Martin Clarke expects to be turning £100 million plus in digital revenue in three to five years. Clarke once also described mailonline as “journalistic crack”. He said it like a man who has watched about two and a half seasons of The Wire, thinking it all seemed like fun and assuming that things will probably turn out quite nicely for the crack dealers.

As anyone who has seen the series can attest, crack-dealing is not the sort of business in which you can really make three to five year forecasts. Neither is banner ad-based journalism.