Poor old Richard III – you lie under a car park in Leicester for 500 years, then have the news-of-your-discovery-thunder stolen by a Lib Dem MP resigning.

In what would normally make top story news, the confirmation of the DNA results came further down the list thanks to Chris Huhne and his alleged speeding ticket misdemeanours. 

If any monarch was in need of good PR it was our last Plantagenet ruler.  Willie Shakespeare is said to have done a hatchet job on him character-wise in order to impress the Tudors, so we’ve all grown up thinking of him as the evil uncle with a hunchback who murdered his nephews in the tower in order to seize the throne.

I guess that’s the problem with History, it can be very subjective and manipulated to suit the mood of the time.  Even then spin-doctors were at work, but perhaps less potty-mouthed than Malcolm Tucker (from BBC’s ‘The Thick of It’).

Hopefully now King Richard can find a final resting place somewhere more dignified and fitting; Leicester Cathedral seems to be first choice, although as he was born at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire and was a Roman Catholic perhaps the Cathedral in Northampton would be more appropriate?  Now there’s a thought...