“Why are Kate’s fingers all the SAME length?” is the question that until now has never been on anyone’s lips, mostly due to the fact they aren’t.

Undeterred, the Daily Mail today dedicated a significant portion of its front page and two whole pages inside to something which the paper itself demonstrates to be untrue.

The Duchess of Cambridge was visiting a school in Oxford on Sunday when “observers noted that Kate’s fingers appear to be the same length”.

The observers as yet remain unidentified.

One commenter wrote beneath the article :

As I read, and the reality of what they were saying hit me, I realised that a Daily Mail writer had passed the threshold of stupidity. She is clutching the purse. She’s holding it between her fingers on the one side and the thumb on the other, holding it with the flats of her fingertips. That makes the fingers draw up so that they look as if they’re the same length. This really is beyond stupid!

Another commenter took matters into their own regularly-sized hands and conducted their own experiment.

This is nonsense. I tried it at home holding an object the same way she is holding her small purse and my fingers also look the same length. Whereas when I stretched my hand out on a surfaced all fingers are different sizes.

But perhaps the Mail is on to something. According to a lot of completely made up tweets, a whole host of people are now asking the same question.