The general election campaign has reached that inevitable point where the violins come out as the party leaders tell us how they overcame tremendous hardship growing up.

Politics has long resembled the famous comedy sketch where four self-made Yorkshiremen try to outdo each other with increasingly absurd tales of childhood deprivation. (‘A house? You were lucky to have a house! We used to sleep in one room, 26 of us. And half the floor was missing.’)

Trying to play the game in a recent interview, Rishi Sunak clearly didn’t have a lot to go on, so unwisely decided to mention the fact that his family never had Sky TV when he was younger. A childhood deprived of live Premier League football or Headbangers’ Ball on MTV must have been a considerable obstacle to success many can relate to and it’s a surprise he met such scorn and ridicule.

Sunak’s constituency is in Yorkshire, so he definitely needs to up his game when discussing his upbringing with local businessmen.

The Tory PM is trying to play a game popularised by his former party leader, John Major, who referenced his own “two rooms in Brixton” in the 1990s (we can only assume the floor was fully intact).

Keir Starmer, meanwhile, reminds us constantly that his father was a toolmaker. The Labour leader’s mantra is clearly intended to underline his apparently humble origins but it’s reaching the point where it starts to demean his dad’s very noble trade. It’s not as if Starmer’s father was begging for small change in bus shelters in order to put a roof over young Keir’s head.

Warming to his theme in a recent TV debate, Starmer said "I know what it feels like to be embarrassed to invite your mates home because the carpet is threadbare", which seems a lesson in avoiding snobs as friends more than anything else. Does anyone in the real world look at their friends’ carpet and judge anyway?

I’d almost welcome a politician who was carried everywhere in a sedan chair as a child and ate only swans freshly slaughtered by the butler, as long as they were honest about it, rather than trying endlessly to confect some hardship.

Voters are rarely swayed by this ‘backstory’ nonsense but it’s a minor obsession among political strategists and spin doctors.

This endless fixation ignores the fact that people who ‘came from nothing’ can be mightily tedious, boring anyone who will listen about their modest beginnings and rise to the top. Their achievements certainly don’t make them good company or, necessarily, good Prime Ministers.