Dominic Lawson: Jade is crude and abusive, but her freedom of speech extends to the right to be rude

Mr Tweed was not engaging in racial abuse. He was being a prick, which is not yet against the law

I shall assume that you, my readers, are as ignorant as I am about the issue that is currently transfixing the British political establishment. So I shall take it that, like me, you have never watched an episode of Big Brother, but that you read the newspapers and so are vaguely aware of this programme's role in the life of our nation.

Now that Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Jack Straw have all thought it necessary to deliver their opinions on whether some members of the Big Brother house have acted in a racist fashion to another of their number, you and I must hold our noses and jump into this foetid pool, the better to see what is going on under the surface.

We are told that over 20,000 people have complained to the regulator Ofcom about racist remarks allegedly made to a Bollywood actress called Shilpa Shetty. An unknown number of those complainants were particularly exercised by the fact that a Big Brother "housemate" called Jack Tweed had said that Ms Shetty was "a Paki." Since Ms Shetty is Indian, it would have been understandable if she was offended by that remark. Only it was never said. Channel 4, the transmitters of Big Brother, had bleeped out the word used by Mr Tweed. According to yesterday's Daily Telegraph: "Channel 4 was quick to clarify that Jack had referred to Shilpa as a ****, not a 'paki'." I hope that reassured the readers of The Daily Telegraph.

We are all indebted to the leading article in this week's edition of the New Statesman, which is marginally less coy. Jack, it advises its readers, used "the C-word" to describe Shilpa. The NS is troubled that "we are protected from C- and F- words, but racial abuse, clearly offensive to most viewers and even against the law is [apparently] OK." Well, given that the New Statesman can't bear to spell out "the C-Word" to its own readers, it can hardly blame a public service broadcaster such as Channel 4 for pressing the bleep button.

More to the point, Mr Tweed wasn't engaging in racial abuse. He was being a prick, which is - not yet - against the law. Technically, however, the New Statesman has a point. The Macpherson report defines a race hate crime as "any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person." So if "any other person" thinks that Mr Tweed was being racist when he described Ms Shetty as a "****", then the Hertfordshire police, which apparently covers the latest Big Brother house, should be going round there now and making arrests.

It is in fact Mr Tweed's girl-friend, Jade Goody (you see how much one can learn from reading serious newspapers?) who has attracted the greatest opprobrium from the sensitive viewers of Big Brother. But what did Ms Goody actually say to Shilpa Shetty? She said: "You need a day in the slums. Go to those people who look up to you and be real. You fucking fake."

That last bit, in its demotic way, is elegantly alliterative. I have no problem with it. As for the rest, Ms Goody seems to be referring to the fact that Shetty is a high-caste Indian who lives in a world far removed from the hundreds of millions of her followers. Fair comment, I would have thought.

Nevertheless, the row has spread to India, where Gordon Brown had just started to make a series of speeches about what "British values" could give to the world. If it wasn't for the fact that the inhabitants of the Big Brother house are cut off from all interaction with the outside world, I would have speculated that they had been induced to make these remarks by Mr Brown's enemies. A furious-looking Chancellor has lost the front page to Ms Goody and has spent the last couple of days telling various Indian ministers and reporters that "I want to reassure people that what British people are proud of is our reputation for tolerance and fairness."

What's clear is that this great British tolerance no longer extends to the notion of free speech. I find it sad that not a single politician who has spoken on this matter has dared to suggest that while Jade Goody and her pals are crude and abusive, freedom of speech extends to us all the right to be very rude. They are all so terrified of being labelled racist themselves that they will say or do anything to appease the thousands of timewasting couch potatoes who have rung up Ofcom because Jade's boyfriend called Shilpa a "****".

It's not just the politicians who have been fleeing for cover: Carphone Warehouse says that it will no longer be the programme's sponsor, while William Hill has prissily declared that "as far as we are concerned Jade does not deserve to win and we will not be accepting any bets on her." In the hard-nosed world of commerce, Jade Goody performs the role that paedophiles do in prisons: to make all their associates feel virtuous by comparison.

If there is anything genuinely disturbing in this melee, it is the big underlying fact: that Channel 4 has become best known as the broadcaster of Big Brother. It is after all, a public service, publicly owned broadcaster, and was set up as such, just like the BBC. Unlike the BBC, it is financially supported by advertising, and since 1998 it has received no subsidy of any sort; but Big Brother still seems a dreadful debasement of what was originally a high-minded and sophisticated broadcaster.

Channel 4 will be able to laugh off the criticism of the past week, however. Big Brother's viewing figures have gone up by about a million each day, as the furore over the conduct of Goody and Co has grown. The programme's owners, Endemol, will meanwhile be recalculating upwards the revenues they expect to get when they sell the latest series to Indian broadcasters. At the end of the line it's a great relief for Telefonica, the Spanish telecoms company which was thought to have paid far too much when it bought Endemol for €5.5bn a few years ago

It's true that a handful of Indians in Patna have, according to the BBC, "burnt an effigy of the programme's organisers, Endemol"--although I wonder how they managed likenesses of Joop van den Ende and John de Mol. The Indian mass media, however, have been much more sophisticated, and their measured response puts our own newspapers and politicians to shame. The Hindustan Times' editorial observed that "Shilpa Shetty went into this with her eyes wide open. A woman like her should have been able to give back as good as she got.'' The Indian Express argued that there was "no need for concerted national outrage... the TV programme in question is designed to bring out the worst in participants. It can be race, it can be class, it can be gender, it can be any marker, real or perceived."

Exactly so--and we can go further: Big Brother brings out the worst in those who watch it, too. One might say that it makes them behave like ****s.

d.lawson@independent.co.uk