He came from beyond the gravy.

The vast man with no neck, Cyril Smith, is now getting the Savile treatment in the press. Lots of allegations, no trial, and he is condemned as another dead paedo. I wonder how big his gravestone is, and whether it will now be removed so that archaeologists of the future can marvel at the mystery of the human-shaped planet they’ve just dug up.

I think, looking back, they might have confused ‘paedophile’ with ‘pieophile’. He only had the one chin but it reached his navel. He reaches out, not so much from beyond the grave as from behind the gravy. There’s a great photo, faithfully reproduced in every article, of him sat next to – and nearly on – Jeremy Thorpe (if I’ve remembered that name correctly. Smokers have no memory, you know). After he died, plane company fuel bills plummeted, the cows had a party and sixteen Rochdale bakers went bust. Gravitational anomalies vanished when he stopped travelling. Maybe he did like children – he was perfectly capable of eating a whole one. At his funeral, only one pall bearer was required. A crane driver.

Okay, maybe he was a pervert, but he’s dead so he won’t do it again. Exactly how are we supposed to punish the dead? Trial by Ouija board? Remove honours he no longer needs? Dig him up, say ‘You’re very naughty’, give him a slap and bury him again? There is nothing anyone can do, he’s already dead.

Although the English have done this before. Two years after Cromwell’s death, he was tried and found guilty of treason. He was already dead but they dug him up and hung him anyway. Then they put his head on a spike. How’s about that then? That won’t happen now because Saliva and Smith would then be accused of leering at passing children. Saliva is already believed to be leering at a school even though he’s dead and underground and, as I recall, encased in concrete.

So what’s behind this? Why are we concentrating on dead possible criminals now? Why is so much news given to people who cannot be punished for crimes they might have committed?

What current horrors are hidden behind the dead?

Somewhere, something terrible is being covered up.