Gorman – AKA this paper’s setter Fed – responded playfully to his naysayers on Modern Life Is Goodish, inspiring a whole new audience to take up their pens

Each institution has its own way of dealing with complainants, particularly those whose protests are perhaps not entirely valid. Traditionally, a comedian deftly – sometimes remorselessly – responds to uncivil hecklers. By contrast, a news organisation falls over itself to confess blame: witness a crossword editor’s sackcloth and ashes whenever an aubergine is defined as a vegetable.

This is not the whole picture: standup Dave Gorman, who sets here as Fed, says the heckler as commonly understood is “a bit of a myth really”. Sometimes, a loose cannon at even the self-flagellating BBC will respond directly – I’m thinking of the early days of accountability blogging, when Eddie Mair replied to an entry in the broadcaster’s Listener Log: “You could try listening properly, you cloth-eared buffoon.”