KEY POINTS:
Pity poor Manuel: almost three decades after the final episode of Fawlty Towers, his life is once again being made miserable by an English buffoon.
As fans of the classic sitcom will recall, the hapless Spanish waiter, played by Andrew Sachs, was routinely baffled, bullied and bitch-slapped by
the demented Basil Fawlty (John Cleese), either just for the hell of it or to divert attention from his own imbecilities.
Now 78, Sachs has just been subjected to one of those gruesome public humiliations which, it must be said, are among the scant consolations of celebrity culture. While an audience of two million listened in, a couple of BBC Radio 2 presenters informed Sachs via his answerphone that one of them had slept with his granddaughter and suggested that, as a result, he might feel compelled to kill himself.
Initially the BBC couldn't see what the fuss was about. After all, the presenters - Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross - were just doing their job which is to push the boundaries, that is amuse tomorrow's middle class by offending today's.
But the outrage mounted. Some 15,000 complaints flooded in; Britain's media watchdog announced it was launching an investigation; the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition set aside their differences to harrumph in unison. The granddaughter, 23-year-old Georgina Baillie, said Brand had embarrassed her by making a private relationship public "in the cruellest way imaginable".
Sachs responded to apologies like a hanging judge reaching for his black cap, saying "it is God who forgives". Finally the wretches bowed to the inevitable: Brand resigned and Ross was suspended.
In short, a timely reminder that pranksters tread a fine line, that the public never needs much excuse to turn on those who earn a handsome living by having fun at others' expense and that the media is as arbitrary in bestowing and withdrawing its favour as a medieval monarch.
Well yes, but if we're going to attach significance to a bad taste joke that fell flat, we might as well lay out all the facts. Baillie is a burlesque dancer whose stage name is Voluptua. She performs with a dance troupe called the Satanic Sluts and recently landed a role in the pilot episode of Trollops of Threadneedle Street. Her interests are alcohol and lingerie.
One doesn't need to be a seasoned navigator of the internet to establish that Baillie's stage name is no idle boast or that her interest in lingerie is not a private, academic pursuit.
None of which excuses this low-rent stunt but it does, I'd suggest, provide some mitigating context. Not even Manuel could harbour the illusion that a young woman who earns a living by pole dancing in lingerie is a blushing ingenue or dismiss the possibility that she might gravitate towards high-profile rogues.
Baillie herself must have been aware that a dalliance with Brand - a former heroin addict who was fired by MTV for reporting for work the day after 9/11 in an Osama Bin Laden costume - would more than likely be noted by the tabloids and follow an unpredictable path to an unhappy conclusion.
Presumably she calculated that the benefits outweighed the risks.
And it surely takes the sting out of the suggestion that Sachs might feel the only honourable course was to retire to the library with a bottle of Scotch and a revolver. Coming to terms with his granddaughter being a Satanic Slut must have required a stoic acceptance that his twilight years might be more eventful than he'd hoped.
You might choose to see the whole affair as yet another symptom of the tragic decline of the BBC, a once august institution with a worldwide reputation for probity and professionalism dumbed down and vulgarised by market forces with their tidal pull towards lowest common denominator broadcasting.
But the days are long gone when people in every corner of the globe would gather around a wireless at 9pm GMT to hear from a man with a clipped Home Counties accent what Mr Khrushchev said in his speech to the Central Committee or how many children lined the streets of Bulawayo to wave at the Queen. The Reithian concept of public broadcasting as a means of educating the masses and elevating the discussion of public affairs is as passe as chaperones.
Likewise, we're not living in the Victorian era or even the 1950s: these days girls just want to have fun and good luck to them. But if it ends in tears we should remember that ladies are now almost as thin on the ground as gentlemen.
