Rescuers try to save Willy the Whale, stuck in the Thames, 20 years ago this month

IT’S an unwritten rule that any journalist who wants to sound thoughtful about their trade must answer the question “what’s your favourite film?” with the instant reply: Ace In The Hole.

The Kirk Douglas classic from 1951 – often described as “still relevant today”, which is media code for nothing has been learned – presents a local newspaper hack reporting on a spelunker stuck in a collapsed cave.

Rather than rescue him the simply way, they draw it all out ­­­– for daily headlines and bumper sales ­– by drilling down through the rocks.

As a circus and hot dog stands build around the site (spoiler incoming) the trapped man dies and the journalist has to think about what really makes a good story. The end.

In central London, 20 years ago this month, there was a similar theme with the astonishing sight of a whale stuck in the River Thames.

This majestic creature was immediately reduced to being called Willy, and the papers and their then fledgling websites wanted every update they could get over three strange days in the capital.

Along the riverside, crowds made an afternoon of it and gathered for hours to get a sight of the bottlenose, taking photos of a faraway grey smudge in brown London water, and her ­predicament certainly captured the public imagination.

It was the biggest banger for editors in January 2006.

Despite everything that was written about her, it’s not been definitively explained how Willy got there.

Some thought she had overshot in her search for food, even though there was no squid dinners likely to be found in the Thames. Others believe she took a wrong turn en route to the Atlantic and became increasingly lost. Details, details…, did you not hear?  There’s a whale in the Thames and you can see its tail.

While people grabbed a coffee ­­– maybe even a beer ­– by the water and told friends excitedly they had seen her, there was probably only ever going to be one end to the spectacle.

Soon it was: there’s a whale in the Thames… oh she’s died.

Her demise was similar to the delight that people in Highgate had when a lost wallaby kept turning up in the area in 2013. People liked the bizarre idea of having an exotic animal bouncing past Karl Marx’s grave, it made a good story but it was always going to end the same way.

Rescue teams and vets had done their best for Willy, of course. They were heroic in the water, but it was reported she was getting exhausted, dehydrated and her kidneys were beginning to fail.

The distraught vets were not like the clueless diggers in Ace In The Hole, but it’s also true that The Sun didn’t want Willymania to end and asked its readers to help pay £10,000 for its skeleton to be recovered and given to the Natural History Museum. How considerate of them.

Then we moved on to the next one.