resources to expose issues that really mean something?

Not that the heavyweight papers don't find themselves indebted to the tabloids when they do come up with a real scoop such as the Oaten story. When I was news editor at The Observer, we waited with baited breath for the first editions of the Red Tops to arrive on Saturday evenings in order to "lift" the occasional truly important story.

The irony, then as now, is that it is the "broadsheets" that will sustain interest in the Oaten story and its ramifications for the Lib Dems long after the tabloids have moved on to shame another poor dupe who once enjoyed a fleeting moment of TV celebrity.

Consolation will be hard for Mr Oaten to find today as he faces a ruined career and a (no doubt) traumatised family. But he may care to reflect that already the man on the Clapham omnibus will have lumped his disgrace alongside Patsy Kensit's latest boyfriend and consigned the whole lot to the oblivion of the recycle bin.