Noel Botham was laid to rest last week. He was the undisputed master of a school of journalism which would have given Lord Justice Leveson the vapours.

He practiced those traditional reporting arts of buying champagne by the bucketload, displaying an ever-open chequebook, paying bribes and extravagant tip-off money, making secret tape recordings and pursuing other old fashioned virtues which allowed him to age the way he liked, as a living legend infamous for serious mischief-making.

He was also 100 per cent accurate in his fact-finding if not always his theories.