Sometimes, seeing a rotund figure ahead of us in the street, Rosemarie and I will turn to each other and say “Yes!”. This answers the understood question: “Does my bum look big in this?” Many readers will recall this catch-phrase of an Arabella Weir character, the Insecure Woman, in The Fast Show, perhaps the last really funny comedy series on British television.

On the rare occasions when I read the Daily Mail (on British Airways flights usually, as I did on Saturday, returning from Athens) I can be heard from time to time muttering “No”. This is the usual answer invited by the questions this newspaper obsessively asks in its headlines.

There were two classics in Saturday’s Mail, which also carried the now-notorious attack on daddy Milliband: “Did British train gunman who led mall massacre?” and “Fluoride in tap water cuts fillings — but does it raise dementia risk?”

Another page dished a double whammy of questions: “Why is the English socialite who ran off with a Russian billionaire saying she’s run out of cash?” and “Why is she now desperate to evict her Cossack horseman ex-husband from their tiny Moscow apartment?”

“Don’t know; don’t care” would he a suitable response to both.

The headline style is presumably an enthusiasm (like stories about cancer, house prices and overweight celebrities) of the Mail’s strange long-time editor Paul Dacre.

According to a recent Private Eye he is soon to be replaced by my old Osney neighbour Geordie Greig, the editor of the Mail on Sunday and a great friend of Lady Rothermere, who is married to the Mail’s owner.

A new broom? Perhaps — although I did notice that this week’s MoS had a front-page splash about a cure (alleged) for skin cancer.