It's quiz time folks. What do the following have in common:
1. Horse meat masquerading as beef
2. Chris Huhne
3. Phone hacking
The answer is that they all occupy far more of the nation's column inches and screen minutes than they deserve to. With a bit of luck by the time I've finished writing this, I may have worked out why, but I'm not promising.
Take the horse meat business. When you buy some processed concoction, you really don't know what you're eating: the list of indredients is dauntingly long and largely incomprehensible. Also, the meat content percentage is going to be pretty damn low, so if a bit of horse has cantered into the box, it's only going to be a very small amount. And crucially, what's wrong with eating a bit of horse? Findus should have kept all their lasagne on the shelves and simply re-labelled it as horse lasagne: watch the sales gallop away!
The horse: a butcher's guide
Then there's poor old Chris Huhne. A ruined man, and for what? He didn't hurt anyone, he didn't steal from anyone, he was just unlucky enough to be caught by one of those infernal speed cameras. OK, and he told a few fibs. We've all been there with the speed camera business. Not only that, I expect many of us know someone who's persuaded A.N.Other to take the rap for them. Alternatively, if Mr Huhne had been driving a foreign-registered car, he'd have got away with it completely. But now, as an indirect consequence of this minor indiscretion, he's facing jail and a lifetime as an answer to a quiz question.
Finally, phone hacking. Readers may remember I've already offered my phone for hacking at a fraction of the price paid out by News International to various celebs. Does anyone really care what messages may be on Hugh Grant's phone? ("Hi Hugh it's me: did you remember to put the bins out and feed the fish?") It really is of so little consequence as to be laughable but despite this, we have God knows how many police hours being wasted on this telephonic twaddle and you and I are paying for it.
Do the police have nothing better to do? Of course they do but messing around with mobiles is so much more pleasant than preventing teenage chavs from making poeple's lives a misery, etc., etc. And do the newspapers and TV companies have nothing more important to report? There's appalling wars going on around the world, most of the developed countries are bankrupt and the undevleoped ones are still starving but never mind, let's devote our first seven pages to "horsegate".
So what do these three news stories have in common then? The answer is that the news customers, that's us folks, want to hear about them. And why is that then? Because they make us feel better. The horsemeat thing is a good laugh and makes for many excellent jokes; everyone likes to see a politician get his comeuppance and these days there is an insatiable demand for any tittle-tattle relating to anyone who can vaguely lay claim to being called a celebrity.
Britain's debt continues to rise inexorably; Africa is riddled with killings and poverty; it's a race for armageddon between North Korea and Iran. Scary stuff - who wants to read about that? Whack another lump of Shergar in the microwave!
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