Those organisers and PR types who think they are being awfully clever arranging for planted question at their events should know that they are very easy for an intelligent audience to spot and that they are really nothing new.

One former orator and advocate of the deception once boasted “At all our meetings I had party members in the audience with orders to interrupt, along carefully prepared lines, to give the impression of a spontaneous expression of public opinion. These interruptions strengthened the force of my argument”.

The clever orator who orchestrated his own heckling? Adolf Hitler, in 1921.