When I started work in 2003 in London, buying the Evening Standard from the newspaper chap on the way to the station was a normal thing, but the morning paper was on the way out as a free paper "The Metro" had taken root.

The launch of an evening version ("The London Paper") soon put an end to that, and the standard eventually became free in 2009. A couple of years later smartphones started to take the place of the "something to look at" - at least on the surface lines.