Dominic Sandbrook

Punchy from the Shah.

Now, mention of the Americans brings us to his guest at that New Year's Eve banquet.

And this is the person who you've ventriloquized so magnificently, the 39th president of the United States, James Earl Carter Jr., Jimmy Carter.

And Jimmy Carter, what an extraordinary man he is.

I think it's even by the standards of today's president, it's hard to exaggerate what an unlikely president Jimmy Carter is.

So Carter was born in 1924 to, unimprovably, a peanut farmer in Plains, Georgia, in this absolutely sleepy, backward kind of rural hamlet.

And Carter was very self-improving.

He went to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, and then he got a job as an engineer on the US nuclear submarine program.

And Carter had a very, very distinctive personality.

So he's incredibly conscientious.

He's incredibly hardworking.

He's an autodidact.

He's not a tremendous laugh.

He's a bit of a loner.

He's got no close friends.

He's very moralistic.

He's very competitive.

He's very stubborn.

He's the kind of person who basically comes home.

He's like a sort of character from an improving 19th century manual.