It's Richard Madeley Gone Mad

So, this week a new series of Richard and Judy's show, Richard & Judy, has started on Channel 4. (Yes, I'm at home in the daytime.) Now, Richard Madeley is an opinionated man. There's not many an issue that he doesn't havean ill-thought-out position on. Today he's successfully masking this by bringing on guests with even dafter views than him, but often he gets quite angry about the many injustices he percieves in the world around him; an interesting tack for a man who was happy in his programme to fleece his viewers in rip-off £1-a-go phone competitions up until the time they were shown to actually be fraudulently conducted.

In this new series, he has launched a war on "the twin nightmares of political correctness and 'elf and safety." Presumably, Madeley envisages a future utopia in which all mankind lives in harmony together, confined to their hospital beds following workplace accidents, hurling racist epithets across the wards. In any case, it's unclear at this early stage exactly what form this righteous crusade will take. But I would suppose it's safe to imagine that it will consist of a large amount of pointless sniping at individual stories about the crazy decisions of local councils, and very little in the way of constructive suggestions to in any way alleviate this terrible scourge beating its evil path across the nation, leaving only ruin and misery in its wake. Poltical correctness is very easy to poke fun at, but it seems a very stupid target for a full television assault, seeing as it's almost always harmless (his pet examples include a council who replaced a parkful of benches because they were three inches to high or too low or something, and an old school building where they leave the lights on at night so that trespassers don't injure themselves) and it at least springs from good impulses - who doesn't want everyone to be treated equally and for us all to get along?

Anyway, I suggest that we hereby start a War On Richard Madeley's War On Political Correctness. There'll be no objectives or structure to this campaign; it will consist solely of pointing and laughing at Richard Madeley. If you agree, well then there's no need to do anything. Just be sure to point and laugh at Richard Madeley.