It’s not often the Daily Mail’s Amanda Platell is forced to eat humble pie. So, her craven apology to billionaire shopkeeper Sir Philip Green must have been hard to swallow.

Platell had suggested Sir Philip lent the McCann family his personal jet to visit the Pope “only because of the massed media following the case”.

Apparently not. Four days later, a clearly confused Platell realises that it was simply “an act of pure kindness”.