Graham Norton's entries for the "Most pathetic excuse of the year" competition

It's perfectly legitimate for a newspaper or magazine to mainly come at politics or culture from a particular perspective - everyone will know where that publication stands and nobody has to buy it. 

Though it is worth qualifying that by adding that the best and most successful even of the most partisan of publications make a point of including a few columnists who take the opposite point of view. You will find the occasional centre-right article in the Guardian and the Independent, and more than occasional left-wing articles in the Telegraph or the Spectator.

A national broadcaster funded by what amounts to a tax that everyone has to pay - like the BBC - is in a totally different position. It has a moral duty (and, as I understand it, a legal responsibility too) to ensure that every significant and legitimate viewpoint is represented and covered in its output.

Much of the time the BBC can clearly be seen to be making an effort to represent all views. The classic example would be the Brexit referendum, during which it was obvious to 99% of the population that the gut instincts of the overwhelming majority of BBC journalists and editors were pro-Remain (and I write that as someone who voted Remain myself) but they were trying so hard to be impartial in their coverage of the pro-and-anti Brexit debate that the other 1%, the likes of Lord Adonis and Emily Maitlis, accuse them of overdoing it and leaning the other way.

 Maitlis made an interesting point in her recent lecture about the challenges involved - how do you report on a debate when the vast majority of some community or group lean one way but there are figures on each side, as for example on the views of Economists about Brexit, on which the vast majority of Economists were Remain and they had great trouble finding a pro-leave economist and usually ended up with Professor Patrick Minford.

But surely the right thing to do was what the BBC almost always actually did: put up both one of the many pro-remain economists, and Minford, and make clear in the commentary that the former represented the views of most, but not quite all, of the profession.

One person who cannot be accused of bending over too far to represent the other point of view is the comedian Graham Norton, who has come out this week with two of the most pathetic excuses I have ever heard. 

Specifically, I refer to his excuses for the absence of "right-wing" voices on his BBC show - a term he appears to use in a very lazy way to mean anyone he disagrees with, because he mentions J.K. Rowling in this context. This is presumably because of her views on transgender issues which are actually shared by quite a few people on the feminist left and are not by any means shared by everyone on the right. On most issues Joanne Rowling describes herself, accurately, as left of centre and I don't mean that as a criticism, just a statement of fact.

Norton told the Sunday Times that cancel culture makes it “hard to find Right-wing guests” to come on his BBC talk show, and even when he finds one, “the audience probably don’t want to see them”.

Oh, pull the other one, it's got bells on.

There are plenty of people with centre-right or right-wing views - you only have to look at the results of the last four general elections to appreciate that those who could broadly describe as being on the "woke left" are nowhere near to being a majority of the population.

And there do exist modern comedians who are popular despite not fitting the stereotype of a "left-wing" comedian (Simon Evans, Andrew Lawrence) or actively rejecting it (Geoff Norcott.)

Of course, the best comedians take the mickey out of people on all sides of the political spectrum. If you're not doing that, both you and your audience are losing out.

Graham Norton's comments are reported and analysed on "The Daily Sceptic" website here.