"Hello, this is Ofcom. Got a complaint to make? Sod off."

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A wizened old dame sits in her threadbare armchair. Dusk has fallen and her shadow dances weakly on the marigold wallpaper, cast by the flickering television which dimly lights the room. The programme blares into straining ears as an elbow rests heavily on the doily-covered arm, a phone in its hand, Ofcom on speed-dial.

This is the image I invariably get when yet another anodyne remark on the airwaves has viewers scrambling to register their fury and disgust with broadcasting regulators.

This is the country of Monty Python and Eddie Izzard, for goodness sake, what has happened to the British sense of humour and ability to take a joke?

Following the uproariously boring Brand-Ross scandal last week, jumpy prudes have now leapt to complain at a Jeremy Clarkson comment on Top Gear on Sunday.

So great is the fervour of itchy-fingered complainers that, presumably, were Monty Python's dead parrot sketch to be aired tomorrow there would be outrage expressed by the Parrot Conservation League and a representative of the Norwegian Fjord Collective branding the word "pining" offensive.

Who are these self-proclaimed defenders of purity? What could possibly inspire such an outpouring of disgust?

The Brand-Ross debacle was the non-event of the year (as beautifully described by Charlie Brooker) and merely an excuse for newspapers to devote a few column inches to something other than Obamania. It may, just possibly, have been an event had Jonathan Ross's comments been flagrantly libellous, but it turns out (allegedly) that Russell Brand actually did f**k the person he claimed to have f**ked, so it was merely a whingey sort of "It wasn't what you said, it was the way you said it" kind of outcry.

And now Jeremy Clarkson has felt the tongue-clucking wrath of the prude army.

Bemoaning the constant need to change gear when driving a lorry, Clarkson said: “This is a hard job and I’m not just saying that to win favour with lorry drivers, it’s a hard job.

“Change gear, change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That’s a lot of effort in a day.”

Lorry drivers might not be over-chuffed at being tarred with the same brush as Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe and Suffolk murderer Steve Wright, it is true, but it is a joke. J-o-k-e.

In fact, it is not lorry drivers doing the complaining, but some kind of prostitutes' union, like a Unison of the sex trade, the existence of which is much more interesting than their opinions on Jeremy Clarkson.

Aside from the outrage of the English Collective of Prostitutes (I sh*t you not), 537 people rang in to complain to Ofcom, presumably at the fact that their sense of humour glands had suffered a fatal bypass...

Top Gear averages several million viewers per episode, so the fact that only 537 of them took offence at a remark is surely proof-positive that the joke was harmless and that, possibly, more homicide-related jokes should be included in prime-time television.

But to return to a point I made in my blog about the Ross-Brand nonsensia, this is the way round things have to be done to protect media freedom and creative license in this country.

You either have to have regulators to retrospectively assess broadcasts, or censors to pre-emptively police material before it goes out, and I know which option I would choose.

The name Mary Whitehouse may well be a by-word for prudish, blue-rinsed fury at all things sexual, racy, colourful, loud, noisy or shiny, but she fulfilled a sort of pain-in-the-arse role that probably saved us from stricter censorship.

By gauging reaction to broadcasts from Whitehouse and her ilk, broadcasters can assess the tone of their programmes and adjust them accordingly and draw-up their own guidelines of taste and decency. No doubt a quiet word will be whispered in Master Clarkson's ear about future prostituticidal remarks and he will no doubt ignore them and be no more hidebound than before, but it forms a sort of feedback that keeps the media free.

It is only when the narrow-minded and the hysterical are given the chance to feedback that things take a turn for the preposterous. "Sack them!" bleated a hissy-fitting headline in the Daily Mail (who else?) over the Brand-Ross malarkey. What, had they abused power, been corrupt, told lies, stolen money, killed someone? No. Some people sent text messages into the BBC calling for Jeremy Clarkson's dismissal, as if the work of an entire much-loved career should hang on one risqué remark.

Paying a licence fee to the BBC does not equate to part-owning the corporation and wielding a shareholder-like fist of fury at every blip. The BBC provides a remarkable, superb, unparalleled entertainment and information service for the equivalent of about 45 pence a day, so perhaps shutting the hell up and appreciating it might be in order, do you not think?

The only solution I can propose is to give Points of View a three-hour long prime-time slot every day and have a "Press Red" interactive function to allow viewers to bellow tearfully down the phone at the offensively technicolour shirt worn by Kirsty Ward on Newsnight (it was pretty horrible) or Victor Meldrew's disgusting use of the word "bloody".

It might put Ofcom out of a job, but, as Victoria Wood so aptly put it: "When the Russians feel strongly about an issue they form a bloody revolution — the British write a strongly-worded letter to Points of View"...