‘THE MINISTER AND THE SHOWGIRL’, ‘TORY WHIP SHOCK’, ‘THE DISHONOURABLE MEMBER’, ‘TOE JOB TO NO JOB’... I could go on, but you get the picture.

No wonder I became both fascinated with newspapers and suspicious of politicians growing up in the early nineties, for these were all headlines from the ill-fated reign of Conservative Prime Minister John Major. Sleaze, sleaze and more sleaze, pretty much every Sunday in the News of the World.

So should we be hugely shocked that, once again, almost 30 years on, parliament is being told to clean up its act?

Where it will all end is anyone’s guess, but what’s required now, as it was back in the nineties with the likes of Norman Lamont, Alan Clark and David Mellor, is due process to root out the genuine bad apples prior to outlining the reforms that are clearly needed across the political spectrum.

Change could start with re-organisation of the House debating process, where scores of greying, Tweed-bedecked former public schoolboys heckle and jeer their way through discussing issues that affect the very people they are paid handsomely to represent. But that is another column for another Saturday.

As the Harvey Weinstein saga snowballs apace, we are in real danger of falling into that very modern trap of losing all sense of perspective and thus inadvertently taking our eyes off the ball when it comes to really serious examples of sexual harassment in the workplace, of which there are many. Every single day of the week. In probably every city and town in the UK.

We’re, and by that I mean the media, fuelling a ‘trial by mob’ scenario. What next? Dozens armed with pitch forks and flaming lumps of two-by-four stampeding on the ancient palace of Westminster to root out anyone who, 15 years ago, may have placed an ill-advised hand on the knee of a female journalist? That was now former defence secretary Michael Fallon who, probably sensibly, got out before the hounding began following allegations surrounding a dinner with scribe Julia Hartley-Brewer more than a decade ago.

Fallon’s behaviour was inappropriate, creepy and unacceptable but given Ms Hartley-Brewer has moved in political circles for much of her journalistic career, clearly is a tough cookie with a thick skin and, moreover, threatened to punch Fallon in the face over the dinner table, you’d think that the issue was put to bed at the time. If his resignation on Wednesday night was solely over this incident then the trap door really is creaking open and hundreds of MPs will now be going through their social diaries of the past 10-15 years.

Westminster is fertile ground for incidents such as the one involving Fallon and, more worryingly, serious cases of men flush with power forcing themselves on often more junior female staffers and interns. And that is where the distinction needs to be made, for suggesting ‘Knee-Gate’ is on a par with aggressive, sustained harassment is frankly insulting to victims of the latter.

Now is the time for measured reform, led by key figures away from Westminster, that will spark long-term change and not a media-driven witch-hunt that will inevitably result in innocent parties being dragged through the mire and victims of habitual campaigns of harassment seeing their own horrifying experiences dumbed down to the level of a wine-fuelled knee graze.