"While we are returning to the UK, it does not mean we are giving up our search for Madeleine, " he said. On his last line, his voice broke, "Despite there being so much we wish to say we are unable to do so, except to say this: we played no part in the disappearance of our lovely daughter, Madeleine." This was the time to show emotion.

But the media, as it does, had already turned on the McCanns. Why? Because they, not Madeleine, were always at the centre of this story. While Sky News has attempted to be more objective, asking questions about another girl who went missing in the area in 2004, the tabloids salivated at the prospect of the McCanns' guilt, driving speculation forward.

On Thursday, the Mirror had two dramatic headlines:

"Maddy 'Pills Overdose'" . . .based on another "sourced" report in France-Soir claiming to have seen DNA evidence that Madeleine was heavily sedated . . . and "Kate & Gerry. . .Their Story". Revealingly, the latter headline about the McCanns took precedence over Madeleine's headline.

The child's picture . . . once emblazoned on posters everywhere . . . was relegated to the bottom righthand corner, no bigger than a thumb print.

Blink and you'd miss her.

However, Kate was pictured in her Communion dress, a young Gerry in his sports gear. It was clear who were the stars of this story. And it wasn't "our Maddy", that's for sure.

It gets worse. When Gerry closed the door of his home, he updated his online blog, which was then picked up by the BBC. "On Sunday we left for the airport at 7am with huge media attention, " he wrote. "Camera crews followed us all the way to the airport and the whole experience, like much of the last four months, was incredibly surreal."

Here's an entry from 5 September: "Kate and I went for a run along the coast at lunchtime. It was pretty windy but still warm enough.

Later in the afternoon we went to visit a friend of Kate's who is on holiday in a nearby village with her family. They brought lots of cards from well-wishers at home and we talked a lot about the search for Madeleine."

It's both strange and unsettling in its self-regard. But it doesn't make them guilty. On the one hand, this kind of fanzine personal material powers the celebrity buzz around them, not Madeleine.

On the other hand, it humanises the story and keeps us, and therefore the media, interested in this case, not the thousands of other missing children.

TV news has suffered by its lack of hard facts. Earlier in the week, BBC News 24 had a reporter "actually outside" the McCanns' apartment in Portugal and later said the McCanns went home with "differing emotions". CNN's Phil Black interviewed a Portugese reporter, the journalistic equivalent of talking to himself in a mirror.

But the question remains:

had the McCanns not been nice middle-class people like us, would we have been so interested in them? If they were from a council estate, rather than a nice house in Leicestershire, and wore shell suits, would it have taken days . . . not months . . . to interview them for only the second time in order to rule them in . . . or out?

Stressed-out mum Reporters like Martin Brunt from Sky News cited sources saying the British police were going to confiscate Gerry's PC and Kate's diary, which allegedly says she was a stressed-out mum. (Hold the front page! ) But if they were guilty, that would surely jeopardise the case. All Gerry would have to do is delete computer files or drop it in the bathtub.

Meanwhile, on Questions & Answers the panel wondered if the Portugese police are scapegoating the McCanns.

Fintan O'Toole said they created the campaign . . . which they did . . . but couldn't control it . . . which they can't. Aine Hegarty said we'd invested a lot in the McCanns. (Over 1.5m, though one can assume donations will now be slower. ) We have invested a lot. In fact, the emotional thrust of the story has always been about how her parents feel.

What about Madeleine? If she's alive. The media can't get enough of the McCanns and the McCanns can't get enough of the media. For instance, there's so much they wish to say . . . so they have had their relatives say it for them.

And, now, what do we think we know? Some DNA was found in the car the McCanns rented 25 days after Madeleine disappeared.

BBC's Newsnight treated this with the skepticism it deserved. Sir Alec Jeffreys, who developed DNA profiling, said DNA may be one part of the puzzle, but it doesn't have the words "guilt" or "innocent" written on it.

That may be so, but we need to face up to one fact that has been missing from most of the media coverage this past week and has certainly been missing from the lurid and highly contagious tabloid headlines: the professional expertise and opinion of the man who developed DNA profiling is all well and good, but it doesn't exactly make a good story.