Katie Hopkins Pwns The Mail

“'Have you an ounce of sympathy in your nasty little heart?': Katie Hopkins is slammed after failing to acknowledge Peaches Geldof's death” scolded the Mail on Tuesday morning, making sure they gave Ms Hopkins as little time as possible before laying into her for not having the good grace to open her mouth, put her foot in it, and help them generate even more cheap copy.

Dignified silence, both then and now

Dredging up the This Morning argument between the two, the Mail got one of its gofers to monitor mentions of Ms Hopkins on Twitter. They found just three (by comparison, she has around 158,000 followers). She was then accused of “Tweeting and Retweeting irrelevant remarks”. The Mail, however, was not so reticent.

Just reporting Peaches Geldof’s death was not sufficient. We had to hear about “Peaches Geldof's haunting last column for baby magazine is revealed as police scour her home for clues to her death” (irrelevant, much?) and then came a characteristically tedious diatribe from Amanda Bloody Platell, which, it hardly needs to be said, was also little more than click-bait. Supposedly wonderful diarist Sebastian Shakespeare also had to have his ninepence worth.

And then came the truly vacuous: “Nick Grimshaw and Alexa Chung head out to dinner in LA as they prepare to support Pixie Geldof in wake of sister’s tragic death”. Would anyone like to sink even lower? You betcha, says Sarah: “'She was a sweet, funny girl... it's a tragedy': Simon Cowell pays tribute to Peaches Geldof”. It couldn’t get any more desperate. Or could it?

Oh yes it could: “Gavin Rossdale takes heartbroken daughter Daisy Lowe to lunch in LA following the sudden death of her pal Peaches Geldof”. By this morning, there was even something from tired and unfunny churnalist Richard Littlejohn: “The sudden death of a young mother is always sad. But that doesn’t explain the distasteful outpouring of vicarious grief over Peaches Geldof”.

That would be the “vicarious grief” on which his paper had been shamelessly trading all week, including “Peaches Geldof 'was found dead with her 11-month-old son by her side after husband raised the alarm because she wasn't answering her phone'” today, which we also did not need to know.

Meanwhile, Ms Hopkins has used her Sun column to say, simply, “Peaches didn’t want a tweet from me. She didn’t welcome it in life. She certainly didn’t need it in death. She was tough enough not to seek approval from anyone. I admire that trait in others… Peaches didn’t need tweets from celebrities or strangers – she just needed a mother’s love”. That would appear to be one-nil to the Hopkins.

One also wonders if this is connected to Ms Hopkins appearing on Channel 5, and Dacre’s hatred of Richard “Dirty” Desmond. Oh, it might just be. More than a little.