're told they're scrapping it now because it doesn't work and it's pointless.

But where the confusion seemed to lay was that the Joint Bioscurity Centre, when presenting their evidence on why it should be given this special status of Amber Plus, was because a prevalence of the so-called beta variant in the reunion islands, which are 5,800 miles from mainland France.

Right.

And is the Reunion Islands, or is there only one of them?

Is it Reunion Island?

I haven't got the globe.

Because I was assumed it was a bit like a century island

instead of it's a completely different part of the world,

but there's only one of them, I think.

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