Spare a thought for the folically-challenged Michael Fabricant, the idiosyncratic Tory MP for Lichfield, who was on a trekking holiday with a friend in South America when he ran up against the moustachioed authorities.

He was in Colombia when he was confronted by a stern-faced police officer glaring at him and rummaging though his bags.

At gunpoint, he was questioned about the dodgy-looking jar in his baggage. The suspicion was clear: the cops thought it contained raw cocaine and that the honourable parliamentarian was, horror of horrors, trying to smuggle drugs.

However, the jar in question was in fact Coffee Mate and the white substance was not raw cocaine but, actually, coffee whitener - the backbencher did not trust the local milk.

As one officer began shouting: "Cocaine, cocaine," Mr F began replying: "No coffee, coffee." Who in their right mind would link cocaine with a senior Conservative? Yet the police seemed unconvinced.

In the end, in order to prove to the officials that Fabricanto was an innocent man, he gulped down mouthfuls of the said milk substitute.

"It took some explanation - as I don't speak more than two or three words in Spanish - for them to accept it was Coffee Mate," explained the Staffordshire MP.
"They didn't want to taste it as pure cocaine is fairly poisonous so I had to eat several mouthfuls in front of them, with guns aimed at me, until they could see it had no ill effect."

Mr Fabricant added: "Except afterwards; I felt as sick as a dog."

Apparently, the police, as they let the MP and his companion on their way, began giggling.
The backbencher said the episode had taught him an important lesson and that he would be more careful in future. "I would not wish to unnecessarily cause the risk of a by-election," he quipped.

The things our noble parliamentarians have to go through.