It has been a week awash with apologies. We’ve had the contrite descendants of cannibals from Papua New Guinea saying sorry for eating your missionaries in the 19th century but they were delicious. (Okay, I made that last bit up.) Next were the offspring of rampaging Vikings embarrassed about their murderous past in Ireland — destroying monasteries and killing locals — more than 1,000 years ago. But there is one other ancient tribe that will roast a man’s reputation, if not eat him, that had a tough time saying sorry last week: I mean, of course, the BBC.

Its victim was John Redwood, the Tory MP, who was trying to present his new proposals for removing red tape in business, which would save about £14 billion of taxpayers’ money. A serious and important topic, you might think, but the bright sparks at the Beeb know better. To illustrate Redwood’s proposals, BBC television news bulletins carried highly embarrassing footage of Redwood mumbling his way through the Welsh national anthem when Welsh secretary in 1993.

The choice of this particular footage is significant. It wasn’t as if some poor editor at the Beeb thought: crikey, the only footage we have of Redwood is him mumbling, so we had better use that. No, this was a deliberate act of political sabotage. Every picture tells a story. The sub-text of the BBC item was obvious: weird man, weird ideas.

Helen Boaden, the BBC director of news, has admitted that it was a mistake to use the footage but has refused to apologise to Redwood.

You would have thought that at a time when the BBC is struggling to reestablish its credibility for honesty and impartiality, a full and public apology would be in order. It’s not as if the BBC hasn’t had a lot of practice of late. It had to do it for the Queen after a trailer of a forthcoming film misled the public, and it did it when it had to suspend telephone-related competitions after admitting that Children in Need, Comic Relief and Sport Relief had deceived viewers. But Redwood is just a Tory and thus fair game.

Is this just another case of BBC bias? Yes. But I suspect we have something more at work here. The choice of the Redwood footage is the work not just of some peeved anti-Tory leftie, but also a closet satirist. The Redwood item bears all the marks of someone who grew up on Spitting Image and dreams of going on Have I Got News for You. What we are dealing with is a wider cultural change within the BBC.

News programmes are full of current affairs nerds and swots who think they have a sense of humour. For them serious politics has become too unsexy and stuffy. In the old days real BBC newsmen and women wanted to be serious journalists like Richard Dimbleby or James Cameron; now they all want to be Armando Iannucci, Ali G and all the other political pranksters.

Vlad’s gone a bit Camp David

Vladimir Putin at 54 is a fine figure of a man — or at least he would like the world to think so. The new pictures of the Russian president strutting around the hills of Siberia with his torso on display raises in my mind only one thought: is he gay or a metrosexual dictator who think it’s cool to be a touch Camp David?

Anyway, seeing this middle-aged Chippendale strut his stuff makes you nostalgic for the days of flabby, booze-sodden Boris Yeltsin.

What I want to know is: do women find this sort of body in a middle-aged man sexy? I hope not. I don’t have love handles; I have a bouncy castle. But ladies, beware: never fall for a man who waxes his chest.

I admit there’s nothing more depressing for a middle-aged man to see than another middle-aged man in good physical shape. Heterosexual women, on the whole, prefer a chap with a bit of flab because they know the man with the six-pack is a man who spends too much time at the gym. More flab equals more fun.

So whom would you rather wake up next to: Jack Nicholson or Putin? The problem with Jack is he might crush you; the problem with Putin is he might send you off to a gulag the morning after.

Who’d want to get close to the real Elvis?

It’s hard to escape the fact that it was 30 years ago that Elvis Presley died. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Elvis as much as the next fruitcake. He certainly sang some great songs in his time, but his last words on earth leave much to be desired, especially when you compare them with some of the famous last words of historical figures.

I mean, Rabelais lay on his deathbed and said: “Bring down the curtain; the farce is played out.” Or consider the final words of Madame Roland who, during the French revolution, said: “O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!”

And Elvis? Well he just waddled over to the bathroom and said to his girlfriend: “Honey, I’m gonna go take a s***,” and he died on the loo.

But watching the legions of Elvis impersonators descending on Memphis it occurred to me that what we fans need is a real Elvis impersonator.

But then, I guess transforming yourself into a fat, racist gun freak and drug addict might be an impersonation too far.

- Of course everyone is happy for Angela Kelly, the 40-year-old mother who has become Britain’s biggest lottery winner with a prize of £35m — well, that’s what we keep saying through gritted teeth.

Still, I can’t help feeling that there’s a curious double standard operating here. Her win comes at a time when we have been more incensed about the growing inequalities of wealth in our society since the 1960s.

Funny, when some hard-working chap from the City gets a huge end-of-year bonus for making his company money and keeping the economy afloat, everyone complains about “fat cats” getting “obscene” amounts of money for doing absolutely nothing. But when a single mum Royal Mail worker from East Kilbride like Angela gets an obscene amount of money for doing nothing, then it’s a case of, “Good luck to you and enjoy your splash out!”

A curious myth has grown up that the British economy is driven by the creative industries — all our wonderful pop stars and fashion icons. In fact it’s those much despised fat cats who are doing the driving and not the Pete Dohertys and Kate Mosses of this world. He shoots up, she dresses up; talk about obscene money for doing nothing.

- Something strange is going on with those A-level exam results — and I don’t mean the usual concerns about them being too easy. No, what worries me are the Missing: the thousands of young men and women who have actually failed their A-levels.

In all the press photos and television coverage of pupils finding out their results, we’ve had nothing but pretty blondes and handsome young men acting as though they’d just scored for England. Where are the spotty, depressed failures? Critics of the exam system will say we never see them because nobody ever fails A-levels.

But there must be some — and if it’s harder to fail your A-levels than ever before, that’s some sort of achievement.

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