There’s no question that Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross need their arses spanked for mobbing up one of the stars of the greatest British comedy of all time. But if not literally – how?

The BBC can’t take them off air for good; quite apart from difficulties with contracts and irritating though Ross’s ego can become, there’s no doubt that large numbers of licence-paying punters enjoy him. Perhaps some kind of ritual public humiliation for him. Maybe he should stand in a set of stocks in Trafalgar Square (or outside Broadcasting House) while passers by are invited to pelt his visage with sponges soaked in low-grade Vin Ordinaire.

Grubby little Brand (who, I imagine, close to, must smell of sweaty socks and smegma), as a punishment for revealing private intimacies about Andrew Sach’s granddaughter, Georgina Baillie, should submit to being locked in a chastity belt for a week and kept under 24 hr CCTV surveillance, viewable on one of the BBC’s innumerable obscure digital channels which you can’t get in the part of Shropshire where I live.