Chesterton’s got a knack for hiding truth in humour. In one of his first novels, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, he worte this dialogue about an absurd joker who was about to become king.

‘He is a man, I think,’ he said, ‘who cares for nothing but a joke. He is a dangerous man.’

Lambert laughed in the act of lifting some maccaroni to his mouth.

‘Dangerous!’ he said, ‘You don’t know little Quin, sir!’

‘Every man is dangerous,’ said the old man without moving, ‘who cares only for one thing. I was once dangerous myself.’

(Insert your own Kierkegaardian response here.)