I have been flying again, which means I have once more been reading the Daily Mail, a copy of which only usually comes my way from the free pile at the departure gate.

No doubt this massive giveaway helps to inflate the Mail’s circulation figures to the benefit of Lord Rothermere.

The newspaper I read carried a ‘story’ – a word appropriate in a way, if not the one traditionally associated with journalism – dealing with a cloud formation photographed in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, by one Heidi Webb.

Now, journalists are taught from day one not to ask questions to which the answer is a plain ‘yes’ or ‘no’, since to do so results in there being nothing to place within quotation marks in their stories.

The Mail’s sub-editors, however, apparently operate under no such constraint.

They ask questions to which the answer is always in the negative, in the way that William Blake did in the first two stanzas of Jerusalem.

“Is Cecil the lion looking down on us?” was the effort this time.

“No, of course he’s not, you daft ‘aporth,” as my dear old Aunt Sophie would have said.

To my eyes, the formation did not even look like the late lamented leo, more like a poodle, or a large rabbit, or possibly Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man.

Ms Webb thinks she took “a lovely photo”.

She added: “It seems to have given people comfort after they were upset by [Cecil’s] killing.”

I know this is the silly season, but really...

Mail editor Paul Dacre evidently has a penchant for stories touching on the supernatural, as well as those about house prices and cancer cures.

“Is this a warning to the US?” the Mail asked recently concerning a flock of birds merging to form Putin’s face.

No and again no.