I endeavour to be the archetypal right-on, left-wing comedian. I stand on stages, in ethically sourced baseball boots, shouting about US foreign policy and media liars, preferably while sipping from a locally brewed bitter made by a workers co-operative. I say no to adverts, try and spread myself thinly across many benefits, some for human rights charities, some for theatres that need new carpets, and I avoid slurs directed at anyone who is overweight in the front row. But I still find myself constantly in the midst of moral quandaries.

The problem is, the bigger the moral quandary, the bigger the pay cheque. Comedians have made millions from appearing in adverts and entertaining companies with dubious human rights records. Is it better to be a millionaire sell-out living behind metal gates in luxury with the occasional migraines brought on by self-doubt, or to live in near-squalor with a smug self-regard for your goodness and about to have your gas disconnected?

Or is it possible to find a comfortable middle ground of living up to your personal ethical code and still surviving in the media world? This bout of introspection has been brought on by my most recent ethical hiccup. I agreed to host a business awards event, after my agent assured me there would be nothing to make my liberal heart bleed. Unfortunately, shortly before the gig, I found out that one of the nominated companies was BAE systems, a weapons manufacturer against which I had recently performed a benefit.

The only solution was to donate some of the fee to charity and pepper my script with facetious one-liners about the weapons industry. I am sure my vicious gags and cluster bomb puns have put the executives on a Damascene path to voluntary work for the Red Cross. How do others manage?

Marcus Brigstocke, Radio 4's leading satirical mouthpiece, is a regular entertainer at company dos. How does he maintain a clean bill of moral health? “I have one hard and fast rule: I won't do anything for companies involved with arms or oil.”

Jimmy Carr is such a regular on the corporate awards circuit that Viz magazine has joyfully ridiculed his mercenary nature. Their pages regularly feature photographs of Carr beaming next to the Northeast Glazier of the Year or Kent's Best Chartered Accountant. But does even he have an ethical line he won't step over?

No, he says, “I am a jester and a joker; I don't have the moral right to judge these people.” He adds that as a former marketing man for Shell Oil, he has never held himself up as a paragon of socialist virtue.

The next lucrative but dubious dilemma is the advert. I avoid them now, though I did once audition for the part of a cheeky Twiglet. Justin Lee Collins won that role.

Although adverts are deemed “selling out”, almost as soon as alternative comedy was booming, filthy lucre was being pocketed by its stars. Adrian Edmondson was the face of student banking, Fry and Laurie were the Abbot and Costello of the building society, and Harry Enfield was the face of everything else.

Even the left-wing icons of the alternative did not shy away from a few hours in the voiceover studio. Alexei Sayle was accused of selling out when he started voicing ads, though he thinks nothing of the sort. “I have always made the distinction between voicing an ad and appearing in one, because by appearing there is a level of endorsement, of being bought, which I don't think exists if its just the voice.” He does admit: “You could say this is an arbitrary and weaselly distinction.”

Ben Elton has weathered numerous accusations of selling out since his Eighties heyday. According to the former spotty youths who used to hang on his words, it seems to be working with Andrew Lloyd Webber that saw off the last embers of idolatry. It may be mean-spirited to damn a man for his involvement in middle-of-the-road musicals, but maybe Elton made a mistake by allowing one of his songs from The Beautiful Game to be used at George W. Bush's inauguration. The once politically interested comedian obviously missed the Florida debacle.

Bush is partly the reason for the comedian's next moral quandary. Once the squaddies' entertainer was Jim Davidson. Now it is more likely to be someone such as the if.comedy award nominee Rhod Gilbert or Paul Tonkinson. I spoke to one comedian still in a fog of uncertainty: “I went on the Stop The War march, but I also said yes to entertaining the troops in Iraq, and I'm still not sure if that's right or wrong.” On one hand, they are entertaining men and women who are following orders. On the other, they are jesters in what is held by many to be an illegal war. Would a lack of knob gags in a war zone bring the conflict to a quicker conclusion? During the early years of alternative comedy, there was a sense of ideological camaraderie, but that was before it became big business. Once there's good money in something, you find out how much your moral code is worth.

Personally, I don't believe I should entertain the troops in Iraq, advertise delicious shakes or do a 20-minute routine for Halliburton, but that's just what it is, a personal belief. I'm too worried about my next quandary to pour scorn on Mitchell and Webb's Apple earnings or Carr handing out Best Small Armament Innovation of the Year. As the acclaimed political comedian Mark Steel once told me: “In the end, we're just entertainers after all.”

Robin Ince is hosting Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People: A Rational Celebration for Christmas, Hammersmith Apollo, Dec 21, 7.30pm (www. ticketmaster.co.uk). Ince is touring Bleeding Heart Liberal from January (myspace.com/robinince)

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