As an ex-standup, then I say a lot of it is just pure shock tactics. The easiest thing to do is throw something outrageous in there to get a gasp or a laugh of shock instead of a good line and claim it is there to provoke thought. Now someone like Richard Herring is clearly doing it for effect. So is Jim Jeffries, who goes so far over the top then you can’t mistake it for reality. Some standups make a career out of it – hellooooo Sarah Silverman – because they’ve got fuck all else to say.

However, I cannot shake the feeling that the likes of Gervais, to an extent Jimmy Carr and definitely the last series of Little Britain have an undercurrent of nasty superiority and bullying.

A couple of years ago it seemed like “chavs” had become the new “Pakis”. You couldn’t be racist or sexist, but those beneath your social class were fair game.

The brilliant thing, often repeated, about Alf Garnett was that the bigot always got his comeuppence in the end. Where the racist says something racist and ends up on the losing side, then it shows that racism is the wrong thing to do.

With Gervais especially, he pretty much never loses. No matter what he says, whether in The Office, Extras or in his live show, he never comes off at the wrong end. The lesson is that belittling others wins.

And I really don’t like that.