Nice to see the national press playing to stereotype at the lord chief justice’s annual press conference at the Royal Courts of Justice last week.

The Daily Mail asked if capital punishment should return, the Evening Standard wanted to know if the Abu Hamza case had taken too long and the Telegraph wanted to know exactly how much violence its readers can inflict on burglars. Obiter’s colleague in the raincoat and trilby managed to get in questions about litigants in person (sorry, self-represented people) and cameras in court.

Lord Judge was his usual jovial self, answering questions with characteristic charm and offering the occasional juicy soundbite to keep the hacks happy. But they won’t have been so pleased to hear the LCJ’s views on newspapers. ‘I just flick straight to the sports pages,’ Lord Judge told them, before going into detail about his excitement at the Ryder Cup.