It is a little shocking that a seasoned news consumer such as myself can read a broadsheet headline: “Jordan fears consequences of Israeli Wall”, and react to it by spluttering between clenched teeth, ‘Who gives a monkey’s what she thinks!’ before realising that they’re talking about the Hashemite Kingdom, not the witless, talentless, faux-poitrined ‘former glamour model’.

Because it is part of my function to peruse the front pages of the Red-Tops and Shag-Rags, it is with growing disgust that I have seen these papers leading every day for the last fortnight with the holiday antics of this sad, ridiculous person. I don’t (though I would like to) know if the editors or the punters are driving this incomprehensible obsession. Possibly, by some bizarre twist in the taste of the public who choose to buy these papers, the former glamour model has taken the place of the late Princess Diana, and is required to be on the front page, because if she isn’t, a red-top will lose out to its rivals in the way editors claimed they did in the heady days of Diana’s roller-coaster sex-life.  Much as I deplored the gross coverage given to the late Princess, for her privacy as well as my own boredom with her activities, at least there was some justification in that she was the mother of the future king.

But that Jordan, vapid nonentity, should justify any space at all could make you think either that the shag-rag editors or their punters are in the last throes of death by trivia. But this is the insidious nature of persistent coverage that seeps by osmosis from the tabloids e’en unto the Journaux serieux. I don’t know what excuses can be made for papers like the Guardian writing about her and her pointless husband. Of course, any reports (like the most recent, under the banner of television review) in that paper are loaded with appropriate irony. But that’s not enough and still produces more column inches. And was it irony that prompted them to give 2/3 of page to the obituary of the late St Jade Goody – if you can remember who she was?

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