Be you ever so high, the lawyers say, the law is above you. Jonathan Ross has just discovered that be you ever so witty the British press is above you too. They always get their man, especially if he is working for their subsidised, monopolist rival, the BBC.

Ross is today no doubt privately echoing Macaulay’s famous comment that there is nothing so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality. Unfortunately for him, the BBC has just pulled from under his feet the platforms on which he might show off his erudition: his Friday night BBC One chat show and his Saturday Radio Two programme.

You might think his suspension saves him at least from the humiliation of referencing his debacle on air, but motor-mouthed personalities such as Ross do not think that way. The airwaves are their oxygen and to be banned from them is the equivalent of asphyxiation. He and we will have to wait to see what lines his scriptwriters eventually come up with, the mots justes that will serve contrition with a dash of cheek (or perhaps the quantities will be reversed).

I suspect the wait will not be very long for the scandal in fact is much more to the BBC’s than Ross’s: editorial misjudgement followed by management failure, compounded by inept public relations. This is a BBC, brilliant in so many ways, that is run by moral cowards and so in love with strategy papers and focus groups that it appoints as head of BBC Radio (“Audio”) a marketing man called Tim. The only mark in the BBC’s favour in the whole affair is that its errors have been thoroughly examined by its own programmes. Both Radio Four’s Today and the Five Live morning phone-in had featured the nightmare prominently for two days running.

Nevertheless, although it is the BBC with its neck in the noose, Ross will suffer collaterally when he returns, as return he will. He has two big numbers playing against him: 47, which is his age, 6 million which is what he earns a year from the licence payer. By comparison his co-defendant, Russell Brand, is a baby of 33 and earns a pitiful £200,000 a year from his Radio Two show (on which the jape actually was broadcast).

Ross will be realising his sex-obsessed act needs to mature before he morphs before our eyes into an irredeemably dirty old man. It would help, too, if he were willing to bring his earnings in line with our new age of austerity. Fortunately for him there is a role model to follow. Chris Evans, once the richest and most obnoxious figure in broadcasting, has reinvented himself as funny but warm and child-friendly compere of Radio Two’s humble drive time show.

Ross will be back. He is too good to be permanently sacrificed. But if he ever hoped to succeed Wogan at breakfast, he can dream on. After this week, the job is Evans’s for the asking.

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