Leading article: Farewell, the silly season

It is with much regret that we record the death of that innocently old-fashioned British institution, the Silly Season.

It was extremely ancient and had been ailing for some time. The season was born in an era when newspapers were generally filled for 11 months by po-faced reports of high-minded events.

Then, come August, when courts and Parliament retired to their ancestral fastnesses, eggs purportedly frying on pavements and the doings of bathing belles were allowed their brief month in the media sun.

Today, such matters (and their successors, mostly from "reality" television) are the year-round reporting norm, and thus every season has become, in its own way, a silly one. "Shirt-sleeved holiday crowds", where are you now?