I’m reliably informed there was a time when, if a member of the public had a particular grievance, their chosen method of airing it was to write ‘A stiff letter to The Times’ and sign it “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells”.

How that complaints system worked out for people who lived in Ammanford, Inveraray or Walton-On-The-Naze, I’ve not been told.

If The Times printed the letter, the complainant was satisfied and moved on to find something new to complain about.

If the newspaper decided not to print it, presumably The Times received a follow-up complaint letter signed “Even MoreDisgusted of Tunbridge Wells”.
Today, in a world saturated with social media and 24-hour TV news channels desperate to fill airtime with controversial arguments, all the “Disgusteds of Tunbridge Wells” out there have innumerable platforms to air their complaints.

So, isn’t it odd that someone who’d paid to see a comedian not known for his inoffensive, gentle humour, was so ‘offended’ by one particular joke that, instead of complaining via social media, they phoned the police?

Comedian Joe Lycett recently revealed this happened to him while he was on tour earlier this year.

With so many unsolved crimes on their hands plus all the other difficulties of their job, you’d think the cops would have told the person not to waste police time.

But no!

They decided to investigate and ‘paid a visit’ to Joe Lycett to discuss the matter.

Joe was naturally shocked that the police would involve themselves in something so trivial.

He revealed that as nice as they were to him, they told him they ‘had a duty to investigate’.

No, they didn’t!

Their duty is to catch burglars, car thieves, drug dealers and all the other miscreants causing real harm to society.

That they took notice of one audience member, who ‘took offence’ at one joke in a two-hour show and thought the most logical way to complain about it was to call the boys in blue, beggars belief.

Before you ask, I don’t know what the exact joke was.  All I know is, it involved a donkey.  And I don’t mean the audience member who made an ass of them-self.