It has been a habit of mine, through most of my adult life, to every so often buy (a good split infinitive that) a copy of the Daily Mail, just to remind myself what a dreadful rag it is.

I bought one on Wednesday of last week, with the additional motive of seeing what it had to say about the serious case review on the Oxford sex grooming case published the previous day.

The news reports I suspected (correctly) would feature the work of a former colleague who covered the long Bullfinch trial for us before graduating to what used to be called Fleet Street. There was nothing to take exception to in these. But then I turned to the editorial in which was stated: “In Oxford, as in Rotherham, the true culprit is a pernicious doctrine of political correctness, which stopped the authorities acting against Pakistani gangs for fear of being branded racist.”

Oh yeah? Look what was stated on this matter in The Times, in a story from Andrew Norfolk, the fine investigative journalist who broke the Rotherham story and many similar ones that followed. “Unlike recent findings in Rotherham, where 1,400 girls were subjected to abuse over a 16-year period, the review does not suggest that concerns about racial or cultural sensitivities played a role in agencies’ failure to tackle such crimes in Oxford.”

So the Daily Mail made it up.

Elsewhere that day, the Mail was delighting in the stripping of the CBE (“at last”) from Rolf Harris. But a few pages earlier, columnist Ephraim Hardcastle was sympathising with a man whose jailing for perjury had been the subject of embarrassing questions in a BBC interview. This was Lord Archer, still flaunting his title despite his criminal past.

It was good to have my anti-Mail prejudices confirmed once more . . .