Some comedians make a living being offensive. If people really found their jokes so awful, surely they wouldn't want them shared any further?

The 'good, the tanned and the ugly' up for this year's comic alternative to the Baftas

Racism is “at the heart” of British Government policy - and the racist views of some people in power “trickle” through society, a comedian told the High Court today.

Comedian Frankie Boyle complained today that he had been libelled when a tabloid newspaper described him as “racist”.

TV presenter’s punishment of 18 months' community service dismissed as 'derisory'

The Way We Live: Britain today is just as socially stratified and morally bogus as it was in 1962

Panel show pair David Mitchell and Victoria Coren are engaged to be married.

Ricky Gervais reminded us recently, as if we'd forgotten, that language can still offend en masse if its use is misjudged.

At least we now know how, if you are a comedian whose career is becalmed, you can make yourself the centre of attention. You deploy one of the new swearwords. "Spaz" and "retard" are favourites and, as this week has shown, "mong" can do the trick pretty well, too.

IMHO...

With the pre-surgical Ed Miliband still deprived of sleep by that "life-threatening apnoea", it behoves us to help him through the befuddlement.

Fingers on the buzzer! Get ready to test your knowledge of the scandal spreading around the world. Asking the questions is Matthew Bell (answers at bottom of page)

The British have always been susceptible to a rogue, factual, fictional or a bit of both, from Robin Hood to Falstaff to handsome highwaymen to Arthur Daley and Derek Trotter. It's the attraction of opposites, of the mischievous to an essentially staid nation.

It is the sense of communality that gives the best humour its therapeutic power