There is a technical term in the newspaper business for the moment when a newspaper, having reported an event with great conviction one week, says the opposite the following week with equal conviction. It is called a “reverse ferret”. But ferrets have rarely been reversed more rapidly than they were last week.

The squeal of brakes and the screech of tyres as editors executed an emergency stop and rapid U-turn would have done credit to Jeremy Clarkson.

And all because Madonna is getting divorced. Or not. Whatever.

As late as last Tuesday the Daily Mirror was insisting that accountants were untangling the complicated finances of the singer and her husband, the film director Guy Ritchie.

“As desperate Guy jetted to New York for crunch talks with his wife it emerged that celebrity accountancy firm MGR, which handles the couple’s books, had been asked to get their files in order,” said the paper. “Guy tried to mask his anguish with a smile at Heathrow.”

Perhaps he was masking his anguish. But might he just have been, well, smiling?

Because by Wednesday all was supposedly well again. “Madonna denied reports she is divorcing Guy Ritchie,” said The Sun. She also denied rumours that she was secretly seeing Alex Rodriguez, a baseball player with the New York Yankees.

“Madonna made it up to Guy with a candlelit meal as they listened to Ella Fitzgerald tracks.”

That was in The Sun. But according to the Mirror it was a classic smokescreen. The paper insisted that Madonna has rejected her husband’s appeal to save the marriage by offering to live with her in New York. “Steely Madge told him in no uncertain terms: ‘You’re not coming. I still want a divorce. Stay in London’.”

Are we about to see a reversed ferret reversed?

The Daily Mail, meanwhile, promised us “The royals as they’ve never been seen before”. So what were these sensational pictures that we’d never seen before? Anybody hoping to see Prince Edward in nothing but a leather pouch will have been disappointed. The Mail’s pictures showed the Queen and other close family members enjoying lunch.

Lunch – as you’ve never seen it before. Doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it?

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