It was surprising yesterday to hear Radio 5 Live invite News of the World investigative journalist Mazher Mahmood into their studios to puff his recent book. Simon Mayo’s show is usually more discerning.

Starting with a fatuous charade to obscure Mahmood’s identity, the lights in the studio were dimmed so that those viewing through the webcam wouldn’t see his visage, despite that fact that it can be seen on several well-used websites, including Wikipedia.

You might ask - Who gives a shit anyway? The man’s a busted flush. His brand of sloppy, largely fictitious journalism is less in demand than it was as the GB Public become more sophisticated (not enough yet, though; over 3 million morons still buy the News of the World every week to grubby up their Sundays.)

The News Of The World is indignant this Sunday about local authorities using surveillance techniques to catch Council Tax cheats. There’s always an enjoyable sense of the ridiculous to be had in seeing the Screws working themselves up into a righteous frenzy about someone else doing exactly what they’ve been doing – extensively and sometimes illegally – for years.

In their usual scrappy way, without naming one authority or citing any specific examples, they tell us that ‘Town Hall’ snoopers are using anti-terrorist powers to monitor mobile phone signals to see who is sleeping over with whom, and doing it regularly enough to nullify a single occupancy discount. They quote MP Eric Pickles “the country is walking into surveillance state where spying on citizens has become the norm.”

Yes – and more often than not by the News of the World.