The Town Hall officials had seen the Mayor with his bucket and spade and knew he was off to the seaside, so they didn’t like to bother him. Soon, though, there was so much fuss that the Mayor had to come home. Larry said: “Oh, baaa, Dennis, we’re in terrible trouble – and I’m only a little lamb. ”And Dennis said: “Larry, mein freund, I to Arkville am moving.” The Mayor ordered an inquiry, and before long two of his wireless executives resigned from their jobs and Ernest the Policeman was telling Larry: “Now then, young fellow-me-lamb, the Mayor has decided that you are to be punished, so no pocket-money until after Christmas.” And Larry said: “Oh baaa!”

It was hardly surprising that the media – including the BBC itself – should leap whole heartedly on to the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand story so that it came to dominate the news for a week: it had the advantage of being a distraction from the serious subjects which had been forcing their way into even the most bubble-headed of papers and broadcasts. As a break from the ongoing economic crisis and the incessant U.S. election, the predecessors of the bad boys of broadcasting were those incautious guests in Corfu, Lord Mandelson and George Osborne. Ross and Brand were clearly a softer target. Nevertheless, the newspapers that took up the case against them have an adequate defence against the accusation that they exaggerated the importance of two flamboyant egos. It is a clear duty of the press to reveal bad behaviour and stupidity wherever it harmfully occurs – and especially within an organisation that pays vast amounts of public money to performers who should know better than to risk damaging a great and trusted broadcasting institution.

It was less convincing that many commentators, in the ancient tradition of Mrs Grundy and Mrs Whitehouse, decided to emphasise the use of adolescent foul language rather than the more serious matter of gratuitous abuse and invasion of privacy. In spite of earning his living as an actor, Andrew Sachs has every right to be treated as a private citizen. Could it be that some papers felt a pang of conscience because they themselves are not averse to ringing people up at strange hours and asking them impertinent questions, and that, therefore, the obvious breach of good taste and decent behaviour was a little too close to home?

As for the BBC itself, the news departments showed an understandable anxiety that as few stones as possible should remain unturned. Again, hardly surprising in the light of Ross’s claim at the British Comedy Awards a year ago that he is “worth a thousand BBC journalists”. From the managerial point of view, there remains a doubt about whether anything would have been done about Ross and Brand if the Corporation had not come under fire from the press. Certainly, executives should be sent on training courses to teach them public relations skills – if they remain as accident-prone as recent and not-so-recent events suggest, they will hasten the dissipation or cessation of the licence fee and put a handbrake on one of the world’s most vigorous journalistic machines.

Political wolves will always prowl around the BBC, because it is not under direct control of government or private enterprise. Its independence irritates the powerful, and that’s why the rest of us need it so much. In its turn, the BBC must defend itself by maintaining its own core values: they are far more important than attracting a youth audience with celebrations of obnoxious yobbishness. And it may be that youth has something to say other than abuse. Looking at the images of the thousands of young people among the crowd at Grant Park celebrating the victory of President-elect Barack Obama – and how that great Chicagoan broadcaster, the recently deceased Studs Terkel, would have yearned to interview all of them – even hardened old observers must have felt that a new era might be beginning, one based not on the greed of the past few decades but on the values enshrined in the golden age of the BBC.

Goodbye, children... everywhere. — BH