Matthew Norman's Media Diary

In considering the seductive prospect of a British government with the balls to stand up to Rupert Murdoch, it seems safest to begin with the traditional caveat as taken from Michael Frayn's Clockwise: it isn't the despair, as John Cleese's frantic headmaster puts it, it's the hope I can't stand.

Even so, a glimmer of hope has appeared, thanks to Trade Secretary Alastair Darling's call for an investigation into News Corporation's influence. When we use the words "Alastair Darling" in this context, we use them, of course, as shorthand (longhand for you pedants) for his master Gordon Brown, who appears to be picking a fight with Mr Murdoch over his 17.9 per cent stake in ITV.

This deal concerned Ofcom, which took a moment off from worrying about Big Brother to consider the competition implications, and here we are now with the matter referred to the Competition Commission. Before anyone gets too excited, it should be mentioned that these commissioners are government appointees who, if they have any appetite for other lucrative quango posts, will do Gordon's bidding to the letter.

So there's every chance that this is a traditional established charade designed by Gordon to assuage Mr Murdoch's opponents and please the back benches in the short term while doing absolutely nothing at all. Equally likely, Gordon is using this investigation as a shot across the bows, serving notice that he'll play rough if the Murdoch papers give him too hard a time. Things will be clearer in six months when the Commission races back with its report, but for now we offer tentative thanks to Gordon for at least hinting at an end to an era of Murdoch domination stretching back to the early days of Mrs Thatcher.

Whatever our feelings about Mr Murdoch, let no one accuse him of failing to protect our young. Sky TV has now introduced a system whereby subscribers must input a pin number to access its film channels before the watershed. Quite right too. You cannot overstate the corruptive influence on unformed minds of such noir classics as The Brady Bunch in The White House.

I was delighted last week to see my colleague Stephen Glover address the vexing matter of Mr Justice Eady, the Maximum Bob of the libel courts, who seems determined to produce enough case law to bypass any need for legislation to establish the hateful and dangerous concept of privacy. Newspaper lawyers are now terrified of defending even facetious actions purely because he is likely to try them – and since we're already saddled with the democratic world's most draconian libel laws, this isn't helpful to freedom of speech at all.

What the answer is I've no idea. Well, only one. If enough of us make references to Eady J that are unflattering without straying into libel, soon enough he'll have to recuse himself from every case involving a newspaper on grounds of personal animus. So I hereby call on W F Deedes to kick things off with a wistful recollection of how he once came upon Mr Justice Eady in the gents at the Garrick, clad only in a toga and dancing the tango with a cardboard cut-out of Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss while wearing a horsehair traffic cone in place of his wig.

Splendid to see "homophobes" make a ritual appearance in quote marks in Richard Littlejohn's Mail column, as he turns that original mind to stories intended to familiarise primary schoolchildren with gay relationships. "If I went up to a four-year-old boy in the park and started talking to him about homosexuality   " writes Richard, "I'd be arrested, banged up for five years, and put on the paedophile register for the rest of my life. But do it in schools and you get a grant for it." A brilliantly incisive point. The same goes for Lolita. Teach it to a classroom of A-level students, and you get paid for your troubles. Sidle up to a 13-year-old girl you've never met before on a bus and start reading the more lascivious bits to her, and you could be in trouble with the law. If that isn't an example of a PC-gone-mad society, I can't imagine what is.

Elsewhere in the Mail, by way of a refreshing change of pace, Melanie Phillips gets into a frightful strop about the Human Rights Act, which she joins John Reid in blaming for the absconding of suspects under control orders. I respectfully refer Mad Mel, once again, to the excellent Daily Telegraph piece last May in which her husband, Joshua Rosenberg, explained how journalists deliberately distort the effects of the Act; and why repealing it, or derogating from it, would be absurd. We cannot have this marital scrapping across the pages of rival titles any longer. It isn't dignified, and it sends a terrible message to readers.

Finally, this is a fifth and final public warning to Daily Mirror senior working-class warrior Paul Routledge. Many weeks after I accepted his public challenge to a game of darts, Routers remains in hiding. With the Gay Hussar in Soho, where he suggested the loser buys lunch, reportedly facing closure due to a rent hike, the matter becomes ever more urgent. I am driving to Manchester tomorrow to finalise arrangements for personal tuition from Phil "The Power" Taylor with the 13-times world champion's manager Steve Motteshead. This grudge match is going to happen, even if it means hiring mercenaries to snatch him and deliver him to the dartboard in my kitchen.