The inauguration of Barack Obama as America's first black president made yesterday a truly historic day.

Britain's newspapers certainly thought so.

Every national newspaper in the land, apart from one, led its front page on Obama taking the oath.

"The Hand of History" declared The Daily Mail. "Remaking America" screamed The Daily Telegraph. "Obama's Promise" - The Times. "Reborn in America" - The Daily Mirror. "Living The Dream" - The Northern Echo. And so it goes on. All historic papers of record.

The exception was the Daily Express which had a four-page "wrap-round" of the main paper, promoting Fiat Cars.

The Express's front page is dominated by a huge photograph of a Fiat 500.

I don't know how much the Express was paid to sacrifice its historic front and back pages to an advertisement, but I assume it was an awful lot of money.

Has it really come to this?

By the way, the Daily Expres's slogan, sitting above the Fiat 500, is "The World's Greatest Newspaper".