So, "free speech" apparently means the ability to say what you want, no matter how racist, offensive, likely to incite hatred etc. it is, without impunity. As long as you're a well-paid TV daytime show host. And you're writing about Arabs. In the Sunday Express.

Yes, I'm going to have my two new pence worth about Kilroy who wants his show back despite quite probably abusing his position, never mind causing huge amounts of offence to what probably constitutes a fair proportion of his audience. How can he host the show again? What if the people he's just completelyt slagged off are due to be on the show as guests? How can they be sure he won't be biased against them?

I'm reminded of the sacking of Angus Deayton from Have I Got News For You, where the issue wasn't so much that fact that he'd slept with a prostitute, taken cocaine etc. (however you may feel about these things), but that, having done those things, it made him unable to present a show on which people in the public eye indulging in such behaviour were regularly targets for his or the scriptwriters') wit and sarcastic comments. Surely the same applies here: whatever Mr Kilroy-Silk may have intended by his comments, he has offended a large number of people (and probably not just Arabs either). How can he present a show where he may well have as guests people who will have felt included in his comments.

The whole "Free speech" argument doesn't wash. Yes, this is a free country and people are allowed to say and write what they think. And this is a good thing. We can't stop people saying things we don't want them to say, we have to be grown up and accept that people think differently from us and have the same right to express that view. And sometimes, these views will be considered offensive, racist etc. We cannot avoid these people and the best way is not to ban them but to show them up for what they are.

But Mr Kilroy-Silk is not just a man in the street expressing his ill-thought out comments in the letters page of a newspaper. He is a well-known, popular (and probably very good, although he's not my cup of tea) television presenter with a significant audience and, presumably, a significant influence. Now, I accept that most people are not sponges, they have the intelligence to think for themselves and not just accept it because some bloke off the tele said it. But if someone in the position he is in says these thinks, surely people are bound to see it as in some way legitimising their own views. There is a real danger that Mr Kilroy-Silk is inciting people to racism. He's not wholly responsible, and it doesn't excuse those who will use his comments as a pretect for their own actions.

If it wasn't what he meant to say, then he should write more clearly and read through what he's written before publishing - make sure it says what he wants it to. Surely even a column in the Sunday Express deserves that? If he stands by it, then I think he should either step down or the show should be axed.

For a more intelligent, less ranting point of view, see David Aaronovitch's column in the Guardian today.

Phew, didn't quite mean to start off that way - will be less ranting in the future...