Cherie Blair this week joined the growing list of Labour women – Harriet Harman, deputy party leader, Kevlar-waistcoated in her south London constituency; Jacqui Smith, home secretary, feeling unsafe on south London streets – to dramatise the re-emergence of the knife into London’s fearful mind, 120 years after Jack the Ripper began his cut-throat prowls among the prostitutes of Whitechapel.

Jack the Ripper was made immortal by the press, then reaching out to its first mass audience. Now it is television that feeds or soothes our crime anxieties. BBC News is currently undergoing an internal debate on how crime should be presented, and in what context, the results of which (assuming they are visible) we will see soon. But the burden for the presentation of crime falls, as ever, on drama.