Ooh, it’s the age-old question, isn’t it? How old is OK? When are they old enough? When is it OK to say that something was justified because they didn’t look like a child to you? I notice the Daily Mail this week deploying the famous hair test to determine whether or not it’s OK to go there. Wait – maybe that wasn’t clear and you thought I was talking about another type of hair? Guys, of course not! I’m talking about hair on the upper lip. Look at that one – it’s got bumfluff and it’s flaunting its smile. If anything, it’s us that’s going to be taken advantage of. Old muggins here is going to put out for another little chancer.

But you see the problem. Sometimes it’s really difficult to know whether we’re on about refugees coming to the UK, or underage children of celebrities that you shouldn’t feel bad about having sexual feelings for. Or maybe not you, but whoever chose the “gorgeous” paparazzi picture of the 11-year-old, or wrote the “leggy” picture caption to accompany it. Or whoever decides that the “child” in the phrase “child refugee” can now only appear in print in inverted commas.

Kim Kardashian doesn’t need to learn a lesson – but the media seems to Read more

Occasionally, it’s almost as if the Mail is deliberately trying to rip a tear in the age-appropriate continuum. Consider Thursday’s front page. The main headline ran: “Give ‘child migrants’ age tests, says Straw.” And right next to it was a picture of Cindy Crawford and her 15-year-old daughter, with an exhortation to “spot the difference”. Well, now you’re asking. I used to be sure it was something about one of them being a child, but I’m starting to lose my bearings. Also: can I give Cindy’s daughter an age test? She looks “older”. Say what you like about political correctness, it will never take our inverted commas from us.

Even so, whenever they’re talking about individuals of indeterminate age – be it refugees or hot minors – I always find it helpful to think of the Mail as engaged in a dangerously perverse take on George Carlin’s famous routine about words you can’t say on TV. “I can prick my finger,” he mused. “But I can’t finger my prick.”

Of course, Lost in Showbiz would like to stress that it’s not just the Mail that’s a bit “confused” about age. When Adam Johnson was found guilty of sexual activity with a 15-year-old this year, the Sun lost no time in denouncing the “pervert footballer”, despite having run pictures of Cindy’s Crawford’s aforementioned daughter during the trial, in which readers were invited to enjoy her “shapely pins”. She was 14 at the time.

Still, maybe the paper knew something we didn’t. Maybe it was using the same two-bit age-recognition software on which the Mail seem to be nosing its entire coverage of the child-refugee issue. It’s not to everyone’s taste, it must be said. I notice Gary Lineker has taken a lot of stick for appearing repulsed by the Mail’s angle – and he will doubtless take a lot more from the paper itself before it is done with him. In case you missed this – Gary reacted to the front page querying the ages of some of the refugees leaving the Calais camp for the UK with a tweet reading: “The treatment by some towards these young refugees is hideously racist and utterly heartless. What’s happening to our country?”

How unforgivable that Gary should have failed to understand the Mail’s byzantine etiquette around the issue of age. He can’t say it hasn’t given him special insights. In fact, it wasn’t all that long ago that I saw a Mail headline inquiring suggestively: “So who’s the younger lady, Gaz?” over a picture of Gary with his “pretty stepdaughter”, who at the time was 11.

At least she was older than Heidi Klum’s daughter, described as a “leggy beauty”, who “showed off her best model walk through the parking lot” after a paparazzo caught her coming out of gym class. She was eight.

In some ways, though, it is through the prism of fathers and daughters that we can gain the most insight into the tabloid view of age. A year ago, I was deeply moved by a rather angsty column written by the Sun’s former editor Kelvin MacKenzie, shortly after José Mourinho had attended an award ceremony with his daughter wearing a dress that seemed to have aroused Kelvin. Aroused him to anger, I should stress. Although I suspect what Kelvin was really saying was that he found the picture appealing – certainly he must have, at some level, to have embarked on such a lengthy deflection mission. “If I were José Mourinho, I wouldn’t be impressed with my 18-year-old daughter,” he fretted. “Surely, no father would enjoy seeing his daughter wear so little.” I bet Donald Trump would. But if Kelvin prefers an answer closer to home, what about Sam Fox’s dad, whose permission he sought to print topless pictures of her when she was 16?

Making Kelvin sound like a moral philosopher, meanwhile, is Tory MP David Davies (not the Brexit secretary – the other one). By chance, I wrote about David last week, when he made some sally in the Great Brexit Marmite wars. This week, he pops up again, declaring from a couple of photos of the Calais refugees that they “don’t look like children”, and demanding they be subjected to dental tests.

Back then to that question: when is it OK to justify something with the observation that they “don’t look like children”? I’m just feeling my way on this. If you are a Tory MP, and about to deploy the phrase “They don’t look like a child”, you need to first ask yourself an important question. Are you looking at pictures of a) a little minx in a miniskirt, or b) someone who has fled a war zone and has been living in a tented migrant camp for months or even years? If it’s a), then it’s not OK, because times have moved on and we’re all a little more enlightened about which bits of our mind palaces we can open to the public. But if it’s b), it’s still totally fine to say it out loud.

David’s such a headline-seeking brainiac that I half expect him to roll out this plan to the Premier League, and demand that the big clubs fund in-nightclub dental screening to guarantee the age of the females the players might want to do it with later. Or maybe the bars could install booths fitted with the shonky age-guessing software the Mail are using?

Failing that, maybe someone could invent some software through which kid-related newspaper copy could be fed, in order to determine whether it’s “bravely saying the things that ought to be said” or “obviously fucking gross”. Consider this exhibit from a Sun article – featuring all! the! shocking! photos! – about a child beauty pageant: “CAVORTING provocatively in a tiny pink swimsuit and clutching a cuddly stuffed kitten, little Ocean Orrey struts her stuff in a British beauty pageant – aged just FOUR.”

So, as we play out, readers, remember: it’s never OK to share pictures of four-year-olds and say they’re “cavorting provocatively” – unless you’re a national newspaper. I mean that seriously. I think you can literally be arrested for it.