It's been a scandalous old year for broadcast media, hasn't it?

There was the huge phone-in competition furore, which suggested to shocking effect that – gasp – people in television may not tell the truth on a regular basis, and that the rigid integrity of naming a Blue Peter cat or trying to win a pikey holiday on GMTV may be called into question.

Bigger than that, though, was the Celebrity Big Brother racism row, during which Volkswagen-with-lipstick Jade Goody got into all sorts of trouble because of her constant hassling of fellow contestant Shilpa Shetty. Mind you, it's not as if such ignorant views seemed particularly surprising when they spewed out of Jade's mouth – she is, after all, a cretin of almost biblical proportions whose sole brain cell is mostly occupied by deciding which brand of lard to inject next.

It's not as if some nice, middle-class, well-educated BBC presenter was spouting such drivel.

Until now.