Guilty pleasures come in many forms. Big Brother. Cher Lloyd’s Swagger Jagger. Scouring the aisles of supermarkets for ‘Whoops’ buys.

None of these, however, surreptitiously fill the heart with glee like The Curious Case of Christine Hemming vs Kitten.

For the uninitiated, this saw Christine, the wife of John Hemming, Lib-Dem MP for Yardley, found guilty of burglary of Beauty: Beauty was the name of the cat belonging to John’s lover.

It’s one of those stories that put everyone concerned in a murky light. Christine, in particular, has garnered some sympathy but almost zero credibility.

But, having witnessed an unprecedented media love-in over the last few days, I began to wonder. What if Christine was Foxy like Knoxy?

Newspapers have always been drawn to reconfiguring a news story if there’s a beauty involved (unless it’s the love-triangled cat belonging to John’s lover, obviously).

Take the generally criticised Dale Farm traveller residents, who surprisingly secured fleetingly favourable front-page news coverage this summer.

How? Because picture editors found a saucy pic of two teenaged, midriff-flaunting girls celebrating a failed eviction. Ponder why last weekend’s heatwave has never been illustrated in the media by a bare-chested bloke of advanced years, plentiful of belly, messily devouring a 99.

Note that good A-Level results are only ever achieved by leaping, willowy blondes (often, inexplicably, twins).

Clearly, I’m not about to equate the acquittal for a brutal murder with a conviction for kitten theft.

However, the excitable response for Amanda Knox’s freedom is the one of the clearest examples of blanket media interest being fuelled by a protagonist’s prettiness.

But with Amanda, this fascination with ‘beauty’ reaches a new level. From the moment the case hit the headlines five years ago, media trawled through flesh-baring Facebook pics of the accused – symptomatic of the modern media phenomenon of using social media to source revealing photos meant just for friends.

Salacious tales of Amanda’s sex life were lasciviously retold across gossip columns and in feature supplements. She was even reduced to a nickname explicitly detailing what she offered to the media fraternity – hello ‘Foxy Knoxy’.

(Actually, as an aside, if Amanda actually finds it harder than expected to secure lucrative deals post-incarceration, I’d like to suggest she’d make an excellent replacement for the creepy vulpine star of the Foxy Bingo campaign.)

The sad death of Meredith Kercher is unfortunately exactly the kind of story that excites both the media and public: reportedly, a sex crime and mystery cocktail guzzled down by all.

But I really wonder if the one thing that’s driving the story into an international sensation is because Knox is apparently a fox, a femme fatale for the 21st Century.