LET’S face it, neither you nor I could buy influence on the local community council. Well, certainly not you, judging by the shabby state of your trousers.

But there are people out there with immaculate slacks who can buy influence at the highest levels. And who are these people? Correct: those and such as those. Not us. Those.

But I’m less concerned with them than with the people being bought and, this week, I want to examine two examples, men looked up to by many in this country as fine role-models, almost gods, people whose pictures we proudly point out to our children as we tell them: “You must grow up to be fine, upstanding, roister-doistering heroes like these. And, if you do not, I will sell you to a circus. Just like I did your mother.”

I speak of Boris Johnson and Prince Charles. Do I detect tittering? If so, and since my flies are up, I presume it’s at our subjects. Well, let us examine Exhibit A: Johnson, B.

The charge: played tennis – an alleged sport – with Lubov Chernukhin, wife of one of Percy (is it Percy? Something like that) Putin’s ex-ministers in return for a £160,000 donation to the Tories. This isn’t a good look when the Tory Government is opposing Percy’s plan to rule the world. Indeed, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says the Tories have received £800,000 of donations from Russian oligarchs.

Question: what’s the point of paying a backhander to see the Foreign Secretary’s backhand as he waddles about the court calling for new balls and giving new meaning to serving one’s country? Does it buy influence? Not much. But it must buy something.

Turning to our second exhibit, Charles, subject of a new book called Rebel Prince, we find author Tom Bower suggesting that “publicity and kudos” are the rewards for fat cats paying vast sums to strap on a nosebag with the large-lugged royal.

He cites the instance of a Turkish billionaire, subsequently indicted for racketeering, who paid £200,000 so his wife could sit next to Charles at dinner and listen to him slurping soup. And there were many more like him, paying huge sums in insane bidding wars for access to the prandial Prince.

Though the money was for charities, Charles allegedly received free cruises and access to private jets to such an extent that even Princes Philip and Andrew thought he was ruining the reputation of The Firm, particularly when the expression “rent-a-royal” came into circulation.

And, oh, the charities: at one point there were no fewer than 24, all begging for cash. According to Bower, one was set up so that Charles could buy – sight unseen – dilapidated Dumfries House, in Ayrshire, for £43 million, paid for by the usual selfless toil of eating lunch or dinner with tinpot tycoons.

On one occasion, Charles hosted a party at St James’s Palace for a Spanish tile manufacturer called Manuel. Later, the Prince appeared in a Spanish magazine called Hola!, where it looked like he was promoting the tiles at a Buckingham Palace dinner party. Tiles which – look away now, Martha! – later decorated the bathrooms and kitchens in several royal properties.

As for the dinners, most were organised by a valet called Fawcett, who was in charge of the special bells used by the Prince to summon staff for specific instructions: “Bring in more oven chips: crinkle-cut.”

Fawcett has been accused of poor taste, at one point engaging Irish dancer Michael Flatley – case proven – and a troupe of female performers who, as Bower describes, “whipped off their robes to reveal skimpy bikinis, with violin music apparently coming from speakers concealed in their bikini bottoms”.

Bottoms? Dancing? Robes? Where will it all end? You may scoff but Cash for Nosh (just got a picture of Charles announcing at the commencement of dinner: “You may scoff”) isn’t a healthy option for the nation. As for influence, the nabobs under advisement must presumably be gaining some, even if just publicity in magazines for their bathroom tiles.

All in all, another tile in the wall is Facebook, since influence these days is largely online, which is why we found election-interfering data collectors Cambridge Analytica mining folk’s details at a reputed cost of £570,000. A leading shareholder of its parent company, SCL, has donated £707,000 to the Tories since 2004.

And there we have it: a web of patronage and palm-rubbing practised by those and such as those. It indicates that, at a time of austerity, there’s far too much money swilling about this country, and it needs to be taken off those people to fund another socialist experiment. That’s my take on it. But then I’m not on the take.