No matter how glamorous the guest-list, or how luxurious the food photographed sliding down the hostess’s gullet, there is an occasion which, deep down in his thoracic cavity, the average tabloid editor knows he would rather snoop on than the wedding of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. It is the 19th birthday party next month of the daughter of Mary Bell, who as an 11-year-old killed two children in Newcastle upon Tyne, and became for a while the nation’s favourite figure of hate.

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