Daily Mail, 6 February 2009. The story quoted Edna Andrews, the family’s housekeeper, who said that Bishop Williamson’s mother thought that his father, a hosiery buyer, had been denied promotion at Marks & Spencer because he was not Jewish. Which is why you should never read on after a headline like that: you know that the story can only be a disappointment.

Sun, 20 February 2009. The Sun reported a mysterious pattern of criss-cross lines (below) apparently shown by Google Earth on the North Atlantic ocean bed. The BBC reported a statement from Google the next day: ‘What users are seeing is an artefact of the data collection process. Bathymetric (or sea floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor. The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data.’

Daily Mail, 28 February 2009. The online version was more heavy-handed, although this meant that it contained more explanatory material, for those of us not so familiar with the private lives of popular entertainers: ‘Is Madonna still in love with Sean Penn, the man who beat her up with a baseball bat?’

The Wardman Wire blog, 4 March 2009. Twitter was quite new then.

Fraser Nelson, Coffee House blog, 26 March 2009. Several Questions to Which the Answer is No have an ‘end is nigh’ theme; this one referred merely to bad things happening to the economy after a Bank of England auction of Government debt failed to sell completely. Nelson thought this might mean that the Government would be unable to raise money to finance its vast deficit. Actually, it was a glitch caused by uncertainty over the pricing of gilts, as a result of the new policy of Quantitative Easing, a fancy way of saying ‘printing money’.

Janet Daley, Telegraph blog, 1 April 2009. An offensive and unnecessary question, I thought; the refuge of the over-expressive commentator. It was offensive and unnecessary when Matthew Parris asked it of Tony Blair, in The Times, on 29 March 2003: ‘Are we witnessing the madness of Tony Blair?’ Parris meant, ‘I really, really, really do not agree with the war in Iraq.’ I suppose Janet Daley’s question, at the time of Brown’s G20 meeting to ‘rescue the world’, meant, ‘I am a Conservative.’

Mail on Sunday, 12 April 2009. Reported in the Mail on Sunday on this occasion, but repeated in all newspapers from time to time, in all good bookshops and on The History Channel. The ‘after all’ was a particularly deft touch, suggesting that the Mail on Sunday understood that any sensible person knew that the shroud was a fake, but that some new evidence had come to light that unexpectedly suggested that the fruitcakes had been right ‘all along’.

Fox News, 16 April 2009. As Barack Obama began to put his healthcare plans through Congress, his opponents held up the British National Health Service as a nightmare vision of America’s future. Sarah Palin said that decisions about entitlement to treatment were made in the UK by ‘death panels’, and Fox News interviewed Jerry Bowyer from the National Review, who explained why the NHS is easily infiltrated by terrorists. Because it is a bureaucracy, apparently.

Daniel Finkelstein at the Times blog, Comment Central, 20 April 2009. For this one I broke my own rule, that the author of the question had to imply that the answer was Yes for it to qualify for inclusion in the series, on the grounds that Finkelstein was asking the question on behalf of the owner of the X-ray, who had put it on eBay claiming it was of Hitler’s skull.

Independent, 20 May 2009. After Michael Martin, the Speaker of the House of Commons, announced his resignation, my own newspaper responded with its own brand of hyperbole, as if it were the Prague Spring and the lifting of the Labour jackboot all in one. I thought it was quite a bright day for Parliament, as it was likely to acquire a better chairperson. As for a ‘new dawn’, (a) we weren’t exactly living in the feudal age before and (b) you must be joking.

Richard Shulman, examiner.com, 26 May 2009. This was from Richard Shulman, an ‘examiner’ for examiner.com, ‘a dynamic entertainment, news and lifestyle network’. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, had apparently acted on Blair’s suggestion that he should hand over to the Palestinian Authority the sales tax that the Israeli government collected on its behalf. Still, it was better than the more usual question, the other way round.

James Delingpole, Telegraph blog, 5 June 2009. Again, he was not asking the question himself, as he is sceptical about human-made climate change, but on behalf of Russia Today, the English-language channel, which suggested that ‘severe weather conditions’ had caused the crash, off the Brazilian coast, four days earlier.

Ephraim Hardcastle, Daily Mail, 11 June 2009. A persistent question, first asked by Ephraim Hardcastle, the fictional Daily Mail diarist. Peter Mandelson was, and still is, a life peer, an appointment which, as he said, ‘is for life’. Although there is no bar to a peer becoming Prime Minister, there has not been one since Lord Salisbury in 1902. The Bill that included a provision to allow life peers to renounce their peerage fell in the pre-election rush in November 2009.

Daily Express, 24 June 2009. An awkward one this, because one of my early Questions to Which the Answer is No was ‘Is the Express a newspaper?’ I had formulated an arbitrary rule that its headlines did not count. But what are rules for, if not for changing?

Ynetnews, 14 July 2009. ‘A Hamas police spokesman in the Gaza Strip, Islam Shahwan, claimed Monday that Israeli intelligence operatives are attempting to “destroy” the young generation by distributing such materials in the coastal enclave.

‘A number of suspects have been arrested. The affair was exposed when a Palestinian filed a complaint that his daughter chewed the aforementioned gum and experienced the dubious side effects. “The Israelis seek to destroy the Palestinians’ social infrastructure with these products and to hurt the young generation by distributing drugs and sex stimulants,” said Shahwan.’

You could make it up. But you would be condemned as an Islamophobic smart alec.

Neil Durham, editor of Healthcare Republic, 18 August 2009. As I said, Twitter was still quite new.

Daily Telegraph, 26 August 2009. A picture of something that actually looked like a giant squid had been spotted by a security guard as he browsed the digital planet. A similar question had been asked by the Telegraph six months earlier, on 19 February, about the picture below: ‘Has the Loch Ness Monster emigrated to Borneo?’

Gene, Harry’s Place blog, 30 August 2009. Gene at Harry’s Place was having a go at Victoria Brittain, a journalist for the Guardian, who was a member of the council of Respect, George Galloway’s party, which is not so much anti-war as pro-war on the other side.

Mail on Sunday, 6 September 2009. This was asked by Lauren Booth, Cherie Blair’s half-sister, writing in the Mail on Sunday. Something to do with the Princess of Wales’s campaign against land mines.

Jonn Elledge, Liberal Conspiracy blog, 9 September 2009. As with so many of these questions, the words of Kenneth Clarke come to mind. He was intercepted by a camera crew at the 1999 Conservative Party Conference, who put Margaret Thatcher’s words to him, that ‘in my lifetime all our problems have come from mainland Europe’. Clarke looked disbelieving, repeated ‘All our problems?’, and said: ‘Well, it’s a theory, isn’t it?’

Daily Mail, 11 September 2009. Another gem of the genre, given away by the supplementary question, which was also one in my series: ‘And are the US and Britain covering it up to continue war on terror?’ Well, it was a theory, wasn’t it?

Daily Mail, 21 September 2009. Hats off for the opening paragraph, which quoted the BBC’s Watchdog programme as saying that this man is ‘a menace’, before continuing to describe how one of the newspaper’s ‘most cynical’ reporters met this ‘controversial healer’ and ‘her scepticism began to waver.’ An example of the have-cake-and-eat-it Mail at its best. Rebecca Hardy scoffs at ‘the most controversial healer in Britain’, Adrian Pengelly, but then wonders if there might be something in anti-science superstition after all.

Christopher Booker, The Real Global Warming Disaster, 17 October 2009. A Question to Which the Answer is No asked, at book length, by Christopher Booker in The Real Global Warming Disaster (Continuum), with this question as its subtitle. I do like the quotation marks around ‘climate change’, just in case anyone suspected that Booker thought there was something in it.

Peter Oborne, Daily Mail, 31 October 2009. Peter Oborne wrote that there were many times when Blair had to choose between ‘doing his best for Britain’, or ‘creating a good impression with potential future employers in the European Union’. Only one thing wrong with this otherwise persuasive thesis. On the most famous occasion when Blair faced this choice, over Iraq, he chose to go against the policy favoured by the leaders of most of the large EU countries.

Ed West, Telegraph blog, 10 November 2009. This was a question that West asked in response to a sensible comment by Tim Montgomerie at Conservative Home. Montgomerie wrote:

The ‘EUSSR’ thing is just one of the wholly inappropriate comparisons that often come up in debates. Other classics are Bush equals Hitler, Israel equals Nazi Germany and Britain-under-Brown equals Zimbabwe-under-Mugabe. Every comparison devalues debate and, more importantly, cheapens the suffering of the people who did live under the USSR, Nazi Germany and Robert Mugabe.

Tim Montgomerie: living proof that there are intelligent Conservatives on the internet.

Adam Boulton, Sky News blog, 19 November 2009. Adam Boulton asked this question on the morning of the European Council’s meeting to appoint Herman van Rompuy, former Prime Minister of Belgium, as its first President. Blair had been the bookmakers’ favourite until two weeks earlier.

Boulton was not alone. Benedict Brogan wrote on his Telegraph blog that morning: ‘Why Tony Blair should not be written off quite yet.’ Mike Smithson asked at the Political Betting website: ‘Is Blair back in the frame again for the EU job?’ And James Forsyth on Coffee House wrote: ‘Why my money is on Balkenende.’

Daily Mail, 21 November 2009. Well? Have you?

Peter McKay, Daily Mail, 30 November 2009. Early version of another frequent flier in this series. Far easier to ask the question, so that Daily Mail readers who hate Blair could fantasise about it, than to look at the law, which would be rather dull and from which any reasonable person would quickly conclude that there is no prospect of Blair, or any other politician or official, facing any kind of trial over Iraq. No matter how often I tried to explain this, and in how many different ways, the question kept recurring, with subtle differences of wording.

Nile Gardiner, Daily Mail, 9 December 2009. The President had given a speech about Afghanistan in which he did not mention the UK.

Sebastian Shakespeare, London Evening Standard, 15 December 2009. An unusual achievement in asking, about the invasion of Iraq, two Questions to Which the Answer is No in a single headline.

Iain Martin, on his blog, 7 January 2010. I said at the time that I feared that this was a Question to Which the Answer is No, and so it proved. When Alistair Darling published his memoir of his time as Gordon Brown’s Chancellor, Back from the Brink (Atlantic Books), in 2011, he wrote: ‘I met him later that afternoon, shortly after 4 o’clock ... He was in a dark mood, unsurprisingly, but there was no way that he was going. He was convinced that he had to stay on and see it through. We had a long talk about the need for him to engage with his colleagues ...By the time I left the room, I was satisfied that we had a mutual understanding of what we needed to do together.’ A pity.

Mail on Sunday leading article, 24 January 2010. A rather special one, this, and possibly the first Question to Which the Answer is No in my collection that was not a headline. Such a pile-up of a sentence, with at least three subtextual slurs on David Miliband, that somebody must have been very proud of it.

Ed Yong, Not Exactly Rocket Science blog, 2 February 2010. Ed Yong reported the findings of a Birmingham University study, which found, surprise, surprise, that ‘reactors’ move more quickly than ‘initiators’, but that this is not enough to make up for the 200 milliseconds it takes to start reacting in the first place.

Daily Mail, 6 February 2010. This cover line on the Saturday Weekend section carried a rehash of an old story about Oscar, a cat in a nursing home in America that can tell when residents are about to die.

Daily Mail, 6 February 2010. A classic conspiracy theory, which would depend on executives in pharmaceutical companies taking a substantial risk of going to jail.

A mystery billboard, somewhere in America, 10 February 2010. Spotted thirteen months after George W. Bush left the White House.

London Evening Standard, 25 February 2010. Nor a plague of boils, darkness over the land, rain of frogs or any of the other evils predicted by a Conservative pre-election campaign against the ‘Hung Parliament Party’.

Socialist Workers Party poster, 4 March 2010. This was the title of a meeting organised by the SWP on 4 March 2010, although how many of its target audience will know anything about the student unrest of 32 years earlier is debatable.

John Rentoul, Independent blog, 11 March 2010. Another historic first, this was a question in the series that I asked myself, on the Independent blog, about a YouGov opinion poll putting the Conservatives on 37 per cent and Labour on 34 per cent.

The result of the election two months later was a Conservative lead of seven points, with 37 per cent to Labour’s 30 per cent, thus proving the wisdom of Tom Freeman’s all-purpose news report, which I reproduce with his permission:

A newly released statistic shows that the thing it measures has sharply and unexpectedly changed. The move takes the number index past the psychologically important level at which over-excitable fools gibber a bit.

The sheer oddness of the number, which has been met with gaping and shrieks aplenty, almost certainly means that it means very little. The index usually only changes gradually, and this latest statistic represents the biggest ever change since records began not all that long ago. The nearest comparison was the sudden shift a couple of years back, after which nothing much happened except that it later turned out to have been wrong.

Today’s statistic is the first provisional estimate for the number covering a period of time that did actually pass some while ago without anyone noticing anything unusual. It is still liable to be revised a few times as new data comes in, then encased in concrete and dumped in the sea, before being revised again in a very quiet voice in the dead of night.

A spokesman from the Institute For Stuff (IFS) said: ‘You got me out of bed for this?’

Paul Richards, Progress magazine, 12 March 2010. This one was cheating, because Paul Richards, who asked it in an article in Progress magazine, did not imply that the answer was yes. He was actually making a point about the misuse of historical conjecture, comparing Douglas Carswell, the Conservative MP, who suggested that the Levellers were early Tories, to the spiritualist interviewed by the Sun in 1992, who was asked how Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, Karl Marx and Chairman Mao would have voted (Churchill was for John Major; the rest for Neil Kinnock, naturally).

Psychological Science, 16 March 2010. The study discussed in this article suggested that doing something virtuous in one part of your life gives you the licence to behave badly in other parts.

Daily Mail, 18 March 2010. ‘It seems like a crazy idea,’ said Hank Albarelli, ‘an investigative journalist and author’ quoted by the Mail. ‘If someone came to you and said a CIA unit were going to poison a French town with acid, you’d laugh at them. But that’s what happened – no question.’ No further questions, your honour. Oh, wait. There are.

Daily Mail, 20 March 2010. At this point I began to suspect that the Daily Mail’s sub-editors were doing it on purpose.

John Rentoul, Independent blog, 21 March 2010. This was a question asked, unfortunately, by me, on the Independent blog, on the assumption that Labour and the Liberal Democrats might form a coalition in a hung parliament. Even on that assumption, however, it was a stupid idea. When the Lib Dems did enter a coalition a few weeks later, the Conservatives did not feel that they had to offer them the Chancellorship.

UK Forces Media Ops blog, 21 March 2010. A question asked on the blog of the UK Forces Media Ops team in Helmand. If they meant did it have oil, the answer was no. If they meant would it become an environmentally unsustainable collection of air-conditioned skyscrapers in a desert, the answer was still no. If they meant would westerners there get into trouble over women and alcohol, the answer was: not for much longer.

George Pitcher, Telegraph blog, 23 March 2010. Asked by the religion editor of the Daily Telegraph on his blog. An update of the Government’s National Security Strategy had mentioned the possibility that terrorists might try to attack London with a ‘dirty’ nuclear device. But this Question to Which the Answer is No ought to win some additional prize for sheer illogical noodliness. It posits this thought process in the mind of the average voter: ‘I’m worried about jihadist terrorism; I was going to vote Tory but now I won’t.’ It makes sense to the Reverend Pitcher, anyway.

Daily Mail, 25 March 2010. The Daily Mail sub-editors were trying to subvert my series by making it hard to know whether they had asked a Question to Which the Answer is No or not. In fact, this, on a comment article by Stephen Glover, was not. They meant, ‘Is there now any area of our lives ... ’ Instead, they managed to ask, if you untangle the double negative and correct the grammar, ‘Is there an area into which the Nanny State will poke its nose?’ To which the answer is yes.

Will Straw, Left Foot Forward blog, 30 March 2010. Will Straw at Left Foot Forward wrote an article that had everything: microblogging, suspect use of statistics and a Question to Which the Answer is No.

Daily Mail, 30 March 2010. The Daily Mail sub-editors showed increasing ingenuity in finding new ways to provoke me. ‘Researchers say’ is a lovely touch on this strapline, above a huge headline in the health section, ‘The Toxic Timebomb’.

The Spectator, 2 April 2010. A question asked by Alex Massie, paraphrasing a speech made in the US House of Representatives by Hank Johnson, a Democrat ‘whom the good people of Georgia’s Fourth Congressional District have seen fit to send to Washington’, as Massie put it. Johnson was concerned that the Pacific island of Guam, an American territory, was listing and ‘may tip over’.

Manchester United supporters’ forum, April 2010. I have no idea what this question is about, or why it was asked on a Manchester United supporters’ internet forum, but I am pretty sure that the answer is no.

Keep Tony For PM blog, 8 April 2010. Asked by Blair Supporter on the blog that was still called ‘Keep Tony For PM’ nearly three years after his departure from Downing Street, about the Blair-hating film, The Ghost Writer, directed by Polanski from the novel by Harris, a former friend of the Blairs’. I said she would not sue, not because the portrayal of her and her husband in the film is not defamatory, but because she is not mad.

Peza, 9 April 2010. A question asked by Peza, who appeared to be a cat, on an internet forum. One reader had a good reply: ‘Peza, are you drinking that vodka flavoured milk?’

Iain Dale’s Diary blog, 11 April 2010. A question asked by Iain Dale, the Conservative blogger, about this UK Independence Party election poster. The answer was, of course, no, it is offensive, silly and insulting to the intelligence of the voters. UKIP won 3.2 per cent of the vote at the election.

Guardian, 13 April 2010. If they meant that blokes with grey pony tails would play air guitar with models of molecules and illegally download books about the Large Hadron Collider, I don’t think so.

Toby Young in the Daily Telegraph, 15 April 2010. A somewhat perverse question, given that Rowling had just written a passionate pro-Labour article in the previous day’s Times, which concluded: ‘I’ve never voted Tory before ... and they keep on reminding me why.’ She also donated £1m to the Labour Party in 2008. Nevertheless, Young suggested that she was a closet Conservative, comparing Hogwarts to Eton and Quidditch to the wall game, and claiming that Rowling’s fictional school is ‘heritage Britain sprinkled with fairy dust’.

Never mind that Young missed the point about the artistic imagination, he had missed an even more telling piece of evidence for his ridiculous argument. The currency of Rowling’s wizarding world consists of knuts, of which 29 make a sickle, of which 17 in turn make a galleon. She is not only nostalgic for the pre-decimalisation world before 1971, therefore, but a Eurosceptic who would view a single currency divided into cents with horror.

Or, possibly, not.

This was not the end of the matter, however. Tim Johnson, a blogger known as Conservative Party Reptile, wrote to point out the following:

The subplot of The Order of the Phoenix is that the Ministry of Magic is concerned that the headmaster of Hogwarts is running it as a sort of Dumbledorian madrassah, training up students to fight the Government. As a result they impose ever more centralised control of education, imposing a school inspector who gradually increases her power to remove teachers, micro-manage the school rules and eventually take control of the school curriculum itself. This process of greater state involvement in education is portrayed as extremely malign, with the curtailment of independence stifling the quality of education and leading to a counter-productive focus on passing tests, regardless of their applicability to real life. At the end, the students rebel and force the return of Dumbledore and the end of Government meddling.

Nice try, sir.

Oliver Burkeman, the Guardian, 20 April 2010. An early sign of the Guardian’s adoration of St Nicholas was Oliver Burkeman’s question. Clegg had pulled off the amazing feat of exceeding the low expectations of him in the first televised debates between party leaders in British election history. The Guardian went on to urge its readers to vote Liberal Democrat before regretting it.

Peter Kellner, yougov.co.uk, 20 April 2010. More Clegg-mania from Peter Kellner, the president of YouGov, the opinion polling company, with this question on his website.

Fox News, 28 April 2010. Winner of the 2010 Outstanding Effort Brass Plate, asked by Fox News and first spotted, to my chagrin, by Oliver Kamm, from whom I stole the idea of the series in the first place.

Daily Mail, 3 May 2010. This headline was found on an impenetrable story by Richard Kay, a diarist, about the 10th anniversary party of Cherie Blair’s legal chambers, Matrix, with added innuendo of the usual ‘They’re all mad’ variety.

Iain Dale’s Diary blog, 6 May 2010. One of my favourites in the series, a question asked by Iain Dale on his blog on election night, shortly after the polls closed at 10pm and the exit poll, run jointly by the BBC, ITN and Sky, was published. Reassuring his fellow Conservative supporters, he wrote:

So the exit poll shows the Tories on 307 seats, 19 short of an overall majority. Don’t panic chaps and chapesses. My view is that by 4am this poll will have been shown to be wrong. It seems too incredible to be true that the LibDems are only predicted to get 59 seats. I’ll run naked down Whitehall if that turns out to be true.

The result, confirmed the next day, was that the Tories had exactly 307 seats and the Liberal Democrats did not even win as many as 59 seats, ending up with 57. The naked run down Whitehall has not yet taken place.

Daily Mail, 10 May 2010. A classic, asked by the Daily Mail and drawn to my attention by Matthew Barrett. Barrett, who started to collect a rival series of Questions to Which the Answer is No on his blog, Working Class Tory, gave up and paid me the ultimate compliment: ‘You have proved to be the best compiler of useless headlines in the blogosphere.’

Chris Ames, iraqinquirydigest.org, 12 May 2010. A question of numbing self-absorption asked by Chris Ames of the antiwar Iraq Inquiry Digest website. The answer was of course in the negative because the old government revealed the truth about Iraq at all times. The belief that there is some hidden truth about the war that has to be ‘revealed’ is a conspiracy theory held by those whose opposition to the war was, or became, so fierce that they were convinced that no reasonable person could have supported it for the reasons given.

James Delingpole, Telegraph blog, 14 May 2010. James Delingpole, a man with possibly the most unreasonable views on climate change in a crowded field, asked this on his Telegraph blog after Chris Huhne’s appointment as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.

Ian Leslie, Marbury blog, 17 May 2010. An easy one, this. Leslie explained why the answer is no, too, which is against the rules but the question is too interesting not to be included.

Researchers looked at hundreds of professional penalties and fed the results into a computer, breaking them down according to where the shot was placed, where the keeper threw himself, and whether a goal was scored or not. From this they were able to work out what the optimal strategies were for taker and keeper. It turned out the best strategy for the keeper is to stay where he is. Takers send the ball down the middle about 33% of the time, and left or right about 15% each.

He did not explain what happened to the other 27 per cent of penalties, but let us not be distracted. The point is that, rationally speaking, goalkeepers ought to stand still.

Given the high stakes involved, the hundreds of hours of experience, and the high-powered training programmes supporting them you’d think goalies would adhere to this strategy. But they don’t: goalkeepers stay where they are in only about 6% of penalty kicks.

The researchers interviewed goalkeepers to find out why, and reported:

Goalkeepers feel a pressure to act because they would feel guiltier missing a ball while staying in the centre than missing it while trying to do something.

Which is all very well but only reinforces my belief that it is demeaning for a professional sport to decide the outcome of tied matches by a bout of what is, in effect, scissors-paper-stone.

Christian Today, 20 May 2010. I was distracted by the constitutional novelty of the formation of a peacetime coalition government, but fortunately my friend Oliver Kamm spotted this one, asked by an Australian magazine called Christian Today.

Mike Smithson, politicalbetting.com, 20 May 2010. The other big political story of the middle of 2010 was the start of the Labour leadership election campaign. Diane Abbott came fifth out of five candidates, the first to be eliminated, with 7 per cent of the vote on in the first round.

Daily Mail, 21 May 2010. A sensational return to form by the Daily Mail after a dull patch. This story about the claims of Craig Venter, a supposed geneticist, to have created a living cell could have been created in the Mail’s own journalistic test tube. Elsewhere in the newspaper, Michael Hanlon, the Mail’s science editor, commented on the Venter story, asking another Question to Which the Answer is No: ‘Has he created a monster?’

Samira Shackle, New Statesman, 21 May 2010. This was what some Conservative MPs were saying, apparently, about the new Prime Minister’s attempt to take over the 1922 Committee, which since, er, 1923 has been the exclusive preserve of back-bench MPs. David Cameron wanted it to allow ministers to attend and vote at its meetings.

An earlier Mugabe comparison had prompted me to propose a Protocol to Godwin’s Law. I suggested that the following should be appended: ‘The first one to compare his or her opponent to Robert Mugabe loses the argument.’ Unfortunately I got Godwin’s Law wrong. I thought it said that the first person to mention the Nazis loses. It actually states that, the longer an argument on an internet forum goes on, the probability that someone will mention the Nazis will approach 100 per cent. Which is sort of the same thing, expressed differently.

Charlotte Gore, Spectator, 23 May 2010. As the Liberal Democrats got nothing out of the coalition that David Cameron did not want to do anyway, apart from a referendum on electoral reform, which they lost, and twenty-two ministerial jobs, the question answers itself.

Lord Soley, Lords of the Blog, 12 June 2010. Clive Soley, the Labour peer, asked on his blog if the Prime Minister ordered the England team to draw 1–1 with the United States team in the Group Stage of the World Cup in South Africa. He started his question badly: ‘I’m no football expert and I’m not paranoid but ...’ and blundered on: ‘... does anyone else think that Cameron told Robert Green to let the ball in deliberately so that the US didn’t feel totally trashed and oiled up by the Brits?’

Press release, 15 June 2010. This was the subject line of a piece of ‘email spam’, by which I think he meant a press release, received by a fellow journalist. He said the answer is ‘Who cares?’ (see Beattie’s Law, page 7), but I said it was number 341 in my series.

Mind you, it gave me an idea. A website where you could look up people with whom you went to school and reunite old friends. Any ideas for a name?

Jesse Zwick, New Republic, 18 June 2010. Back with the football, Jesse Zwick at the New Republic asked another World Cup related Question to Which the Answer is No, after the Americans drew with Slovenia. Zwick wondered about the ‘fateful call’ in the 86th minute. Was it ‘offsides’, he asked? That was, of course, another one.

Thomas Sowell, investors.com, 22 June 2010. A fine example of the genre, asked after Barack Obama had been president for nearly a year and a half. Sowell opened his diatribe with a reference to Adolf Hitler and managed to throw in Lenin’s ‘useful idiots’ in the third paragraph. ‘American democracy is being dismantled’, he said, not only ‘piece by piece’, but ‘before our very eyes’, and could he just tell you what the most amazing thing is? ‘Few people seem to be concerned about it.’ The implication is that the heinous crime – something to do with spending public money – is being committed in broad daylight; that it is a concealed operation that no one has noticed and that takes the extraordinary percipience of the wool-free eyes of Sowell to see. Or it was possible that ‘few people seem to be concerned about it’ because ...

Guy Walters, Daily Telegraph, 25 June 2010. Wikipedia is not perfect, but it is useful and is subject to no consistent bias.

Ephraim Hardcastle, Daily Mail, 2 July 2010. Not only a Question to Which the Answer is No, asked by Ephraim Hardcastle, the fictitious Daily Mail diarist, but one that used ‘the net closing in’, one of my favourite Blair-hating clichés from the glory years of the cash-for-honours imbroglio, the ‘impeach Blair’ looney tune and the anti-war ‘take him to the Hague’ daydream. Not only that, but the same edition featured a column by Tom Utley with a headline (one of those special long ones) that pretended the Mail knows what satire is: ‘If Mr Blair deserves a freedom medal for invading Iraq (and banning me from smoking) then satire IS dead.’ The Daily Mail. It’s the complete package. And they can use that in their advertising if they like.

Parliamentary Written Question, 7 July 2010. Asked by John Spellar, the Labour MP for Warley West, and answered in the succinct negative by Anne Milton, the minister for public health, on behalf of Andrew Lansley, the Secretary of State. The question may have been inspired by a report in the Sunday Times on 27 June that the Welsh Assembly had circulated guidelines to hospitals in Wales recommending ‘water, juice, seeds, dried fruit, sandwiches and some low fat cakes as healthy alternatives’ to sugared tea and coffee from vending machines, and suggested that cheddar cheese sandwiches should be avoided because they ‘contain too much fat’.

Biblical Archeology Review, 8 July 2010. Not just number 361 in my series of Questions to Which the Answer is No, but one of the all-time Great Historical Questions to Which the Answer is No. Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, ‘nine years, almost to the day, after Roman legionaries destroyed God’s house in Jerusalem’, namely the Second Temple, in 70 AD.

Richard Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 9 July 2010. A question asked about a report that said: ‘In an attempt to rid the country of “decadent Western cuts”, Iran’s culture ministry has produced a catalogue of haircuts that meet government approval.’ It appeared the choice was between looking like Dustin Hoffman, Wayne Rooney with a lot of hair, or David Schwimmer.

Jon Kelly, BBC News website, 17 July 2010. Asked in the headline on a ‘magazine’ feature on the BBC News website. Perish the thort, as Molesworth used to say.

Hopi Sen blog, 24 July 2010. Hopi Sen, one of my favourite political commentators, had this as the title of a blog post. He speculated that Labour did worse in the election because the unusually cold January and February deferred some economic activity from the first to the second quarter. If better growth figures had been published during the election campaign in April, Sen asks whether Labour would have won more votes. No.

Andy Beckett, Guardian, 24 July 2010. A gem, and the winner of the 2010 Guardian/Daily Mail Crossover award. The companion article, on the rampant expansion of the working and pauper classes, seems to be missing from my collection.

Ian Leslie, communication with the author, 26 July 2010. As soon as Leslie, who wrote a brilliant book called Born Liars about why untruths come naturally to people, asked me this, he realised that it was a question that answered itself.

Daily Mail, 12 August 2010. The Daily Mail not only asked this Question to Which the Answer is No, but provided a photo-montage of what it might have looked like. We’ve supplied our own version.

Independent, 12 August 2010. The Independent asked another Question to Which the Answer is No in its headline on the same story, about the release of some wartime Ministry of Defence papers. In fact, Winston Churchill did cover it up. He said: ‘This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic amongst the general population and destroy one’s belief in the Church.’ But it wasn’t a UFO encounter, so the answer is still no.

Juli Weiner, Vanity Fair, 9 September 2010. This was runner-up in the Bizarre Political Comparisons category of the 2010 Questions to Which the Answer is No Awards. To be fair – a phrase horribly over-used by Tony Blair in his book – Juli Weiner was comparing the reaction to the publication of A Journey to that of Going Rogue, Palin’s memoir. But the answer was still no.

Mike Smithson, politicalbetting.com, 12 October 2010. Mike Smithson of the Political Betting website wondered about the effect of the publication of the report by John Browne proposing the tripling of student tuition fees. He was referring to the pledge signed before the election by 54 of the 57 Liberal Democrat MPs, including Nick Clegg: ‘I pledge TO VOTE AGAINST ANY INCREASE IN FEES in the next Parliament.’

John Rentoul, Independent blog, 22 October 2010. I am afraid that I asked this one, when the Spectator asked another Question to Which the Answer is No: ‘Are transsexuals going to destroy women’s sport?’ This followed some discussion about the case of Caster Semenya, the South African middle-distance runner, who had been required to take a test proving her gender the year before.

David Hellier, City AM, 28 October 2010. I think David Hellier knew the answer, but it is gratifying to look back and have it confirmed that this was a lot of wolf-crying from the financial services sector when the pitchforks were waved in their general direction.

BBC Northern Ireland, 29 October 2010. Asked of a clip of The Circus, a Charlie Chaplin film made in 1928, in which a woman appears to be walking past while talking on a mobile phone. ‘My initial reaction,’ said George Clarke, who put it on YouTube, ‘was that’s a mobile phone, they weren’t around then; my only explanation – and I’m pretty open-minded about the sci-fi element of things – it was kind of like wow that’s somebody that’s went back in time.’ Which is the first explanation that might occur to anyone, is it not?

James Murray, businessgreen.com, 15 November 2010. Winner of the 2010 Hyperbole Trophy. Asked by James Murray at Business Green, an environmental website. Zac Goldsmith was elected as a Conservative MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston in the election that year, and spent some of the time since threatening to resign and force a by-election if the Government went back on its pledge not to build a third runway at Heathrow airport.

Vincent Graff, Daily Mail, 22 November 2010. I presume this, number 437 in the series, was about the failure of the Corporation to screen more repeats. Not having read it, I am forced to speculate that Graff failed to take into account the unfunniness of the ensemble.

Mineral Products Today, 23 November 2010. This one, from a specialist magazine, is included just for the sheer oddity of it.

BBC4, 23 November 2010. The title of Hannah Rothschild’s documentary. Well, obviously he was not the real Prime Minister by then, as Labour was out of office, but the implication was that he had been while Gordon Brown nominally held the post.

Peter Kenyon blog, 27 November 2010. The 2010 winner in the Bizarre Political Comparison category was asked by Peter Kenyon, the indomitable Labour activist, on his blog. Something to do with Ed Miliband’s ‘blank sheet of paper’ on which he was going to set out his policies, and Rolf Harris’s catchphrase, ‘Can you tell what it is yet?’

Richard Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 29 November 2010. Asked by Richard Spencer, a Daily Telegraph Middle East correspondent. I like the subtle hedging of bets: CIA, Mossad, one or the other. For the purposes of conspiracy theories, they are the same thing.

Iain Dale Diary blog, 29 November 2010. This should not count, because he offered it purposely to get into my list of Questions to Which the Answer is No, but the Committee was beginning to take a flexible view by this stage.

Daily Mail, 1 December 2010. The Committee was unanimous, one vote to nil, in declaring this to be the best Question to Which the Answer is No of the year.

The article quoted Phil Collins (the ‘millionaire musician’, in case any Mail readers thought it meant Tony Blair’s former speechwriter), who had recently said that he fought at the Battle of the Alamo in 1836 in a former life. ‘I don’t want to sound like a weirdo, but I am prepared to believe.’

The main character, though, was Chris Vicens, a 26-year-old shop assistant who told the newspaper that he once lived as Marilyn Monroe. ‘Yes, people have scoffed, but I know what I know,’ he was quoted as saying. ‘When I first awoke from my session and the therapist told me who I’d said I was, I thought: “No, that’s not possible – what are the odds of that happening?”’ Do not attempt to answer that question.

Chris went on: ‘Each time I regress, I learn a little more. I like to think I am a sane and rational person. I am definitely not making this up. Why would I open myself up to ridicule?’ Do not attempt to answer that question, either.

Martin Rosenbaum, Twitter, 1 December 2010. This was asked by my friend Martin Rosenbaum. I had no hesitation in declaring it the winner in that year’s Smart Alec category.

Daily Mail, 6 December 2010. The Doctor’s sonic screwdriver is an essential plot device, because it can open any door or lock. It also allows the Doctor to ‘reverse the polarity of the neutron flow’ or, in other words, to save the characters from certain doom with a bit of pseudo-scientific hocus pocus. The Mail reported that engineers at the University of Bristol were working on a screwdriver that could use rotating ultrasound waves to turn screws from a distance. It quoted Bruce Drinkwater, Professor of Ultrasonics, who said: ‘Whilst a fully functioning time machine may still be light years away, engineers are already experimenting with ultrasonic waves to move and manipulate small objects.’

A pedant might point out that a light year is a measure of distance rather than time. For a bonus point, a pedant might point out to the Mail that Doctor Who does not take the contraction Dr, according to the BBC. This is something that I discovered years ago in the steam age of Google, before it had learned to search for different spellings or forms of words, when I searched for ‘Dr Who’ and could find little.

Barack Obama, Mythbusters, 8 December 2010. I am not quite sure why, but this was asked by Barack Obama on the Discovery Channel. For some reason the President had agreed to launch an episode of Mythbusters. The programme tried to recreate the legendary feat, with what success I do not know.

Steve Rose, Guardian, 8 December 2010. A top conspiracy theory from Steve Rose in the Guardian. The mascots (below). They’re aliens. Apparently.

Steve Shaw, Left Foot Forward blog, 20 December 2010. I felt Shaw should really have asked if it were the most important law this millennium. But the answer is the same. I had no idea that there was a Sustainable Communities Act.

Daily Mail, 28 December 2010. It hardly counts, because it was written by a computer programmed to churn out Daily Mail headlines to a Question to Which the Answer is No template. But as it was the season of pretending to believe in fiction for the sake of the children, it is on the list.

Daniel Nalliah, catchthefire.com.au, 11 January 2011. I think it was someone at the BBC who described the flooding in Australia as being ‘of biblical proportions’. I should have known that there would be trouble. And so it came to pass that Daniel Nalliah, on the Catch the Fire Ministries website, asked number 483 in my series. (Biblical proportions are, of course, about 19 × 13 × 5 cm.)

Reza Aslan, The Atlantic, 13 January 2011. Asked by Reza Aslan (a cool name for Narnia fans) in The Atlantic with a full-form supplementary question:

Is it possible that Iran’s blustering president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, long thought to be a leading force behind some of Iran’s most hard-line and repressive policies, is actually a reformer whose attempts to liberalise, secularise, and even ‘Persianise’ Iran have been repeatedly stymied by the country’s more conservative factions?

In fact, the article made the serious point that the WikiLeaks leaks suggested that Ahmadinejad may be less of a tub-thumping fundamentalist in private, and that there are even more dangerous elements of the Iranian ruling theocracy than he. But the answer was still no.

Soil Association, 18 January 2011. Asked by the Soil Association, which promotes organic farming. According to a Guardian report the previous day, donkey milk, which was ‘widely sold in the UK until the end of the 19th century’, contains more protein and less fat than cow’s milk.

Time magazine, 18 January 2011. This was drawn to my attention by Will Cookson, who had just started his own collection of ‘Theological Questions to Which the Answer is No’.

Daily Mail, 25 January 2011. You must admire the precision with which the Mail estimates the proportion of the United States that will be wiped out by an event a bit like one that may or may not have happened more than half a million years ago. With a special ‘How Journalism Works’ award for the use of ‘set to’.

Policy Exchange seminar, 31 January 2011. The title of a seminar at Policy Exchange, the right-of-centre think tank, addressed by Jim O’Neill, Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. I do not think it was a lecture on the semiotics of The Jam’s 1977 single.

Daily Mail, 3 February 2011. The article elaborated, by asking: ‘Was da Vinci’s young male apprentice the model for that famous enigmatic smile?’

New Scientist, 3 February 2011. This was the first of a miniseries of Unexpected Historical Questions about the Egypt Crisis prompted by the unrest in Tahrir Square that eventually toppled Hosni Mubarak’s government. The New Scientist reported a warning from scientists studying complex systems, who said that ‘ever-tighter coupling among the world’s finance, energy and food systems’ would result in ‘waves of political instability,’ and that ‘Some say that is now happening in the Middle East.’

Alan Beattie (originator of Beattie’s Law) wrote to me to say: ‘Today’s events in Egypt surely show the folly of adopting sedentary agriculture in the Nile valley in the 8th millennium BC.’

Devon DB, Global Research, 9 February 2011. The 2011 winner in the Loopy But A Bit Slow Anti-War category was Devon DB, at an outfit called Global Research. By the time he or she asked it, Barack Obama had been President for more than two years, and had therefore been a war criminal by definition for all that time – long enough for even the dimmest conspiracy theorist to notice.

Jim Pickard, Financial Times, 11 February 2011. A question paraphrasing the argument of the Yes campaign in the referendum on the Alternative Vote: ‘Around the wedding it will be a coming-into-summer, more optimistic, more of a yes mood.’ That insight into popular psychology (‘Hurrah for the happy couple; let’s tear up centuries of constitutional tradition’) was almost faultless.

Tim Montgomerie, Daily Mail, 12 February 2011. Asked by the otherwise sensible Tim Montgomerie in an article about Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, in an article in the Daily Mail.

Mirror, 19 February 2011. Not the Mail this time, but the Mirror. Bonus marks to Dr Ian Winfield, a lake ecologist at the University of Lancaster, who was quoted as saying: ‘It’s possible that it’s a catfish from Eastern Europe.’ Right. The lesser four-humped catfish of Wytrzyszczka, probably.

Norman Tebbit, Telegraph blog, 21 February 2011. Asked by the unlikely blogger and Thatcherite former cabinet minister, on his Telegraph blog. Although this should perhaps belong to a new series of Questions to Which the Answer is No But We Wish it Were Yes.

Daily Mail, 26 February 2011. The Daily Mail was reporting the publication of a book by Richard Wiseman, professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. A clue to the answer lies in the full title of Prof Wiseman’s book, from which the two-page spread was extracted: Paranormality: Why We See What Isn’t There.

Nile Gardiner, Daily Telegraph, 1 March 2011. The Prime Minister, along with President Sarkozy of France, had said some muscular things about the uprising of the Libyan people, while the US President emphasised how different he was from George W. Bush by hanging around at the back.

Daily Mail, 2 March 2011. This is known in the trade as Keeping Your Options Open. The headline ran on: ‘Pentagon report reveals financial terrorists may have triggered economic crash.’ Which deploys another gambit known as Hedging Your Bets, ‘may have’ being the historical equivalent of ‘set to’.

Salem News, 7 March 2011. After the democratic revolt in Egypt turned bloody, Salem News (‘Serving Oregon & The Pacific Northwest’) asked the important question. Complete with picture of Howard Carter looking at Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus, taken from an internet article headlined ‘Was there really a curse on King Tutankhamen’s tomb?’ which is another Question to Which the Answer is No.

Sophie Van Brugen, BBC News report, 10 March 2011. Sophie Van Brugen interviewed World Champion whistler David Morris, who thought his skill was a dying art and blamed the ‘personal music player’.

Daily Mail, 11 March 2011. Asked by the Daily Mail on the day of the most powerful earthquake to have hit Japan in modern times. ‘Supermoon’, the Mail admitted, was a word made up by Richard Nolle, an astrologer, to describe a lunar perigee, when the Moon comes closest to the Earth. This was not due until 19 March, nor was it explained how it might trigger earthquakes.

Anthony Tucker-Jones, Channel 4 News, 19 March 2011. There were a lot of similar questions asked, with similar answers, about Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, there was a book published in 2006 by Robert Brigham entitled, Is Iraq Another Vietnam? The questions asked about Afghanistan were more along the lines of, ‘Is Afghanistan Britain’s Afghanistan 1842’, or ‘Is Afghanistan America’s Russian Afghanistan 1979–89’?

Daily Mail, 21 March 2011. He was a wild animal kept in a cage in the wrong climate.

Daily Mail, 23 March 2011. It was at this point that I thought someone at the Daily Mail had finally twigged. They knew what I was up to and had started doing it on purpose. With this, they managed to ask two Questions to Which the Answer is No in one, winning the Double Idiocy Special Effort Merit Star. And, no, the use of the word ‘could’ doesn’t make a difference.

Daniel Hannan, Telegraph blog, 24 March 2011. Asked by Daniel Hannan, the Conservative Euro-MP, on his Telegraph blog. I had better not dwell on why he asked that particular question, but he presumably needed a Question to Which the Answer was No as a headline for a post in which he kindly said that the series was ‘brilliant’. He was especially taken by the ‘white dwarf supernova’ Question to Which the Answer is No (see above).

Daily Mail, 24 March 2011. As I said, someone at Northcliffe House had rumbled me. But was that going to stop me? That was another Question to Which the Answer is No.

Daily Mail, 24 March 2011. Another hardy staple of the genre. The Loch Ness monster. A yeti. Aliens. A grainy photograph. Or, in this case, a ‘new video’, of an ‘ape man’. And a question. Only two months later, on 28 May, the Mail asked of some different footage, ‘Is this Bigfoot caught on video?’ Surely it should have been ‘Is this Bigfoot caught on video?’ Or, ‘No, really, is it really Bigfoot this time?’ But the answer is always the same.

Craig, 26 March 2011. Another picture special. That is Craig, with John Woodcock MP on the TUC ‘March for the Alternative’ in London. The next question in my series was asked by Ruth Barnett, a reporter for Sky News: ‘Will the march worry ministers?’ As she concluded: ‘On the whole, probably not.’

Independent, 29 March 2011. With a month to go to the royal wedding, I am afraid that the Independent asked this on its front page. So the Home Secretary had a meeting with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Queen’s private secretary and said, ‘Now, we need to put some of these Trot hotheads in jail because, er, let us come back to that. Anyway, Sir Robin, do you think it would be possible to arrange for one of those Princes to get married so that the scraggies in Che T-shirts are tempted out onto the streets and the police would have an excuse to thump a few of them?’

Big Peace website, 30 March 2011. I cannot remember now what brought this on, if I ever knew. They had not even been burning (many) cars in the banlieus that week.

Sun, 30 March 2011. Not strictly one for my series, as it may have been a rhetorical question, but a good Sun front page all the same.

Sun, 30 March 2011. The same edition of the Sun included this question, posed (along with an invitation to call the news desk) at the end of an article, complete with pictures and (online) a video, headlined: ‘Poltergeist wrecks house in Coventry ... and kills the dog.’ Shame about the dog.

Huffington Post, 31 March 2011. We enjoy the extra schadenfreude of hindsight with this one, but might feel a twinge of retrospective sympathy for journalists closing their eyes, spinning the globe and ... Guess again, HuffPo.

Mail Online, 2 April 2011. Although the Mail was now doing it on purpose, it lacked the conviction to put this in the hard copy edition of the newspaper, although the print headline, ‘So what made four television hosts suddenly talk gibberish?’, was a minor masterpiece in its own right.

Independent, 4 April 2011. What do you mean, it is not a question? Of course it is, thinly disguised. Allow me to translate: ‘Should ballet be subsidised if no one wants to go?’

Mail Online, 6 April 2011. This series is all for celebrating equal rights for all lesbian, gay, transsexual and transgendered people, and indeed for people living in holes in the ground. But the people of the Corded Ware culture of 2900–2400 BC did not live in caves.

Liberal Conspiracy, 12 April 2011. Asked by Liberal Conspiracy, a left-wing blog (no, I do not know why it is called that). You can see what they were getting at, but let us get rid of it and find out, shall we?

Independent, 14 April 2011. This was the headline on an article by Charlotte Raven. The gist appeared to be that middle-aged women writing books about finding themselves had become big but rather predictable business.

Andrew Lowry, Telegraph film blog, 15 April 2011. Something to do with religious themes in horror movies. The Telegraph seemed to have realised what the Daily Mail was up to, and was determined to manufacture its own Questions to Which the Answer is No solely for the purpose of getting them into my series. I refused to be put off.

Hanh Nguyenm, TV Guide, 15 April 2011. Gabor’s daughter, aged 64, was quoted as saying, ‘That’s just weird.’ Which is what usurped children always say.

Jonathan Jones, the Guardian, 16 April 2011. Another Who-related question, asked by Jonathan Jones in the Guardian. China’s government administrator of radio and television had warned that time travel drama was ‘frivolous’ in its approach to history, it had just been reported. Doctor Who? Frivolous? What planet is he or she on?

Jeannie Vanasco, The New Yorker, 16 April 2011. Or it may have been, ‘Prozac, the old books?’

Daily Mail, 16 April 2011. Now that the Daily Mail had professionalised its operation, this contribution was as fine an example of the genre as one could hope to see. A worthy winner in the Nazi History Reader category.

New York Times, 18 April 2011. One of two fine examples in the New York Times on that day, the other being: ‘Is sitting a lethal activity?’ In both cases, we know what the newspaper is getting at, but the exaggeration is annoying. Anyway, sitting is not an activity.

Daily Mail, 19 April 2011. Every time I was tempted to call a halt to the series, or at least a pause, the Daily Mail would come up with a corker that could not be ignored. In this case, it included the sub-headline: ‘Secret memo shows president demanded UFO files 10 days before death.’ A worthy winner of the Two-In-One Conspiracy Theory Award.

Conservative Home blog, 20 April 2011. A Question to Which the Answer was, ‘Is Someone Getting Married?’ There had been a flurry after it was reported that the Prime Minister would wear a tailcoat, until a hasty decision was taken by someone with a degree in the sign language of the British class system that it would be a lounge suit after all.

Peterson Institute for International Economics, 20 April 2011. Despite the valiant attempt to liven up the question with the cliché ‘new improved’, it was given the accolade of the Dullest Question to Which the Answer is No of 2011.

Matt Parker, the Guardian Science blog, 21 April 2011. Unfortunately, the Committee, sitting in emergency session, ruled this out of order as close inspection revealed that the author had answered his own question in the negative: apparently, claiming alien involvement ‘cheapens the genuine wonders of archaeology’.

GigaOM, 24 April 2011. A question asked by GigaOM, whatever that is, five days before the big day, which combined all the elements of idiocy for which this series is renowned.

HM Government referendum, 5 May 2011. Number 605, asked, as part of the deal that made the coalition, by David Cameron and Nick Clegg, and answered in the negative by 68 per cent of British voters.

Fox 26 News in Houston, Texas, 5 May 2011. Fox TV was concerned about the appearance of two gay high-school couples in the latest instalment of Glee.

Daily Mail, 11 May 2011. By now, the Daily Mail seemed to be devoted to parodies designed to trick me into adding its headlines to my series. This, on the first anniversary of the coalition, was also written entirely in clichés. It opened with, ‘A year can be an incredibly long time in politics,’ and went on: ‘Eyelids would scarcely have batted.’ What kind of complexion did Nick Clegg now have? ‘Pasty.’ What kind of talk had he given his MPs the night before? ‘A pep talk.’ And its outstanding achievement was to quote not just ‘a body language expert’ but ‘a health and well-being expert’ as well. A fine day’s work.

James Delingpole, Telegraph blog, 15 May 2011. This is not a proper Question to Which the Answer is No, obviously, but it is unusual, so the Committee allowed a dispensation. It is James Delingpole’s parody, on the Telegraph blog, of Peter Oborne’s column in the Sunday Telegraph the previous day. Always fun when right-wingers fall out.

thescore.com, 18 May 2011. I do not normally do sport, apart from American football. I have a particular aversion to tennis, until they abolish the babyish second-service rule (‘Oh dear, you missed, why not have another go?’). And I have never heard of Novak Djokovic. But this, asked by Irish website The Score, is a fine Question to Which the Answer is No.

Harold Camping, 21 May 2011. That was when the American doomsday cultist predicted the world would end. All right, he did not use those exact words. Those words were used by Peter Cook in a sketch called ‘The End of the World’, from Beyond the Fringe in 1962. The answer, however, was the same.

Daily Mail, 31 May 2011. The Daily Mail did it again. Someone had left the autostorybot on overnight. The photograph might be of a Petri dish for all I know.

Tim Karan, newser.com, 3 June 2011. The Smurfs were socialists and ‘the embodiment of a totalitarian utopia, steeped in Stalinism and Nazism,’ said Antoine Buéno, a French sociologist, in a new book, Le Petit Livre Bleu, prompting Tim Karan at the news website Newser to ask this question. Coincidentally, the BBC then asked on 27 June, possibly in relation to the film, The Smurfs, which was about to be released: ‘Do Smurfs provide a model for a good society?’ To which the answer was also no.

Mail Online, 5 June 2011. I knew my lost key would turn up.

Andrew Cryan, BBC News website, 5 June 2011. Another one who thinks he can avoid inclusion in the series by using the word ‘could’. No, London could not.

Peter Oborne, the Sunday Telegraph, 5 June 2011. Oborne thought that Cameron was more pro-European than Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Right-oh.

Guardian, 14 June 2011. This headline on Leo Hickman’s article in the Guardian was runner-up for the Guardian-Compass Wistful Non-Materialist Trophy. The trophy takes the form of a model yurt made of goat poo.

Speakers Forum session, Glastonbury, 23 June 2011. The title of a talk, away from the music, at the 2011 Glastonbury Festival. The kind of tofu-based dottiness that almost makes one want to give it all up and live in a yurt made of goat poo.

Guardian, 21 June 2011. The strange ideological alliance of the Guardian and the Daily Mail greeted the death of Brian Haw, the protester who camped in Parliament Square, with unjustified reverence on 21 June 2011.

Daily Mail, 22 June 2011. Dramatis personae: Harry, a prince and younger brother to the heir to the throne; Pippa Middleton, younger sister to the wife of the heir to the throne. Synopsis: They had been photographed talking to and smiling at each other.

Andrew Brown, Guardian, 23 June 2011. Good thing it does not arise, really.

Jeffrey Archer, Twitter, 23 June 2011. A question asked by Jeffrey Archer himself, or at least by his Twitter account.

Daily Mail, 27 June 2011. The Automatic Question to Which the Answer is No Generator at the Daily Mail had been left on overnight again. The newspaper reported that a video ‘has emerged’ apparently depicting ‘a mother ship and its fleet’ in the sky ‘above a BBC building in West London.’ Extra marks for that wonderfully unspecific ‘has emerged’. From the bowels of the Earth, no doubt.

Daily Mail, 30 June 2011. For some reason the same headline appeared in the Daily Mail twice two weeks apart, on 30 June and 15 July 2011. Paul Dacre, the editor, was obviously trying to put me off. Would he succeed? That was question number 675.

Prospect magazine, July 2011. This question, asked on the cover of the July 2011 edition, shows that serious intellectual magazines can be just as hysterically catastrophist as any newspaper. It did not mean ‘Europe’, or even ‘the European Union’, but ‘the euro’, and, even then, the answer was still no, as it was the euro that was imposing economic hardship on Greece, rather than the other way round.

Ruth Gledhill, The Times, 2 July 2011. Depending on whether or not one thinks He is saying, ‘Thou shalt not play cricket.’

Daily Telegraph, 7 July 2011. Asked by the Daily Telegraph of McCain Potato Smiley Faces. Other candidates, all nominated by MPs (Smiley Faces are made in Gavin Williamson’s South Staffordshire constituency), included the Aga, custard creams and loo roll.

The Economist, 7 July 2011. I had no idea what The Economist was on about. Something about the threat of a trade ban being lifted on Pororo, ‘one of South Korea’s most popular cultural exports’, which might have fallen foul of a US embargo on North Korean products, because animators from the communist North had worked on some episodes of the TV programme.

Daily Mail, 17 July 2011. Unfortunately, the question was ruled out of order. As Omer Lev pointed out, the answer could be yes, if the dieters had been praying for a wristband.

Francis Beckett, Dale & Co. blog, 27 July 2011. Asked by Francis Beckett, a great admirer of Attlee. But even if you are not an admirer of Attlee, the answer is still no.

Le Monde, 16 August 2011. The series went international with this, in Le Monde (‘Will smartphones soon be equipped with airbags?’). Michael McCarthy, my colleague who saw this, asked, ‘Is there no end to the onward march of Franglais?’ Which was, of course, another one.

The New Yorker, 16 August 2011. Asked by David Holmes after the previous weeks’ riots, complete with a list of Games that had been cancelled because of world wars. Typical American overreaction.

Bloomberg, 17 August 2011. Bloomberg, the financial news service, asked this about the insurgent right-wing populist movement that destabilised the Republican Party. You know, if I were an evil mastermind in Beijing, bent on the destruction of the US, that is how I would go about it too.

dailycensored.com, 27 August 2011. Asked by The Daily Censored, a website with the slogan, ‘Underreported News and Commentary’. News can be either censored or under-reported but not, I submit, both. Either way, however, the answer was no.

Andrew Hawkins, Total Politics, 27 August 2011. Asked by Andrew Hawkins, chairman of ComRes, the opinion polling company, writing for Total Politics. The crisis of the eurozone had driven Eurosceptic opinions in Britain to new high levels.

Michael K. Reynolds, 30 August 2011. Asked by Michael K. Reynolds, whose slogan is, ‘Real Life. Real God,’ on his own website. Unfortunately, this introduced a meditation on the metaphor of using loose clothing to conceal weight gain, rather than any interesting archaeological speculation about Judaean dress norms in the 1st century.

Daily Mail, 1 September 2011. One of my correspondents, Graham, spotted this headline in the Daily Mail, which went on to say that the police had found a four-year-old girl, ‘left home alone by her holidaying mother after arresting 16-year-old brother in stolen car.’ He thought this sounded familiar, so he searched for the phrase, and found this, from the Daily Mail on 10 July 2008: ‘Is this Britain’s worst family? Head of clan with 250 convictions stole sister’s identity to net £85,000 in benefits.’ As he said, one of them has to be number 704 in the series.

Meanwhile a Google search for ‘is this Britain’s worst’ found Daily Mail headlines for GP, drunk driver, sheepdog, holiday home, natural disaster and Christmas tree.

History Today, 16 September 2011. Some of these more learned journals think that they can escape inclusion in the series by using the word ‘could’. Well, the inability of eurozone countries to adjust their exchange rates ‘could’ contribute to a collapse of confidence in money and the end of all credit and exchange and starving gangs roaming the countryside ... No.

PC Magazine, 19 September 2011. The summer had seen a ‘spike’ in UFO sightings in America, known in UFO spotter circles as a ‘flap’. PC Magazine suggested two possible explanations: (a) ‘people are outdoors more in the summer’, or (b) ‘an actual alien invasion’. Take your pick.

BBC News website, 24 September 2011. The BBC, financed by a tax on the sale of consumer goods, asked number 711 in my series.

BBC News website, 26 September 2011. A diamond, asked by the BBC, which reported that, although football remains the UK’s favourite sport, recent cycling success ‘raises the question of whether cycling could overtake the likes of rugby, cricket and tennis to claim the silver medal in the British public’s affections.’ A special tin medal for ‘the likes of’.

Daily Mail, 30 September 2011. An Irish coroner had just recorded a verdict of ‘spontaneous human combustion’, so the Mail asked Peter Hough, who had written a book on the subject, for his view:

While many may scoff at the idea that the human body can catch fire and burn of its own accord, I’m rather more open minded than most when it comes to cases such as this. For, having written a book on the controversial subject and researched the area for 20 years, I have learned of many similar deaths that are very hard to explain away.

Hough’s argument seemed to be, therefore: Let us assume that one of the least likely explanations is correct.

New York Times, 7 October 2011. Do I need to explain that a footnote is not a position on a printed page, it is a parenthetical state of mind? Oh. That is another Question to Which the Answer is No.

Observer, 9 October 2011. Marks were deducted by the judging panel for the rather predictable ‘time’ wordplay. Russell T. Davies, the genius behind the regeneration of the series, had blown himself out, it was true. But the great Steven Moffat had taken over with Matt Smith as the Doctor, and they made it come to life all over again.

Daily Mail, 11 October 2011. The paper reported that the Abominable Snowman was ‘close to being caught’ – apparently, ‘coarse hair’ had been discovered in a ‘remote Russian cave’. Coarse hair? What else could it be?

kashmirwatch.com, 22 November 2011. This question was asked by KashmirWatch, the ‘Europe-based news portal of Kashmir International Research Centre’ the aim of which ‘is to provide news, views and opinions with background information on Kashmir’. And the founder of Apple and western civilisation? ‘KashmirWatch also covers world-wide issues that impact on global peace.’

Daily Mail, 8 December 2011. No, it looks like a big circle that someone has drawn on the picture.

Andreas Whittam Smith, OurKingdom website, 14 December 2011. Andreas Whittam Smith, founder of the Independent, is a hero of mine. But he has some daft ideas, and this was one of them.

BBC News website, 19 December 2011. Genius question asked by the BBC, on the front page of its news website, linking to a feature with another headline of sublime comedy: ‘2011: The year when a lot happened’.

Paul Burgess, Journal of the Society of Psychical Research, Vol. 76.1, No. 906, January 2012. The title of the lead article in the journal by Paul Burgess, of the Dept of Physiology in Utah School of Medicine. Found by Oliver Kamm, who has a recurrent, spontaneous and anomalous ability to spot these things.

Daily Mail, 2 January 2012. The Daily Mail started the new year as it meant to go on. This product of the auto-Question to Which the Answer is No generator was done so well that the fine detail looked almost hand-made. The ‘just 390 miles from London’, as if all locations mentioned in the Mail are given in this form, was a particularly realistic touch.

The spread on the Mail website was also marvellous, featuring four images: 1. Idyllic lakeside view (a ‘hidden menace’ – underneath the ‘tranquil’ waters sits ‘a volcano that could devastate Europe’); 2. Higher view of lake, showing that it is in fact nearly circular and looks as if it is in a crater; 3. Photo of a volcano (that is comparable to ‘Mount Pinatubo, which caused a 0.5C drop in global temperatures when it erupted in 1991’); 4. Map. With concentric rings.

Mail Online, 23 January 2012. Actually, for all we know, we could ask almost any question of this picture. ‘Is this a speck of dust magnified so much that the picture is all blurry?’ ‘Is this a dagger I see before me?’ ‘Has someone gone and torn the Turin Shroud?’ And the answer would still be no.

Daily Mail, 6 February 2012. Well, a science-obsessed student could be bitten by a radioactive spider. But he still would not be able to stick to walls or shoot web out of his hands.

The Week, 6 February 2012. ‘Come out of that Foot Locker now, young man, or this passing toddler will get a slap.’ No. Don’t think that would have worked.

abovetopsecret.com, 9 February 2012. A question asked, in boisterous defiance of conventional grammar, on a website called abovetopsecret.com (its slogan was ‘Deny Ignorance’). The writer said of a clip of Blair being interviewed by Piers Morgan at CNN: ‘Noticed something strange in the look and the eyes of this man? ... I’m not a believer in “Reptilians”, however, this video is really pretty odd.’ I think this was a reference to David Icke, who believes that the world is ruled by two-legged lizards from the constellation Draco, inhabiting the lower levels of the fourth dimension – that is, the one closest to physical reality. Not odd at all. What is really suspicious, though, is that the Daily Mail failed to follow this up.

Daily Mail, 18 February 2012. The Daily Mail published evidence in the form of a photograph of M Loret (below) that shows conclusively that he and Hitler had similar moustaches. When you consider that the Daily Telegraph had the day before revealed that their handwriting looked similar, the case was a slam dunk.

David Herdson, politicalbetting.com, 18 February 2012. David Herdson at Political Betting got a little ahead of himself at the prospect of Boris Johnson’s failing to be re-elected, three months before the election for Mayor of London. His article included the golden line: ‘Six events would need to take place.’ The first, that he would be beaten by Ken Livingstone in May 2012, failed to occur.

Sun on Sunday, 4 March 2012. The launch of the Sun on Sunday on 26 February 2012 was of great significance in the British media industry, and of no less importance to the Questions to Which the Answer is No cottage industry. In only its second edition, the Sun on Sunday made its debut in the series, with this question asked in the headline on a despatch from San Carlos de Bariloche.

Daily Mail, 6 March 2012. It was that ‘supermoon’ again, an inexhaustible source of Questions to Which the Answer is No. When the Moon is closer to the Earth, tides are slightly higher than usual, and headlines in the Mail with question marks at the end of them ‘reach epidemic proportions’.

Alexander Boot, Daily Mail, 13 March 2012. You might have thought that David Cameron had introduced a Church of England Disestablishment Bill with provisions to ban acts of worship in schools. But the article was about bans on employees wearing religious symbols at British Airways and the Royal Devon & Exeter Health Trust, bans that were being contested at the European Court of Human Rights. The connection with the coalition Government was tenuous, therefore, and the notion that it was aggressive ridiculous.

Channel 4 News, 14 March 2012. Mary Portas, fresh from advising the Government how to turn round high street retailing, made a television series about her reopening an underwear factory in Manchester.

contactmusic.com, 16 March 2012. One Direction are, apparently, a popular, but not that popular, music combination, which won a television talent competition. Well, a television competition.

Guardian, 18 March 2012. The top selling video game in the UK that week was FIFA Street, a football simulation.

Sun, 26 March 2012. Churchill was President of the Board of Trade, 1908–10, responsible for shipping safety laws in the period that the Titanic, which sank in 1912, was being built. According to Robert Strange, ‘an investigative journalist and former newspaper crime reporter’, in a new book.

Sunny Hundal, liberalconspiracy.org, 29 March 2012. Sunny Hundal on the Liberal Conspiracy website suggested that, in advising people to stock up on petrol in jerry cans, Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, had a Baldrick-style cunning plan.

Daily Mail, 31 March 2012. The story came complete with that adornment of the genre, the list of ‘The Unanswered Questions’. We do not need to list them in full, but at least one of them is another Question to Which the Answer is No: ‘Is it significant that an expert brought in to search for evidence of forced entry was hampered because the front door had been taken from its hinges and locks removed?’

Jewish Book Council, 17 April 2012. This is one of the more unusual examples of the sub-genre of Questions to Which the Answer is No, questions posed by the crank industry of Shakespeare denialists.

Daily Mail, 21 April 2012. A different death on the front page of the Daily Mail. This one was about Neil Heywood, who died in China, and who had the car number plate 007. Although that might have been a fiendishly clever double bluff.

Mirror, 23 April 2012. A reader asked Psychic Sally. Fortunately, Sally was able to reassure her: ‘He will always be with you; he has such a huge place in your heart.’

In the same edition of the Mirror: ‘Is sugar worse for you than smoking?’

The Atlantic, 26 April 2012. Something to do with high definition pictures.

Wall Street Journal, 11 May 2012. Everything wrong in just five words (one of which is ‘moms’). Something is the new something else is a tired journalistic formula, but this one also manages to be sexist and trite on the basis of an old statistic, quoting a Census report which claimed that ‘32 per cent of fathers with working wives routinely care for their children under age 15, up from 26 per cent in 2002’.

NME, 11 May 2012. I am not saying it was bad, but some of us were alive in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Also the 2000s and 2010s.

David Hockney, Guardian, 14 May 2012. Asked in a letter to the editor. Bruno Michel Iksil, a trader at JP Morgan Chase, had just lost $2bn in ‘poorly monitored’ trades, which might have done more to explain the decline of its profits. It was not reported whether Iksil was a smoker.

Andrew Sullivan, the Daily Beast, 29 May 2012. Andrew Sullivan asked this in the headline on an article about Mormonism. Possibly not a genuine Question to Which the Answer is No, unless Sullivan believes that the Reformation, the rise of capitalism and the colonisation of the New World were predicted in 1st-century Judaea.

NPR, 29 May 2012. Those are microbes that rise from under the ground singing ‘Thriller’ in falsetto voices, presumably. Asked by NPR, National Public Radio in the US, for whom ‘zombie’ seems to mean ‘extra-terrestrial’.

Foreign Policy magazine, 30 May 2012. If it is Daleks, everyone knows that conventional weapons bounce off them, because you have to have that scene where the soldiers from Unit (Unified Intelligence Taskforce) grit their teeth and shoot them with machine guns and say, ‘It’s useless, sir!’

Daily Mail, 8 June 2012. This was a question about Paul Otlet, a Belgian scientist, who wrote a book, published in 1934, which mentioned the possibility of combining television and the telephone.

Michael Cohen, Guardian, 9 June 2012. Talk about a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ – which is how Hillary Clinton denounced allegations of financial and sexual impropriety against her husband. Michael Cohen in the Guardian seemed to suggest that the Republican Party engineered the financial crisis in anticipation of the election of Barack Obama in November 2008. (Actually, Cohen suggested that they prolonged the economic difficulties by blocking stimulus measures in Congress. But the answer is still no.)

Huffington Post, 10 June 2012. The Huffington Post wondered whether Iraq might finally be set on a more hopeful course. You know that thing where you put your feet in a warm bath and tropical fish nibble the dead skin? Yes? No.

politico.com, 14 June 2012. Asked by Politico about the Presidential Dog. Someone at George Washington University had done a study of political pets. A ‘systematic analysis of voting behavior’ and a ‘voluminous library of compelling insider accounts’ concluded that presidents’ pets can be an asset in good times but add to unpopularity in times of economic hardship; the pets ‘frolicking on the White House lawn’ can enhance perceptions of inequality and make people think that ‘being president is not a full-time job,’ the study concluded.

Byron Tau, the Politico writer, later updated his report by quoting Forrest Maltzman, professor of Political Science at George Washington University, who led the research: ‘The data and conclusions are real even if there were some tongue-in-cheek references... Every now and then, we like to take our methodological skills and apply them to seemingly goofy, but still interesting, political questions.’

Wall Street Journal, 20 June 2012. To do with Chinese-style lettering on an advert for Stir Fry Kits and Dumplings.