We have these sporadic fussing-sessions over the BBC because the BBC isn’t simply a thing that makes TV shows. It is – in design, if not always in practice – responsible for analysing, and then reflecting back, Britain as a whole. And if we don’t like what it reflects back, we often attack the BBC when we are, underneath it all, taking issue with an entire cultural climate.

After all, there can be no doubt that there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of men who have a sense of humour like Brand and Ross. Theirs is the humour of the age – a fact implicitly acknowledged in both their pay-packets, and their cultural prominence. I don’t think any of the brouhaha stemmed from the fact that either presenter does a line in edgy, sexy swear-stuff.

They’ve always done that, to great success – and, I suspect, they always will. It was that, ultimately, the show in question was an epic failure in politeness. It was simple bad manners. That was why it upset even Ross and Brand supporters.

I very much doubt that the affair has affected Brand’s career much. Let’s face it – he’s an edgy ex-heroin addict with 4ft-high hair who was fired from MTV for dressing up like Osama bin Laden the day after 9/11. When the outcry was at its height, in what was supposedly the “worst” week of his career, he was cast in a $4 million role in the next Pirates of the Caribbean film.

Ross’s future will be the big random factor. As a long-term fan, I am oddly glad that all this has happened. For the past year Friday Night with Jonathan Ross has had a flabby air to it – as if a bright autodidact with an £18 million contract found “just chatting to celebrities” far too easy, and had fallen into dismissive self-parody. In particular, his interviews with women had becoming unfailingly and, it has to be said, mortifyingly rumpy-based.

Bright autodidacts need, and thrive on, boundaries. “Edgy” performers need actually to be shown where the edge is, from time to time. That’s what they sharpen their blade on.

I hope that Ross will come back in January wanting – and, indeed, having, for the first time in years – to use all his charm, dash, oddness and hair to win us over again.

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