This week's move of The Times's leader column from the centre to the front of the newspaper was much commented upon - well, at any rate in The Times itself. A self-congratulatory two-page article on Monday recalled celebrated leader articles supplied in the past by 'The Thunderer' (like the BBC with its 'Auntie' The Times can't resist the twee use of its own nickname).

Among these - predictably - was the 1967 article in which the editor William Rees-Mogg borrowed the words of Alexander Pope - "Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?" - to urge the release from jail of the convicted druggies Mick Jagger and Keith Richard (without the 's' in those days). Their imprisonment is said to have offended against his "gentle liberalism".

But could this not be considered another error of judgment by a man so famous for them that he has long been known to Private Eye and its readers as Mystic Mogg? It could be argued that forcing the pair of rockers to serve their full sentences would have sent out a powerful anti-drug message which, in retrospect, was desperately needed at that time. Instead, they came out and helped to fashion a world in which drugs became the trendy norm.

I know because I was there.