Barristers are taught never to ask a question in court unless they can be sure of the answer they are going to get. In my profession, as I dare to style it, it used to be axiomatic that sub-editors should avoid asking questions in headlines because readers can almost certainly be relied upon to come up with the ‘wrong’ answer.

The application of this sensible restriction would have necessitated the junking of what seemed to me to be two rather stupid headlines in publications I read over the weekend.

The first was in the Spectator whose front cover carried a photograph of David Cameron superimposed (absurdly) on the familiar silhouette of Che Guevara. The headline asks, “Is Cameron a Revolutionary?”, to which question all Speccie readers will chorus: “No, he isn’t.”

In the Mail On Sunday’s Live magazine, a headline asked: “Why would Robbie Williams give away his greatest hits to Mail on Sunday readers for free?” The answer, of course, is “because they’re such a bunch of crap that nobody would pay for them”. (I desist from comment on the tautology involved in giving something away free. “For free” is a ghastly modern expression we must learn to endure.) But it isn’t always questions that invite response. I can’t be the only person irritated by the signs put up to justify Oxford’s new 20mph speed limit: “It’s for a reason.” Indeed it is. And the reason is that many of our local councillors are car-hating zealots who would like to return us to the days when vehicles on public roads had to be preceded by a man waving a red flag.