There may yet be a way for cancelled celebrities to come back, without resorting to eating badger gizzards on reality TV

Idea for a TV show. Cancelled celebrities compete against each other for the ultimate prize: public forgiveness. Hosted by a coterie of bitchy medieval priests, contestants run through a series of challenges: prayer, pilgrimage, fasting, prostrations, public flogging, tearful confessions, sackcloth and ashes, a spell in the stocks and walking naked through the streets to cries of “shame, shame”. Points to be allocated by the public according to how authentically humiliated and remorseful each contestant seems to be. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Redemption awaits – and only one sinner can triumph.

Not only would it be a ratings hit, banished celebrities would be falling over themselves to take part. We know this because recently they have taken to requesting their own baroque public punishments in the hope that they can worm their way back into public life. But, unlike the penalties once dished out by the church, it rarely works.