The McCanns will never know what happened to their daughter Maddie

PORTUGUESE police have finally apologised to Kate and Gerry McCann for declaring them “arguidos” in their daughter Maddie’s disappearance and failing to secure the crime scene.

One wonders whether the online trolls that continue to plague them with wholly unfounded accusations will apologise too.

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Portuguese police have apologised to Gerry and Kate McCann over how they treated themCredit: Alamy

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Madeleine vanished from a Portuguese resort in 2007 while on holiday with her familyCredit: PA:Press Association
But don’t hold your breath.

Either way, this public acceptance of their innocence and police acknowledgment of mistakes made at the scene will surely be of little comfort to the couple who still face life without Maddie 16 years after she was taken from their hotel apartment in Praia da Luz.

If the bedroom she went missing from had been secured properly, would it have yielded a crucial clue?

And when detectives accused her parents of being involved, were vital weeks lost when they could have been focusing on finding the real culprit who they now suspect is convicted sex offender Christian Brueckner?

The McCanns will never know.

But it’s fair to assume that these unanswered questions will only add to their continued pain and the “what ifs?” that haunt any parent of a lost child. In any such case, it’s standard practice for the police to look closely at family, friends and close associates.

But it should never be to the detriment of the ongoing, wider investigation.

In 2018, I interviewed the father of Doncaster-born Andrew Gosden who, then 14, went missing in 2007 and hasn’t been seen since.

It eventually emerged that, instead of going to school as planned, Andrew had waited in a nearby park for his parents to leave for work, then returned home to change out of his school uniform before heading to London’s King’s Cross on a one-way ticket.

Too late

The station’s CCTV cameras show him arriving in the capital.

But any street or bus footage from that point on had been erased by the time the police got round to asking for it.

An oversight, Kevin believes, perhaps borne out of their initial assumption that he had something to do with his son’s disappearance and a failure to look at alternative scenarios until it was too late.

It was Andrew’s 30th birthday in July, but Kevin and his wife Glenys still live in limbo wondering if their son is alive or dead.

And on May 12 this year, it was Maddie’s 20th birthday, prompting her parents to post: “Happy birthday Madeleine! We love you and we’re waiting for you. We’re never going to give up.”

Andrew and Maddie are just two of the 5,200 “long-term missing individuals” in the UK — 1,700 of who were children when they disappeared.

According to Missing UK, 81 per cent of children who go missing are found within 24 hours, and 91 per cent within two days.

Less than two per cent will be missing for longer than a week.

The McCanns and the Gosdens are the unlucky ones.

But they haven’t given up hope and nor should those still tasked with helping them find answers.

Equally, when a child goes missing in the future, mistakes made in their cases should act as a reminder that all potential lines of inquiry must be pursued swiftly, not just those close to home.

HRT not the answer

LANDMARK guidance has been published to advise that menopausal women should not be prescribed HRT for clinical depression.

Makes sense.

But equally, mid-life women suffering mood swings shouldn’t instantly be prescribed antidepressants by certain GPs who fail to recognise that it might just be symptoms of the menopause.

Glad of the fiction

NORMAL People star Paul Mescal is taking advantage of the actors’ strike by beefing up at the gym for his forthcoming lead role in the Gladiator remake.

A source in LA says: “Paul has been working out for months. He’s been hitting the gym pretty much daily to beef up and has a dietician advising him what to eat for maximum muscle gain.”

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Paul Mescal is getting himself in shape for the Gladiator sequelCredit: Alamy

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Russell Crowe played Roman general Maximus in Ridley Scott’s original Gladiator filmCredit: PA:Press Association
Except anthropologists reckon that the real Roman Gladiators were actually overweight vegetarians.

They had little or no access to meat so ate a lot of barley, beans and dried fruit, and they actively cultivated an extra layer of fat so stab wounds were less deadly and they could last longer in the arena.

So basically, less Action Man and more Lack of Action Man.

But, of course, Hollywood ignores that inconvenient fact in favour of a buff heart-throb who will put female bums on cinema seats.

Including mine.

Burden of big babies

A 75-year-old mother in Italy had to go to court to force her adult sons to leave home.

Aged 42 and 40, they refused to leave, declined to contribute towards household bills, despite having jobs, and “expected to be fed”.

They are part of what’s being referred to as Italy’s generation of “bamboccioni” – big babies – who stay put because of rising rents and soaring unemployment.

The p**s-taking pair have to be out of their mother’s house by December 18.

God help whoever they end up marrying.

Idea is pants

LARGE woolly knickers teamed with a short jumper, thick tights and little else is the latest “must-have” look for winter.

Said no one ever but “fashionistas”, and fans such as actress Emma Corrin.

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Emma Corrin attended Miu Miu Women’s Tales Dinner in these strange pantsCredit: Getty
The last woolly kecks I ever donned were bottle green for school hockey, and I have zero intention of ever wearing the like again.

Which I humbly acknowledge will be a relief to everyone.

Hancock’s bad days

FORMER Health Secretary Matt Hancock says his interrogation session on SAS: Who Dares Wins is “one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done and a very unpleasant experience”.

What, worse than waking up to find that snog splashed across The Sun front page and having to face his wife, kids, and a nation he’d told to keep their distance from loved ones?

It’s a Becks No-win

FOR their Netflix documentary, The Beckhams presumably faced the dilemma of whether to address claims that he’d had an affair with Rebecca Loos.

They could just ignore it and be accused of a whitewash.

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The Beckhams had a dilemma when approaching the making of their documentaryCredit: Refer to Caption
They could address it head on and be accused of dragging her back in to the headlines when she’s now living a quiet life in Norway.

Or they could just allude to it in a roundabout way.

They chose the latter and still got criticised, not least by Ms Loos herself in a TV interview this week.

So . . . damned if they did, damned if they didn’t, and damned when they chose a halfway house.

Thai captain shock

DUANGPHET “DOM” PHROMTHEP was captain of the Thai schoolboy football team trapped in a cave for a week in 2018.

Their dramatic rescue was the subject of a TV series and movie, and Dom was able to fulfil his sporting dreams by attending a football academy in the UK.

But he died in February this year and an inquest has now concluded that he took his own life.

How awful that his miraculous escape ended in such tragedy.

My heart goes out to his poor mother who, having thought she’d lost her son once, has now lost him for ever.