At last – legislation is about to be passed which will make homophobic jokes illegal. It has been a long time coming. I haven’t found jokes about homosexuals funny for at least two decades, so either way I win.

First it means that Little Britain’s fabulously boring high-campery might be against the law, which will see David Walliams and Matt Lucas incarcerated for the rest of their natural lives, despite the fact that either one or both of them definitely bat for the other side, an irony which they can mull over while sewing those mailbags.

Retrospective legislation should ensure that the terminally unfunny Larry Grayson is disinterred and arraigned too, along with John Inman, the mincing half-wit Melvyn Hayes from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, Dick Emery, Stanley Baxter, Frankie Howerd, Julian Clary and, one hopes, Graham Norton as well.

Actually, I wonder if Graham really is a purveyor of homophobic humour. It’s a difficult call. It’s true that when he appears on television I suddenly hate homosexuals, just as when Ruby Wax is on TV I suddenly hate all Americans. However, the problem may reside with me rather than Graham, I suppose. Either way I think he should be banged up for safety’s sake. Oooh, missus! Banged up! Yes please! Etc, ad infinitum.

The other great thing is that jokes about homosexuals will immediately become funny again, because they are now contraband, samizdat and against the law. Those same boring old jokes about not bending down in the shower, being good at interior design, liking Judy Garland and so on, will now make one prick up one’s ears (ooh, get you, dearie! But not the ears, surely). And these days we need more things to laugh at.

For years I found racist jokes extremely boring – but they became funny when it was apparent that the act of telling them could (a) lose you your job and (b) bring the Old Bill down on you with a charge of inciting racial hatred. Now, as a consequence, I find almost all racist jokes hilarious, especially ones about Muslims and particularly if they are cartoons which feature Allah or Muhammad or fat ladies in burqas saying to one another: “Does my bomb look big in this?”

However, I don’t find them quite as funny as I find jokes about physical or mental disabilities – they are the real howlers these days. And that’s because the disability lobby has become so preternaturally sensitive, so disposed towards pouncing on anything which might be construed as disablist. Consequently, these days, all you have to do is say “and guess what . . . he only had one arm!” and I fall about laughing.

When my colleague Jeremy Clarkson described Gordon Brown as a “one-eyed Scottish idiot” I smiled briefly; but when the professional race monkeys and anti-disablist monkeys got on his case I suddenly found it all killingly funny. “How dare he imply that having one eye, or being Scottish, is an insult?” these terrible people ranted, and with every rant Jeremy’s comment became truly funny. Oh, I thought, in the end – strap up my sides, I can’t stand it. Such wonderful pomposity, a real gift to the comedian. Such hilarious hypersensitivity.

Jokes are almost never funny per se, when they are stripped of their social context (if they ever could be). The stuff that makes us laugh is never neutral; it involves poking that part of us which, for most of the time, remains unpoked. The part of us which civilised behaviour insists should remain below the surface. That’s why Ricky Gervais is so funny; he gets this point – he understands the latent humour of social embarrassment, of saying things which you are simply not supposed to say. The mentally handicapped kid in the restaurant, the black actor confronted by a golliwog.

It is the breaching of the social convention which is really funny, not the supposed slighting of black, disabled or homosexual people. It is the potential for naughtiness, which exists in all of us (yeah, okay, except maybe Patricia Hewitt). Bring on the legislation and bring on those queer jokes.

+ In the case of that admirable Nottingham postmaster, Deva Kumarasiri, who refuses to serve people unless they speak English, we have heard comment from almost everyone in the known universe, except, of course, from the Post Office. There was just a short and terrified sentence along the lines of “everyone should be served in a post office” and then total radio silence.

The Post Office is in an invidious position, strung between two poles of the most fatuous political correctness, and so all it can do is squirm. If only Kumarasiri were of white British origin, rather than Sri Lankan British origin, it could happily sack him, implying that he is racist. White people who think immigrants should learn English are racist, aren’t they? Kumarasiri also has a Union Jack hanging outside his house and outside his post office. Do you think he would be allowed to get away with that sort of imperialist, oppressive behaviour if he were white? Not a chance.

George gets the cold shoulder

“Gorgeous” George Galloway has been banned from visiting Canada, a terrible blow to both George and Canada. He has been deemed a threat to national security, a decision taken presumably when they saw him pretending to be a cat on Celebrity Big Brother and lapping milk from Rula Lenska’s saucer. In frozen Saskatchewan, the men are often driven to impersonating cats to gain romantic attention from the rather haughty, left-wing women. It is either that or stride off into the wilderness in search of an amenable moose. Needless to say, the Canadian government frowns upon such behaviour, which is why Galloway has been blackballed.

It all seems a bit rough on George. Perhaps we could respond by refusing to allow Celine Dion or Shania Twain into our country, on the grounds that they might similarly compromise national security? That would cheer everyone up.

It’s tough surviving in the lap of luxury

A terrifying ordeal for three young British tourists who got lost for two days in “dense Malaysian jungle” and “faced certain death” – until they remembered the advice of survivalist Ray Mears and at last made it to the coast. Rory Maddocks and his sister Chiara, with their friend Rachel Hodson, had been visiting the, uh, “remote” Seven Wells waterfall in Langkawi.

I suppose my three-year-old daughter and I should be similarly relieved as we were at Seven Wells a few weeks ago and got out by the skin of our teeth. Calling on our survivalist instincts, we took the cable car up . . . and the stairs down. The Maddocks and Hodson were, frighteningly, without food and water; perhaps they didn’t fancy the grilled lobster and sauvignon blanc at the lovely Mare Blu restaurant there or a snack from the local bakery. Next year – the Maddocks get lost on the Isle of Wight: read about their terrifying ordeal in your Daily Mail.

+ An atheist called John Huntis demanding that the Church of England “debaptise” him because he was accepted into the religion when too young to decide for himself. Age does not seem to have alleviated his state of confusion. If God does not exist then John’s initial baptism was utterly meaningless and there is, therefore, nothing to be undone. It would be the negation of a negation.

John is now 56, so he’s got another 20 years or so to get his head clear about all this stuff, before God dispatches him into the area set aside for muddled secularists – an eternal Ryanair departure lounge staffed by demons in the form of Richard Dawkins.

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