Now, I can’t say I thought all that much of Michael Gove’s laboured joke about Harvey Weinstein and John Humphrys. But what about his apology? If all bad, tasteless jokes require a public apology, where will we end up? Everyone involved in Armando Iannucci’s dreadful, crude and trivialising film about The Death of Stalin would be saying sorry for the rest of their lives, for instance. Also, surely the people who laugh at these things ought to be made to say sorry, too? Should the BBC round up the Wigmore Hall audience who laughed at the Gove joke, and not let them go till they have provided written regrets? Those of you who chortled at home might make a donation to an ‘appropriate’ charity.
This is an extract from Peter Hitchens' diary from this week's Spectator