WHEN talk show guests lock horns, there is a rising curve of hostility; at first, the host’s job is to let it happen and not flap. On Midweek we don’t engineer rows, but if they happen, there is no point being a control freak. These are adults, I am not their nanny. They have a right to disagree or take umbrage. Usually the curve smooths off by itself. Yesterday it didn’t.

I should stress that before the programme Joan Rivers and Jackie Collins were both positively looking forward to meeting Darcus Howe. No confrontation was planned: one is not Jerry Springer.

But Darcus has lived for activism and polemic. In an angry moment in his TV film he says: “I’ve felt persecuted from day one by everyone who isn’t black.” On Midweek he expressed the difficulty of marriage to a white woman by saying “in the weight of the sad time of race . . . you hear your wife say something and you think, why don’t you go and join the BNP?”

Joan Rivers didn’t like that; she observed that she was bored with race and wished everyone would “take the best of their bad cultures and move forward”.

After an exchange about American racism the temperature momentarily eased. Jackie Collins and I exchanged relieved glances. Then a gibe by Darcus — “since black offends Joan” — provoked Joan Rivers to real rage.

And it was real, not a stunt: next to me this slight, septuagenarian trouper from Brooklyn shook with genuine fury at feeling she was being branded racist. I invited Darcus to say that she was not: at first he wouldn’t. After a fusillade of “how dare you!’ and “sonofabitch!”, he did. They both said they hadn’t come here to be insulted.

I managed not to mutter, “Where do you usually go?”, and with the desperate nimbleness of the scarred radio pro, said “Now let’s talk about plant photography. . .”

I warmly recommend the tranquillising properties of this line. We spent the next five minutes sedately discussing leaves. That’s the British way.

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