“England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” If George Bernard Shaw were alive today, he might add that they are also separated by, among other things, 3,000 miles or so of sea and a totally different approach to advertisements for erectile dysfunction.

We might be separated by a common language but we are united in our fascination with the Eliot Spitzer saga; it got acres of news coverage in the British press, including the FT, as well as in the US. Who could resist the chance to read about the extra-curricular habits of a man who had set himself up as the scourge of Wall Street, and in so doing probably increased the sales of Starbucks in London several hundredfold by forcing analysts and investment bankers to go out for coffee if they wanted to speak to each other? In his blog, my FT colleague John Gapper produced a very early account of what was happening that proved to be gripping reading for two reasons. First, he swiftly received a post on the blog from a woman working as a highly paid escort in NYC (always interesting to see who reads the FT online), and second, that he included a link to scans of the court papers, which I read with great interest.