In WhatsApp world, everyone can hear you scream | Andrew Anthony

Staley exchanged more than 1,000 emails with Epstein between 2008 and 2012, including ones in which the names of Disney princesses allegedly refer to women trafficked by Epstein.

Matt Hancock, the former reality TV star and one-time health secretary, learned that vital 21st-century lesson in communications technology when the Daily Telegraph published a selection of his most embarrassing WhatsApp messages, introducing a man forced to resign for breaching his own Covid social distancing rules to new depths of public ridicule.

The real issue is whether one should ever commit off-the-cuff thoughts and feelings to imperishable databases.

Andrew Anthony is an Observer columnist