According to the BBC web site, the McCanns are asking for their privacy to be respected. Perhaps they should have thought of that before turning themselves into a media circus?

I can’t criticise them for that. They felt that was what it took to make things happen, but its bit of a Pandora’s Box that can’t be shut afterwards. You can’t make everyone interested in your story and then tell them to ignore it when it starts getting even more interesting.

The same thing happens with celebrities who court attention and publicity at first and then complain about how being famous gives them no privacy. But if the McCanns had not embarked on their orgy of publicity in the first place the investigation into their girl’s disappearance would have disappeared from the front pages weeks or months ago.

Having made the decision to use PR to drive the investigation they really have no choice but to continue it, even if the police’s exploration of every possibility includes possibilities they don’t like. And that’s a big ‘if’ – with the Portugese police unable to say anything according to their laws everything the papers are reporting is second-hand and from sources with their own agendas.

The other thing about that story was a bit towards the end:

Her husband Gerry told the News of the World that Portuguese officers were looking for a quick end to the case and were exploiting apparent discrepancies in the couple’s account of what happened.

He said: “In a system that you don’t know and don’t really trust it’s incredibly frightening.”

Now I haven’t been closely following the story, but you can’t avoid it. Didn’t earlier press statements from the McCanns keep stressing how much they supported the police efforts and in the face of criticism from the UK press kept saying how much they trusted them to do a good job?

What a bloody mess.