From a piece by Alexander Chancellor in the Guardian:

"A point regularly made by people who think that the kerfuffle about Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross has been grossly overblown is that only older people are feeling outraged. The young, they say, can't imagine what all the fuss is about, because for them the essence of comedy is to shock and insult.

"Call me old-fashioned, but I would argue that this very fact, if true, justifies the vast media coverage of the affair. For one of its most alarming aspects has been the claim that young people find what happened on Brand's Radio 2 show perfectly acceptable. How could anyone find it acceptable that obscene telephone calls made to a harmless old man should be broadcast against his will to millions of radio listeners?"

That seems to me to sum up the only really significant aspect of this rather daft story. I was listening to some talk about this on the radio, and the speaker was saying that after all these blokes were employed in order to be offensive, because it had been decided that that was what was needed by the BBC. They were just doing what they were paid to do.

That seems fair enough. So far as this particular mess-up was concerned, the blame primarily lies on whoever took the responsibility of approving it for broadcasting. But more important is the blame on whoever decided that the job of comedians ought to be to set out to be as vicious and nasty as possible. Cruelty is not funny.

If a pitbull terrier savages some passer-by, you don't blame the dog, you blame the owner. It's just hard luck on the dog.