There were just three copies of Edition number 8,674 left. The Indian proprietor told me it had been selling like hot cakes since start of business. 

In all, an extra 1.5 million copies of the tabloid that has recorded everything from “George VI Proclaimed King Throughout The Empire to “Boris Becker’s Secret Love Child” were sold the day it died an ignominous death.

It’s been fascinating being in Britain in the middle of the maelstrom that has closed down a 168-year-old newspaper which is said to have averaged sales of 2.66 million copies each Sunday. 

From afar, I had been following events – disclosures of the phone hacking had emerged earlier – but it isn’t until you are in the eye of the storm that you realise what a bloody big deal this is, well, at least to a newshound like me who’s followed the British tabloids with as much fascination as dread.

It reads like the sort of scandal this newspaper itself would have exposed, and every newspaper is having a field day exposing the exposer. 

Everyone is involved and is being dragged into it – politicians, policemen, private investigators, journalists, the royals, the public – and everyone has an opinion about it.

Celebrities are celebrating the death of the tabloid. Hugh Grant was venomous about it during a television news programme. Comedian Steve Coogan said, “People talk as if they have fallen below their usual high standards. They were already in the gutter. It is just that they have sunk lower than anyone thought they could.” Singer George Michael called it “a fantastic day for Britain”.

In the taxi to Cardiff airport, my driver told me his family had been reading NoW for three generations. His grandparents, his parents and his wife were loyal readers. 

“I only skimmed through it,” he said. “It’s news but it isn’t really news, if you know what I mean. You can’t believe everything you read in it.”

I asked him if he would miss it. “I suppose so,” he said. “But they intruded into people’s privacy, which they shouldn’t have done.”

In an age where privacy is no longer what it used to be – we surrender it freely with every login to Facebook, every search we do on Google, every check we make with foursquare, every message we send through our mobile – it is ironic that privacy lies at the heart of this story, and the lengths the tabloid media will go to to get their story.

Everyday there are new revelations – this morning, it’s people pretending to be Gordon Brown to access his financial information and those in charge of royal security selling phone numbers of family members – and you can bet that more cans of worms will be opened before this scandal blows over.

At the centre of the storm are media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose empire straddles the world from Australia to Asia to Europe to America, his son James Murdoch and their chief executive in the UK, Rebekah Brooks, whose head of flaming red locks has her easily painted as the witch that brought down one of UK’s oldest tabloids. 

Also at stake is Murdoch’s bid to buy over the television station, BSkyB– it’s now been deferred to the Competition Commission – a move which observers say will buy him time. 

I asked the driver whether he thought the purchase should be allowed to go through. “It’s a difficult question,” he said. “He is a very powerful man but perhaps it’s because he’s so powerful that this was allowed to happen.”

After a pause, he added, “Don’t you have that saying in the Orient too? Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Yes, Orient or West, North or South, we’ve seen how power can go to the heads of men and women that they think they can do anything and get away with it. 

Whatever you think of it though, the final edition of NoW has some good editorials in it written by those who didn’t break the law but nevertheless has lost their jobs. 

Mostly, I think I will miss the headlines. The edition, which carried the headline, “Thank You and Goodbye”, reminded its readers of headlines of the past – “Cabinet Minister and his Secret Love”, “Archer Quits as News of The World Exposes False Alibi” and “He’s an F-ing Cheat!” (on a Gordon Ramsay story).

They won’t write them like these anymore.