I wrote recently of the British press, and how they would not stand for some of the nonsense that newspapers in South Africa do, from politicians or business figures. I thought of an extract of an article which I enjoyed in The Daily Telegraph, when they were writing about Rupert Murdoch appearing before a Parliamentary committee, perfectly illustrates the no holds barred approach, “In fact, our first glimpse of the legendary media mogul was a huge anti-climax. Good grief, could than really be him? He was shockingly old, I mean Galapagos tortoise old. Despite the shark pinstripe suit and fashionably strobing, chunky tie, the octogenarian Murdoch looked less like a master of the universe than one of those Ukrainian pensioners who is dragged from obscurity to testify about a suspected past as a war criminal.”

That kind of journalism really hits home hard, and it can be done in a tremendously amusing way, as this extract illustrates, “Never mind the facts, in the opening ten minutes Murdoch Senior seemed to be scarcely in possession of his faculties. In the interminable and embarrassing silence as between question and answer, we wondered whether our star witness, with his head lolling forward, had actually nodded off.”