Powell is often castigated for racism - but his sitcoms employed ethnic minority actors in an age where there were not many genuine ethnic minority representations on screen. Powell himself cites his sitcoms as dramatised working-mens' club jokes, was friends with black performer Kenny Lynch and facilitated the careers of many black actors - despite the admittedly questionable scenarios they enacted.

The so-called 'politically correct brigade' was a complete bluff. 'The Young Ones' and 'Blackadder' contained no black actors whatever, despite their creators being lauded as in some way morally superior to Powell and (the more well-intentioned artistically) Johnny Speight. In fact one could well cite examples of remnant racist, public-school humour in 'Not the Nine o'clock News' and 'Who Dares Wins' - alleged vehicles for 'alternative' comedy.

One could go further and argue that writers such as Powell and of Powell's generation remained proletarian in their outlook. The 'alternative' vanguard, spearheaded by Richard Curtis, Ben Elton et al in the 1980s have gone on to exemplify the capitalist commercial media spirit Thatcherism encouraged - the attacks on Thatcher, ironically, being the very meat and drink of the act they peddled in the 1980s.

Further still, Ben Elton created a play based around the hits of the band 'Queen', a pop band who defied taste and decency - never mind perceived 'political correctness' - to play the rich-white-exclusive 'Sun City' resort in South Africa in the 1980s.

Powell has had no such links with racist tyranny. He is the victim of a virulent snobbery that cannot tolerate his non-Oxbridge writing credentials.