One does not imagine that lords justices of the Court of Appeal come home at the end of a long day to flop down onto the sofa and reach for the remote control, but why should they not? Lord Justice Leveson has clearly been watching the goggle box, and there is one particular show that he does not much care for. No, it is not Judge John Deed, it is US crime drama CSI, a programme which, the judge laments, has created what he terms ‘the effect of CSI’ among jurors, which is ‘a real misunderstanding of the way in which crime can be investigated and detected’.

And no, it does not just affect the kind of person who wore a ‘free Deirdre Barlow’ T-shirt in 1998. As Leveson explained at a Roscoe lecture on criminal justice last week: ‘[CSI] is a television programme which focuses on forensic science. A crime occurs; a scientist turns up and with a bit of DNA, a flake of skin, a hair and some unbelievably clever graphics, the crime is solved in 30 minutes and witnesses do not seem to be involved.’ So what’s the problem? Apparently, that is not actually how crimes are solved in the real world. He says: ‘In most cases, there is no question of a scientific investigation. If you’re on a jury and hear the defence lawyers ask, where is the scientific evidence? Where is the DNA? The answer can be that nobody looked: not because the police were sloppy; not because anyone did not think the crime was serious enough; but because the criminal justice system simply does not have the resources to do that sort of investigation in every case. Even then, science simply does not solve crime; it assists but cannot do it on its own.’ Better turn over to Strictly Come Dancing then, m’lud.