Ross & Brand’s sadism isn’t public service broadcasting

The cruel element in humour used to be illustrated by the far from innocent laughter raised by the sight of an old man slipping on a banana skin. Bergson pointed this out more than a century ago and Hobbes did the same far earlier.

But neither Bergson nor Hobbes thought these cruel elements of humour should be legitimised. Indeed they thought they ought to be de-legitimised, because they encouraged us to take pleasure in the pain or misfortune of others. Hence the long line of highly successful humorists, such as PG Wodehouse, who have maximised the sunny side of humour and minimised the darker and crueller side.

Of course there have been exceptions - ­ Saki and Evelyn Waugh, for example ­ - who have defied this convention and gone in for cruelty, but until the current BBC came along, they have lacked official blessing. That is what is so shocking about the BBC's behaviour today. It is giving official blessing, in effect, to sadism. The BBC talks of its duty to push out boundaries.

The BBC talks of duty yet has, in effect, given its official blessing to sadism

While this may be true about its duty to push out the boundaries around deference and decorum, it cannot possibly be true about its duty to press out the boundary around sadism. Not even the most obtuse BBC mandarin can believe that the Corporation has a duty to do that.

Of course in pushing out the boundaries around sadism they may have given pleasure to viewers; pandered to the crueller side of all our human natures, but this can hardly be said to be the duty of a nation's public service broadcaster.

What is so profoundly worrying is that Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC, has had to be taught this the hard way: ­ shamed into doing the right thing. Indeed it is not even sure that he has done the right thing, since Jonathan Ross has not yet been conclusively sacked.

It is still quite possible that in a few months time, when the furore has settled, he will be back on air, which is rather as if those American guards who were found guilty of sexually taunting their prisoners in Iraq, had merely been given a rap on the knuckle and allowed to return to duty in three months time.

As it happens, these guards too, had broad smiles on their faces.