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talking to. That’s him on the right. Here’s one of his former schoolfriends. Here’s his villa, live from the Sky Copter. Martin Brunt is on the scene. Martin Brunt is on the scene. Martin Brunt is on the scene.
    When that trail cooled off, the coverage degraded into mawkish reports marking ‘one more day’ and occasional shrieks accompanying false sightings. And then, last weekend, the McCanns became suspects and things went totally insane.
    We were treated to hours of live coverage of a police station door. On BBC News 24 , reporter Jane Hill stood amongst the throng, expressing her amazement at the size of the crowd gathered there, who seemed to have come merely to catch a glimpse of the McCanns. She described how uncomfortable it all was, as though she wasn’t there merely to catch a glimpse herself; as though weweren’t tuning in merely to catch a glimpse of her glimpsing it. On Sky News, Ian Woods was doing the same thing. Look at all these locals, they kept saying. They’ve come to stand and stare. Look at them looking at this door. Now keep looking at it.
    And then they split the screen in two while the newsreader back in London spoke to someone else in the studio, leaving one half of the screen streaming live footage of the door, so our view of it went uninterrupted; so we wouldn’t miss a nanosecond of door-opening action if and when it occurred. Unlike the backward, ghoulish crowds, we sophisticates could sit on our comfy sofas eating peanuts, looking at the door on our plasma screens.
    On Sunday the McCanns headed home. We saw live footage of them leaving the villa. Live footage of the drive to the airport. Live footage of anchors standing outside the airport interviewing their own correspondents about the drive to the airport. You could watch a motorbike drive behind Jane Hill on News 24 , then flip over to Sky in time to see it pass behind Kay Burley. Sky’s Ian Woods was booked to fly on the McCann’s plane; he conducted interviews with fellow passengers inside the airport. What do you think? And what do you think? Kay Burley spoke to him live on the phone as he described the seating layout prior to take off.
    During the flight itself, Adam Boulton’s Sunday morning show was also split in two; one half streaming live footage of the McCann’s home in Rothley, where nothing was happening because they were still several hours away, sitting in the sky, with Sky sitting behind them. It was like an episode of 24 in which all the action was paused. Yet you can’t look away. It’s live. It’s hypnotic. Something might happen. Here is the airport. Here is the house. Here is a relative. Here is looped footage of the car journey. Here is the view from the chopper. Here is East Midlands airport. Here is the news.
    At the scene of accidents, Police traditionally wave back rubberneckers by saying ‘move along now, there’s nothing to see’. Sorry, officer. Can’t hear you. 24-Hour News Entertainment has wedged its fingers in our ears. And it’s going ‘nyahhh nyahhh nyahhh’ so loudly it’s completely drowned you out.

The infested [29 September 2007]
    I had a rat once. Not as a pet, you understand – I’m not that cool and alternative and lawless and hard – but as an invader. I was living in a shared house near Clapham Junction, and one day my flat-mate heard a noise coming from a kitchen drawer, pulled it open and got rat in his face. It had been nesting there for some time; it was the drawer where all of our overdue bills were kept, and it had gnawed these up into tiny strips of bedding.
    Anyway, we cornered said rat in the bathroom, shutting the door so it couldn’t get out, and pondered our next move. We tried chasing it out with a broom – but that didn’t work because every time we opened the door it leapt into a small hole in the wall behind the sink. Instead, a lengthy face-off began. I’d heard that poison is a bad idea, as you end up with a decomposing rat under your floorboards,