The Lifeboat News: How sympathetically the BBC and ITV treated the falsely accused Paul Gambaccini.

However, four years later, with another falsely accused man, the demeanour of the BBC and ITV hosts was anything but sympathetic.

At the 7:02 mark of this ITV horror show, as her grim-faced offsider Philip Schofield ruffles through his papers, Holly Willoughby says to her unfailingly polite sacrificial victim: "Ehmm, we should discuss anti-semitism within your party, um, you have come out and sort of apologized on this, it seems that this sort of has been the hardest word for you to say....."

Not content with being accused, sans evidence, by lightweights, Mr Corbyn obligingly presents himself for evisceration at the hands of the Grand Inquisitor of Great Britain, who intones with all the mock gravitas he can muster: "Wouldn't you like to take this opportunity, tonight, to apologize to the British Jewish community..."

QUESTION: Did some advisor/tactical guru advise Jeremy Corbyn to never get angry, to never react to these dull but unceasingly nasty apparatchiks, with their fantastic accusations and incendiary phrases like "Palestinian terrorists"? Who did they imagine would respect Corbyn for this rigid strategy of passivity?