Some great mysteries endure, some just fade away. Does anybody talk about the Mary Celeste any more? The quest for El Dorado has run out of steam. Even, with all due respect to Visit Scotland, the Loch Ness Monster feels a busted flush. And Tottenham Hotspur are no longer fourth in the Premier League.
For weeks Spurs remained inexplicably in the Champions League qualification slots. They kept losing, kept being booed off, kept being embarrassed and yet always they clung to fourth. It was one of the world’s great mysteries. Graham Hancock wrote the sort of book on the subject that enrages academic historians and archaeologists. Mathematicians who had devoted their lives to unravelling the Riemann Hypothesis or Goldbach’s Conjecture were lured into a new field. Yvette Fielding and the restless spirit of Derek Acorah pitched a Sky Witness show about it. (And if any ghost can present a TV show, it is surely that of the popular Bootle-born medium.)
