The BBC News website reports reports that there have been 500 complaints about “provocative” comments made in Top Gear over the last series. Quite rightly, many of them have been rejected as being part of the programme’s humour and style – Jeremy Clarkson has made a career out of hyperbole.

Those people who don’t get it… well, it was spelled out in a recent Sunday Times article where the journalist spent the day with the Top Gear team and Clarkson remarked that he was determined to “beat Ross” after the comments about Thatcher… and even the Poles get it – a recent Guardian supplement on Poles in Britain noted that Clarkson is currently Warsaw’s favourite author, and that Polish women don’t consider him offensive, since the jokes are jokes, made in good humour.

Round of applause for the BBC on this one!