Skipper

I used to admire and quite like Jonathan Ross when he first appeared on the media as a very quick witted and funny guy. Then I found his relentlesss smuttiness-and I quite like smutty jokes by the way- began to pall. The way he inevitably directed every interview around to his subject's sex life, I thought to be reflect a poverty of his own personality rather than the sychopantic millions who listened, watched and paid his enormous salary.

I recall him asking Martina Navratilova if she used to have sex before she went on court to play tennis at Wimbledon; the obvious subtext was that he was fishing for tawdry details of her well known sexual preferences. But the interview which caused me never to watch the pillock again was with David Cameron when he suggested, that, when at Eton, Cameron might have masturbated over pictures of Margaret Thatcher. Brand, I know less well but had found him intelligent and potentially funny until this latest event.

The current scandal about the leaving of obscene messages on the ansaphone of near 'National Treasure', Andrew Sachs was spectacularly misjudged and the widespread kicking they have received from every quarter has been richly deserved, as is their suspension by ther Beeb. However the biggest loser from all this is the corporation itself, already facing problems with its future funding. This will have substantially weakened its case for continued state funding at present levels. But the sad thing is, both Ross and Brand will not suffer at all.

I realise I'm moving right into Victor Meldrew- 'old fart' territory here, but their kind of celebrity thrives on becoming and remaining media 'enfant terribles'. Even if the BBC sacks them for good, their market value will have gone up rather than down and they won't be unemployed for more than five minutes. I fear they merely reflect the infantile consciousness of a significant portion of the British listening and viewing public.