Silly season used to be restricted to August; now it seems to be a permanent fixture in the media calendar. For example, banks have been bumped from the front pages this week by the frothing frenzy about TV shows and their premium rate competitions. The frenzy, naturally, is being fed chiefly by paragons of virtue like the Daily Mail and the Sun.

“How dare TV companies make up competition contestants?” thunder newspapers who employ people to write fictional readers’ letters.  “What right have these people to rig competitions?” holler newspapers who run unwinnable competitions.

Just as top-flight English football didn’t exist before Sky won the broadcast rights, so history only began in 1995 when the World Wide Web was born.  But surely I can’t be the only person alive to remember the fraudulent £1m bingo game in the 1980s when a national newspaper’s employee rigged it so his granny won?

It’s show BUSINESS, folks. They’re not doing it for a philanthropic buzz.

(I swear on my mother’s life that while I’ve been typing this post, BBC Breakfast has implored viewers to “keep sending us your pictures” of litter. When exactly did satire become self-generating? Did I miss that meeting?)