Now, at this distance, I realise Venables is nearly 30. I find the confluence, if that’s the word, of his ruination and my visibility disturbing. At some level, I will always feel I could have been Venables and the more opportunity I get to make myself understood, the more it becomes obvious that he will never escape condemnation, the thing John Major called for more of in his statement at the time of the trial. I have dreams about the boys, and sometimes dream I am the person in the CCTV footage who walks past them with a shopping bag at the exact moment they abducted James. I can see the butcher’s shop where James’s mother is waiting for her change; I see the floor tiles reflecting shadows and hear the mall’s muzak bending sinister as the shoppers go about their business. I hear the echoing swimming-pool clamour of the ordinary day about to go wrong…

Nixon: I do not mind the homosexuality. I understand it. (14-second beep to hide personal information) But nevertheless, the point that I make is that goddamit, I do not think that you glorify on public television homosexuality… even more than you glorify whores. Now we all know that people go to whores. …we all have weaknesses. But, goddammit, what do you think that does to kids? What do you think that does to 11 and 12 year old boys when they see that? …You know what happened to the Greeks! Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo. We all know that. So was Socrates.

Ehrlichman: But he never had the influence that television had.

…you can tell the abductees are lying or delusional because their descriptions of the aliens and their craft are always so unimaginative. As he writes in The Eerie Silence, the giveaway is the banality of the aliens’ putative agenda, which seems to consist of grubbing around in fields or meadows, chasing cows or cars like bored teenagers, and abducting humans for Nazi-style experiments.

He was the existential loner outcast from society who sought solace by riding the waves (the Silver Surfer). He was the military industrial complex (Nick Fury). He was the hippies who rejected the Cold War consensus, and wanted to create their own counterculture (the Forever People). He was the artist who tried to escape his degrading background (Mister Miracle). He was feminism (Big Barda). He was Nixon and the religious right (Darkseid and Glorious Godfrey).