Even Christmas songs are now being banned

AND... they’re off. The countdown to Christmas has begun. Monday’s Today With Sean O’Rourke was already offering advice, more than three weeks in advance of the big day, on preparing Christmas dinner, including a recipe for — get a load of this — poached pears in red wine with flaked almonds, pomegranate seeds and mint leaves. Now that’s what you call middle class one-upmanship.

A few days later, presumably for the sake of balance, a dietitian was in the studio to proffer advice on how to avoid over-indulgence during the holiday season. This “push me, pull me” routine is now as traditional as mince pies. First, stoke the festive hullabaloo, then tut tut over it.

Last Tuesday, Paddy O’Gorman went to meet some of those getting the social welfare Christmas bonus, fully restored for the first time in a decade. He found them in a queue outside a post office in Mullingar, because, as he pointed out, those getting the dole paid directly into their bank accNoiguenllt as La ar wes noon uH sieciteo nd hai merci am whatsoever.Wd he as tr ku emep rs em O’iG no e rs mt, ail nm’ so di a techniques of q re us ahtu ir sat uh tatf uh ge itdao te us rn’ ntkjkul st seek out the usual suspects; he likes finding people with less predictable opinions, such as the woman in her 50s who, after years working around the world, welcomed her Christmas bonus with the words: “We’re so, so lucky here in Ireland... I’m truly grateful and thankful for the system that we have.”

It will have triggered political dyspepsia in many listeners, more used to the language of complaint, but O’Gorman’s gift is letting people talk on their own terms.

Today FM’s Last Word had its sights on a different form of festive controversy — namely, whether the song Baby, It’s Cold Outside, written in 1944, should be banned from the airwaves for being “problematic” in the current #MeToo climate, because “the lyrics are a bit too manipulative”. Christmas FM has also opted not to play the song for the second year running.

It is a “bit predatory”, one of Matt Cooper’s guests noted; but surely what’s more interesting is the increasing inability to put such perhaps outdated material into perspective. Next day, it was Fairytale Of New York in the firing line for its use of the offensive word “faggot”. The controversy, noted journalist Larissa Nolan on the same show, was “ludicrous and misguided”.

As she rightly put it: “Remove context from things and nothing makes sense.”

No one’s arguing that the offending word is not provocative. That’s the point. Shane MacGown's song is about two junkies hurling abuse at one another. The man in the song also calls his lover "an old slut on junk, a line which seems to have bypassed the offence police - for this year at least.

BBC Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour, for its part, deserves credit for devoting so much time lately to the thorny issue of how far women should be asked to accommodate transgender people who self-identify as women despite being biologically male. It’s taken a while for the show to tackle this subject head on. Now the conversation has started, all voices must be heard, however angry it makes the politically correct, who prefer to shout rather than listen.