There had to be at least one moment of utter madness in the press conference unveiling the select committee report into press intrusion. Gerald Kaufman’s band of buffoons didn’t disappoint. It fell to Labour MP Derek Wyatt to provide it by suggesting that a newspaper guilty of breaking the Press Complaints Commission’s Code of Practice could be banned from going on sale the following day.

It was a barmy, top-of-the-head suggestion that summed up the – let’s put it kindly – eccentric approach to the brief that the committee had pursued from the word go. Its choice of witnesses, its virtual disregard of the regional press, its decision to hold some sessions behind closed doors, its occasionally breathtaking ignorance of newspaper practice had hardly inspired the newspaper executives that had been paraded before it like so many errant schoolchildren.