If it is any consolation to Donald Trump as he recovers from the lash of the British ambassador’s leaked assessment, it is this: Leo McGarry could feel your pain, Mr President.

It is hard to imagine a boxed set of The West Wing, that paean to liberalism, is POTUS’s first choice of companion of an evening.

But if he can bear it, a pick of Aaron Sorkin’s awardwinning drama about the fictional presidency of Jed Bartlet and his crack team of advisers, led by White House chief of staff McGarry, could be just what the ego doctor ordered.

The diplomatic telegrams from Sir Kim Darroch, our man in Washington, were anything but diplomatic.

That is the point of such missives. They contain what the ambassador would tell Foreign Office staff if everyone was having a cosy dinner together, in a room swept for bugs beforehand.

Even so, Sir Kim’s depiction of the Trump administration as inept, dysfunctional, unpredictable, faction-riven and clumsy, with the President himself described as “radiating insecurity”, was strong meat and drink indeed.

In his response, Mr Trump chose to follow the advice once given by Michelle Obama in the face of Republican attacks on her husband and his presidency: “When they go low, we go high.”

Speaking in New Jersey hours after the story appeared in the Mail on Sunday, Mr Trump said: “We’re not fans of that man and he has not served the UK well. I can say things about him, but I won’t bother.”

The fact that he could not bring himself to say Sir Kim’s name spoke volumes.

Mr Trump will not forget this easily, hence the scramble of British ministers and Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday to reassure Washington that Sir Kim’s views were his alone.

Sir Kim has got under the presidential skin the way the fictional John Marbury got right up the nose of Leo in The West Wing.

Marbury, or to give him his official title, “Lord John, Marbury, Marquess of Needham and Dolby, Earl of Croy, Baronet of Brycey, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United States from the Court of St James,” was the bane of Leo’s life, wafting in every now and again on the invitation of the President, who thought him a diplomatic genius. “He’s colourful,” Barlet would soothe.

“He’s certifiable,” said Leo. Leo liked to call the floppyhaired Brit, expertly played by Roger Rees, “Lord Fauntleroy” for short.

Press secretary CJ Cregg preferred “Lord Flibbertygibbet”. Whatever the label, both regarded the British ambassador about as warmly as their ancestors had a tax on tea.

Particularly Leo, who Marbury would call “Gerald” just to annoy him. Nor did Leo like the peer’s drinking (a teetotal Trump would concur on that), or his womanising.

For the most part, Leo hated Marbury because he lived up to his idea of the English snob looking down on his American cousins.

Though Leo was the richer, more powerful man, the USA to Marbury’s increasingly tired and insignificant Blighty, the Scots-Irish son of Chicago felt the diplomat was patronising him.

Which is exactly what the US President will have felt on reading Sir Kim Darroch’s withering assessment.

Ironically, however, it is Sir Kim who had the humble start in life with hardly any of the advantages enjoyed by Mr Trump.

After Kim Darroch’s parents separated he moved with his mother to a council estate in Oxfordshire.

It was only because he won a scholarship that he was able to go to public school.

A zoology graduate, he joined the civil service and worked his way up to the position of David Cameron’s national security adviser.

The President, in contrast, was given a head start in business in the shape of a loan from dad that Mr Trump said was $1 million and the New York Times estimates was closer to $60m.

What will particularly irk Mr Trump, who prides himself on being a supreme deal maker, is the questioning of his intelligence.

Sir Kim’s advice to officials that the Foreign Office should make its points “simple, even blunt” suggested they would be talking to a small child rather than the commander-in-chief of the world’s richest and most powerful country.

Then again, how smart was it of Mr Trump to say Nigel Farage would make a great ambassador to the US while Sir Kim was still in the job?

Much to Leo’s dismay, Lord Marbury continued to haunt the corridors of the West Wing long into the Bartlet presidency.

“It has been too long,” sighed the peer to “Gerald” on his last visit. “Oh, I don’t think it has,” said Leo.

At the last, Lord John, grand as he was, always had to bow to the President’s judgment.

“Diplomacy, John, the job of a statesman,” said Bartlet, rejecting the Brit’s advice.

“And I thought it was drinking and dancing,” replied Lord John. Even though he remains in post, Sir Kim has been put in his place, if nothing else than for committing that ultimate diplomatic offence – causing embarrassment. Leo would approve.