'The Mockery of Manuel'

‘Brandgate’: turning crudity into a crisis

With the media masturbation quickening its stroke, another 1,500 people also decided, over a week later, that they, too, were offended enough to complain. By Wednesday morning, a further 16,500 people found themselves vexed after the fact. These days, it seems, one doesn’t have to have found something offensive at the time it was said in order to have been offended by it later; you don’t even have to have heard the broadcast in question – simply being offended on behalf of another (in this case Sachs and his granddaughter) is enough.

If they keep this up, generations yet to be born will still be jamming the Ofcom switchboard, demanding the posthumous prosecution of Wally Woss and Shagged Brandy. All too aware of the historical import of The Mockery of Manuel, the BBC has even created a ‘timeline’ of the incident on its news website, a move usually reserved for the little things in life, like wars and recessions.