Nothing funy about him either

There was nothing edgy about Wossy - spiked

The staggering conceit of the metropolitan elite is to imagine that while they are broadminded, sophisticated and edgy, the Middle England masses are easily offended simpletons who can’t handle anything beyond The X-Factor and Strictly Come Dancing. This elite believes that creeping censorship and intolerance towards anything sweary on TV is slowly gaining the upper hand. It is therefore the job of metropolitans to save the TV schedules from the uptight, narrow-minded masses.

Yet a recent poll on what were the best TV shows of the Noughties suggests that this is actually not the case. At the start of the decade, there was no Daily Mail-inspired campaign to get The Sopranos off our screens for its graphic sex and violence and endless stream of profanities. Instead it was praised across the board for raising the bar of quality TV drama. One of the most lauded comedies in living memory, The Office, is universally adored (it remains the BBCs biggest-selling DVD ever) despite featuring sexual references (‘Five minutes with her and I’d be up to my nuts in guts’, as Finchy memorably said) that apparently only liberal journalists and celebrities can tolerate. Elsewhere, ultra-rude (but ultra-funny) and swearingly offensive hit comedies such as The Thick of It and Peep Show don’t register complaints from the middlebrow tabloids either. Audiences are far more broadminded than the self-congratulating snobs suggest.