Stocks would of course be a very popular, appropriate and effective solution for the “Just Stop Oil” protestors, who are happy to inconvenience ordinary people and damage communal property? Pass the tomatoes please ….

I was thinking of John Profumo, publically humiliated for foolish conduct with a woman not his wife. He resigned, disappeared into private life, his name only to emerge again decades later having been honoured by the Queen after years of humble, quiet service to the poor and disadvantaged of East London.
What a contrast with Hancock’s shameless conduct in taking huge amounts of cash to trash himself for public delectation while promoting his ‘book’. Oh and Profumo didn’t help wreck the economy or sentence thousands to death in a vain and destructive attempt to ‘save the NHS’. I despair that any section of the British people should reward this narcissist with its attention.

Didn’t watch the programme, too moronic, sadistic and cruel. The same can’t be said of the stocks, if properly supervised (squashed tomatoes, for example, should first be removed from their tins). There’s much to be commended in a spectacle which provides public humiliation for transgressors while serving as a harmless outlet for righteous public anger. Delighted to hear they’re still an option – will be writing to my parish council.

Could we ritually put his head on a pike instead?

“In his 1975 book Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault pointed out that ‘we are now far away from the country of tortures, dotted with wheels, gibbets, gallows, pillorie”
The same Foucault who allegedly sexually abused prepubescent boys in a Tunisian graveyard in 1968?

I watched the show, as I do every year because it does provide interesting insights into the human condition.

This year was special, as we saw convicted criminal celebrities (yes, plural) in the jungle castigate a man for doing his job, with no sign of any self awareness of their hypocrisy. They actually treated him at the start as if he was some kind of leper – real ‘never kissed a Tory’ types, and proud of their political bigotry. It was some time before these supposedly intelligent luvvies realised that Hancock is a human being, flaws and all.

The conversations revealed that they didn’t even understand how a politician operates in cabinet government, with their views informed and guided by civil service or special advisers who are ‘experts’. I was pleased he beat the sanctimonious narrow minded bullies in the jungle voting – much better than how the Tories will do at the next election.