An email informs me that someone I have never met has had a child. A poster on the Tube declares that “feeling low” and “wanting to hide” are “OK”. “Because being human is OK.” OK. An adjacent couple at a restaurant devote 45 minutes and perhaps 80 decibels to what one of them calls, in an apologetic aside, “working through stuff”. The other weeps between bites of chu toro.

Diana won, didn’t she? Or rather, to avoid typecasting someone who hasn’t been able to defend herself for 25 years, a worldview that was ascribed to her has won. We in the media deal in dualisms. During the weeks after her death, two ways of going at life were pitted against each other. On one side, emotional candour. On the other, royal uptightness. In the end, the royals submitted. The pursed lip quivered. The bereaved sons, who might have preferred to be left alone, were brought out to meet public demand. “The logic of a Disney production and the enforcement of a Nazi state,” was one account of the atmosphere. Crass, no doubt. Still, whenever someone claims that social media has unhinged public life, I refer them to Britain in September 1997. Mark Zuckerberg was 13.