There was a piece about paedophiles, PIE, Harman, Dromey, Brittan and a cast of thousands in the Mail today. It supported the thesis that when there’s no real news, Dacre’s Desperadoes will either (a) invent some or (b) recycle any old sh*t. In a funny sort of way, it felt like nostalgia for those things still uninvestigated today.

Those who are aficionados of the classic Citizen Kane will recall that Charles Foster Kane starts his journalistic ‘Yellow press’ (today we’d call it Redtop) proprietorial career with the headline ‘SPANISH GALLEONS SIGHTED OFF COAST OF SOUTHERN US’. But recycling is more common these days, as even any old sh*t requires creativity – and there’s not that much of it about any more. So it is that Dacre the Mad – and pretty much everyone else for that matter – constantly presents old bollocks as fresh news: barmy beliefs about AIDS in Africa, Obama’s birth certificate, JFK’s libido, and Madeleine McCann suspects…all are fair game – albeit well hung.

Anyway, I was wondering where this could lead. One can, let’s face it, make a dramatic headline out of things that happened a long, long time ago…but of which today’s down-dumbed folks know next to nothing. People like David Attenborough have built a career on it.  And if the Redtop tabloids got a serious grip on that idea, the possibilities would be without end.

‘EXCLUSIVE: BRITAIN ONCE JOINED TO FROGLAND’ The Sun might scream. The danger of litigition from that one would be homoaeopathic, for it is indeed true. Ancient Britain was a peninsula until a tsunami flooded its land-links to Europe some 8,000 years ago. But it wasn’t until 6,100BC that Britain broke free of mainland Europe for good, during the Mesolithic period – the Middle Stone Age.

In geological time, that’s yesterday…and thus, newsy enough for the tabloids.

Or how about ‘OFFICIAL: ROMANS TAUGHT US HOW TO GET PISSED’? This too is true: they brought with them the grape press, and thus not only altered our language, but also our consciousness.

I kid you not, this is a virtually endless seam. Did you know, for example, that

* Jesus’s real name was Yeshua

* The US Government is still paying two pensions to Civil War victims’ successors

* The Roman Empire sits at only No 19 in the list of Empires by size

* The average Frenchman is only 1″ taller than Napoleon

* Only 63 out of the 3500 Nixon White House tapes have been made public

* The Pony Express lasted just 18 months, from April 1860 – October 1861

* Baseball was invented in the UK

But this is my favourite:

97% OF HISTORY LOST

and this too is absolutely true: we’ve been around for 200,000 years, but only 6,000 of them are written down.

There is a gap in the market for a newspaper headed 6000 years of Exclusive News.  It’s only a matter of time.

Earlier at The Slog: The true hopelessness of Britain’s position