I seem to remember some humourless sheep shagger, a compatriot of my fiercely Nationalist daughter, threatening to report me to the Old Bill after I made some satirical remarks about his homeland. I guess he was too busy dreaming about burning down someones second home to actually get around to it.
Okay my jokes might not have been to everyone's taste but that is the point of comedy - you are allowed to say things which not everyone finds funny.
Move forward a few years and the columnist Rod Liddle delighted readers of the Sunday Times this weekend with a short piece on the Severn Bridge to Wales saying it was "linking their rain-sodden valleys with the First World"
Cue outrage. Hundreds of Welsh citizens said they were offended and duly reported Liddle for a hate crime. Arfon Jones, the Police Commissioner for North Wales, said he received many complaints and Liddle is now being investigated.
Do folks in the welfare addicted backwater have nothing better to do with their time? Probably not. But the Police surely do. Barely a day goes by without some officer taking time off from attending diversity awareness courses or painting his or her nails blue to show how they disapprove of slavery (don't we all?) to take to the airwaves to moan about how under-resourced they are to deal with real crimes.
The response to such moaning should be "Rod Liddle.. now fuck off and tackle some real crimes"