Last updated 11:21, Thursday, 30 October 2008

TELL you what, I bet Peter Mandelson and George Osborne have become massive fans of Russell Brand and his childish prankster partner Wossy this week.

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Jonathan Ross

Political scandal has been pushed off the front pages – and most of the inside pages, too – by the outrage that has been prompted by their lewd broadcasting activities.

Ten thousand complaints to the BBC in one day? I doubt that the Radio 2 programme in which they made smutty phone calls to veteran actor Andrew Sachs, has 10,000 listeners. It’s all whipped up hype.

What Ross and Brand did was pathetic and unacceptable. If they were in any other job they would be sacked on the spot.

But this is what passes these days for alternative comedy. Entertainment? A bout of haemorrhoids is funnier than listening to Brand.

Yet isn’t it all wildly out of perspective? Why, even Gordon Brown, flushed by his success in saving the world from economic meltdown, managed to break off from international talks to slate the Beeb for broadcasting this drivel.

Surely the PM has more important things to address than the sleazy alliance of Messrs Brand and Ross and a BBC that seems to have lost all sense of judgement?

As the newly crowned Lord Mandelson and the Shadow Chancellor discovered last week, the company you keep can rebound on you to devastating effect.

At 48, Jonathan Ross ought to be keeping company more suited to his age than a so-called comedian who trades on his sexual adventures.

The fact is the newspapers, in slamming the BBC, have themselves been revelling in prurient voyeurism. They’ve been loving it. Every salacious development. Here they stand, the guardians of morality while glorying in the discomfiture of Brand, Ross and BBC executives.

There is a level of mock hysteria whipped up here. Even Rosie, the Sun’s topless Page Three girl, is shocked by the crudity of it all. I ask you, who are the hypocrites?

Just in case you’d forgotten, there’s an election about to take place in America which will have ramifications for the rest of the world, the planet is going bust economically before we can destroy it through climate change, hundreds died in an earthquake this week and all we hear about is these overpaid degenerates.

It’s further confirmation we live in a celebrity obsessed world. Let’s not allow something really important to get in the way of a sexy story. I’m quite certain Osborne and Mandelson agree 100 per cent.