Steve Bell, cartoonist in The Guardian, seldom fails to make me chuckle. Today he threw his nappy into the ring in the fight between Harriet Harman and the Daily Mail. (His cartoon is here.)

The Fail would no doubt justify this, now pointless, witch-hunt as investigative journalism holding elected representatives to account. In fact it’s politically motivated smear-drivel aimed at an audience which is predominantly right-wing and reactionary – the age of empire and “wogs begin at Calais” brigade.

So bloody what if Harman once worked for an organisation to which some nutter-kiddy-fiddler was affiliated. She has never championed his cause or fought his corner. Rather the opposite, in truth, but the Fail would never let an honest fact get in the way of a salacious headline. It is insisting that she apologise, but we’ve been waiting for one from the Fail for seventy-odd years. Planks and specks, Mr Dacre!

The Daily Fail really is “Something Rotten in the State of Denmark”. It is, by far, the most wretched excuse for a newspaper ever to be spawned from Fleet Street. It was suggested to me recently that it was only fit to wipe one’s bum, but as the years go by and it sinks from gutter to sewer it’s not even fit for that!