Like the promise of a barbecue summer, Sausagegate has quickly come and gone, and really all that’s left behind is relief that, given its name, it isn’t one of the more traditionally carnal ministerial transgressions.

Keir Starmer saying sausages instead of hostages is, of course, a simple slip of the tongue. It’s like when Rishi Sunak said "stop the boats" but actually meant (in my opinion) "pour calumnies on the desperate and needy and threaten them with something that will never happen to the tune of taxpayer millions". It could happen to anyone.

“These things are there to give you an opportunity to rib me.”

Fortunately, Starmer and team were wise enough to know that such gaffs quickly become yesterday’s battered saveloy and chip paper if you hunker down and ignore them. Sir Keir’s only response was to laugh it off politely a few days later and tell journos: “These things are there to give you an opportunity to rib me.”

Given the number of other early issues in his premiership, it’s worth applauding the correct handling of a situation that could’ve taken a turn for the wurst. If he attempted to make light of it, there was a danger of being accused of making the Middle East a laughing matter; and if he apologised too forcefully, and he'd have given every columnist in the country a reason to explain why he's weak.

Rarely do comms pros have to deal with such national matters as Prime Minister speeches, but an element of the balancing act Starmer and team faced is a question all of us have had to answer at various points during our careers: Is it best to just shut the fudge up?

Often, especially when dealing with leadership, we encounter folks that want to make right that which has recently gone wrong – not least because in their journey to getting to an exalted position they experienced more yes than no. Curbing their instinct to react, and making an entire organization take a breath before it does anything, is the great paradox of communications roles – we’re often most useful when telling people not to communicate.

To quote the great bard Ronan Keating: "you say it best, when you say nothing at all".