Rupert Murdoch predicted that, in the 21st century, only one newspaper would survive in each market sector in Britain: the Sun (red-top market), the Daily Mail (mid-market) and you can guess which paper (broadsheet). The most recent circulation figures and the underlying trends producing them - both social and commercial - make his analysis look rather prophetic.
The dominance of the Sun and the Mail continues, although the Times has so far failed to snatch the quality crown from the Telegraph. But Murdoch's predictions were based on a horizontal model, reflecting the British class system of working, middle and upper classes. I suspect the market is now dividing in a different way.
The working class, and particularly the working-class left, is shrinking. So is Britain's natural Tory constituency. The middle class, meanwhile, is exploding, and it is beginning to divide along political lines. The most remarkable phenomenon of the late 1990s and early 2000s was the growth of the middle-class left. These changes had an obvious effect on newspapers such as the Mirror and the Express. Not so obvious is the effect they will have on the Guardian. The muesli-munchers have always been devoted to the paper. Can it now capture the Caesar-salad lefties? If so, it could defy Murdoch and achieve dominance of the broadsheet market.
What came to define the middle classes in the mid-1990s was a craving for modernity (or at least the outward show of it) and a fervent interest in social issues. The two titles that most successfully engage in that debate - and you could not find two other bed- fellows more unlikely - are the Daily Mail and the Guardian.
They share an unswerving belief that investment in the product matters and that the quality of the journalism matters most. But equally important, they unflinchingly address the issues troubling Middle Britain: education, crime, race, the NHS, drugs, the family, relationships, Britishness. One comes from a position of social conservatism, the other from social liberalism; both are resolute in their modernity. Between them, the Mail and the Guardian are dividing up the middle classes in a new way. Both appeal to the fastest-expanding group of all: educated middle-class women. They are the only national papers to have gained female readers in the past two years.
Murdoch looks to have been right about two of his predictions. Did he get the third hopelessly wrong?
"Award ceremonies are silly," Madonna sneered as she handed the Turner Prize to Martin Creed. Not nearly as silly as cling-on rock stars trying to re-establish their fading cool by association with arty award ceremonies.
But I was struck by the unoriginality of the prize-winner: an empty room where the lights go on and off. Nothing new there to any journalist who worked at the Mirror papers under David Montgomery. He invented the art of lights going on and off at Canary Wharf a decade ago. If nobody moved for more than ten minutes, the lighting of an entire floor would shut down. It was called cost-cutting, not cutting-edge.
Another light, this time of enlightenment, was switched on when I watched the BBC Sports Personality (contradiction in terms, surely) of the Year Awards. At last, I understood why sportsmen end up having so much sex in the dark. Boris "Broom Cupboard" Becker turned up in the kind of lurid purple suit that no self-respecting woman would be seen dead next to. The mob mentality of our star footballers produced an array of dark single-breasted suits, dark shirts and ties as fat and thick as the necks they were wrapped around.
I just don't understand why a bunch of millionaires who spend most of their lives running around a football pitch wearing nasty, shiny, badly fitting polyester want to go out at night wearing nasty, shiny, badly fitting polyester.
It is with great regret that I announce that this is my last column for the New Statesman. This weekend, I return for ever to my homeland, Australia. I have sat - and failed - David Blunkett's new test for Britishness and, like all other non-integrated foreigners, must leave these shores.
After 16 years, I just don't pass muster. I don't like tea (didn't the British nick that from Ceylon in the first place?) or chicken tikka masala (Indian); I have only ever been to one football game (invented by the Greeks) and I didn't like it; I don't wear pearls (from Japan), not since I left the Tory party; I have never worn a pashmina (Pakistani); I hate shopping at Harrods (owned by an Egyptian); I've never driven a Mini (German-run); and I have never even wanted to wear Jesus sandals (Jerusalem) with long white socks, or make love to any man who did.
And I still talk with a funny accent and refuse to give up my own sacred traditions, such as drinking too much and taking the piss out of people.
What I do know is that, having arrived on a boat with only a few quid to my name, I chose to make this my home and not return to what many consider to be God's own country.
Why? Because Britain is a magnificent country - free, enter- prising, culturally rich, welcoming and full of opportunity for foreigners like me.
