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

I'm so new to this live performance business that I'm learning as I go. Last week, I faced my first heckles, which were actually quite fun, but there is a limit to how much you can let someone try to take over a show. I'm quite happy to wade in and take someone on, and am certainly capable of holding my own. The problem is that some people just enjoy the attention, even if they are being verbally mutilated – they just end up shouting anything to keep the spotlight on themselves. I wasn't sure of the form here. Was I supposed to just carry on? Did I have to keep taking them on until they lay on the floor weeping and conceding defeat? Could I simply ask them to leave, or would that be admitting failure?

Should those people who set out to provoke unrest and anger – such as those who burn the Koran – be allowed to do so with impunity?

It takes a bespoke brand of mental infirmity to confuse personal courage in advancing the right to cause offence with a penchant for bullying the most vulnerable

Katie Price has attacked the media regulator Ofcom for failing to demand that Channel 4 broadcast an apology for remarks made by the Glaswegian comedian Frankie Boyle about her disabled son, Harvey.

Channel 4 breached broadcasting guidelines with jokes about Katie Price's son Harvey on its Frankie Boyle comedy show, the media regulator has ruled.

The Brian Viner Interview: Two golds in Beijing made Rebecca Adlington Britain's finest swimmer in 100 years and a poster girl for her sport – even if outside her natural element self-doubt can surface