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One of the odder news stories last week was that Rowan Atkinson has come out in support of the BBC over the sacking of Miriam O'Reilly.
O'Reilly won an age discrimination case last year, after she and three other women over 40 were sacked from Countryfile. It's odd enough that Atkinson is protesting about this now: has he been driving about in his McLaren for 13 months and only just caught up on the newspapers? God help him when he finds out about Egypt.
In fact, Atkinson heard a discussion about the sacking on Radio 4 and wrote in with his opinion. That's the second odd thing: as a famously shy and private type, why would he stick his head above the parapet here? It's a real old poisoned chalice, this debate, infused with all the zeitgeisty complications of discrimination and freedom; it seems an awfully thankless task for a well-loved comedy actor to volunteer a public opinion and risk upsetting, or at least disappointing, a large number of people who would never otherwise have wondered where he stood on the matter.
I admire him for it. Which is not to say I agree. Atkinson's argument is that it's extremely dangerous to handcuff or legally restrict the arts and entertainment industry (true) and that Miriam O'Reilly's case was an "attack on creative free expression" (massively over-simplified).
It could equally be argued that her case was a defence of creative free expression....