Imagine the cosy domestic scene. You're at home watching a nice television programme with your young child when up on the screen pops a presenter with only one hand. Do you: a) think nothing of it, or b) hurl yourself across the room, shrieking “Close you eyes, darling - look away!”, then phone the BBC to complain that you don't pay your licence fee to watch a freak show, thanks very much?

As we are living in the age of the mad parent, it's probably not very surprising that when they saw Cerrie Burnell, a new presenter on the CBeebies channel whose lower right arm is missing, a fair few plumped for option b). Or at least they logged on to the CBeebies parents' forum to register their concern that the sight of a one-armed woman could frighten their delicate progeny.

This isn't a joke. One father wrote that he didn't want his daughter to watch any more, lest it gave her nightmares. Another said: “Is it just me, or does anyone else think the new woman presenter on CBeebies may scare the kids because of her disability?” Yet another was more to the point: “How do you explain to a three-year-old child why one of the presenters has half an arm?”

Others simply sneered that this is the BBC wallowing in political correctness while others tried - and failed - to sound tolerant. “I don't mean to make people feel uncomfortable, but why does she have to have the sleeve pulled so high up?” wrote a kindly soul. “She didn't have to hide the arm but I think she should pull her sleeve down a bit more.”

It is not yet known whether any of these correspondents has a penchant for wearing jackboots.

You could log on and read more of these missives yourself, were it not for the fact that many of them became so obnoxious that the moderator took them down. The BBC, which hailed Burnell as a “warm and natural” presenter (most viewers, it must be said, overwhelmingly support her), confirms that it has received nine formal complaints about her disability. Presumably the dog dirt will be following in the post any time soon.

Isn't this all just delightful? My daughter noticed this presenter recently while flicking through the channels, asked why she had no hand, then accepted it and moved on, as children do. Very few postings mention that a child has actually become frightened - more that the parent fears that they might be. So is it the kids who are offended by the idea of an abnormal limb, or the adults?

God help the children spawned by people so warped in their overprotectiveness that they raise them under the misapprehension that this is Boden World, where everyone has regulation Ken-and-Barbie features and eats organic couscous. How will they cope at school? Will they faint at an unsightly snotty nose, or run for cover when they encounter a teacher who has forgotten to touch up her roots?

Perhaps we should be thankful that these people weren't parents years ago when the tabloids dropped the bombshell that Rod, Jane and Freddy, the singer-presenters from Rainbow, were involved in a bizarre love triangle, or the website would have imploded. (For the record, Jane was married to Rod but then they got divorced and she later took up with Freddy. It was all above board, but that doesn't stop the headline “Love Swap Secrets of Bungle's TV Stars” remaining one of my all-time favourites.)

I am not even convinced that these parents' main motivation is to shield their children. I wonder whether many of them merely want an excuse to sit at their computers all day, wittering on about complete and utter rubbish.

Reading the CBeebies parents' discussion board this week for the first time in my life (it is called “Grown-Up Chat” but I couldn't find much of it), it becomes apparent that a lot of adults are capable of getting very worked up about the most piffling of matters. One endless thread, for instance, bemoans the fact that two CBeebies presenters, Chris and Pui, have been replaced. Yes. That's it. But you'd think the BBC had killed chuffing Christmas.

“Bring back Chris and Pui - I miss them!!!!!” plead post after post, in the style of a lovesick teenager. Some beg them to return and do “one final song”. Others suggest that the BBC has been irresponsible in not letting the children “say goodbye”, and compare it to the psychological damage done to teenagers when Take That split. (Er, hello) One mother writes: “Doesn't it send a dangerous role-model message to children that it's OK to disappear without a trace and without telling anyone where you are going?”

Ye gods, is this what stay-at-home parenting does to you? Do you really start to equate a slight reshuffle in a kids' TV presenting line-up with real child-safety issues? Indeed, do you regress so much that you start to get actual crushes on CBeebies presenters?

I am not being sneery about forums such as Mumsnet and I don't underestimate what a brilliant lifeline they are. But - honestly - have you seen some of the threads on these sites? Some people will spend weeks debating how to get hold of one dolls' house accessory. They will make a crisis over every piffling domestic decision.

Working mothers, the whipping-boys of the modern era, carry huge burdens of guilt and continually envy the extra time that non-working mothers have to spend with their children. But to judge from some of these online conversations, quite a few stay-at-home parents spend less time on the floor with the kids and more on the internet, fretting over non-existent catastrophes.

A children's presenter with half an arm is manna from heaven to a bored parent who wants to start an internet ruckus and kill a couple of hours. Well, it beats talking about scented nappy-sacks.

No, if I was Cerrie Burnell I wouldn't take this week's “controversy” too personally. Instead, I'd take the view that it says less about Britain's intolerance and more about a handful of bored adults who need to get a life.

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