LET'S all laugh at the lunatics. Or we could just watch Ali G. Or Dom Joly. Or just about any TV reality show. It's all to do with laughing at victims, at people who aren't in on the joke. And Victoria Wood has described it as "horrible". "It's all got to be done by duping and it's like laughing at lunatics," she says in this week's Radio Times.

She's right. But isn't it odd that we have this massive awareness of bullying - whether it's children in school and their brave little wristbands or harassment in offices where people seem to be able to sue for the slightest injury and hurt feeling - while the rest of the time, we're downright nasty and think it's funny?

A nurse was recently disciplined for laughing when she couldn't remember an Indian name and said it was "something like Mrs Poppadum". Yet when Big Brother contestant Jade Goody was mocked, derided, insulted, referred to as a pig across many of the national newspapers, no-one batted an eyelid. No-one sent the editor of The Sun on a retraining course in political correctness and sensitivity.

Was this because Jade wasn't very bright? Did that make it alright? And how does that make it any better than strolling down to Bedlam and having a good old guffaw at the antics of the inmates? Much nastier was the thought that, of course, that was why she'd been chosen to go on the show in the first place. So much reality television involves mocking people - for their brains, or lack of them; for their taste, their attitudes. Programme makers set them up, knowing that we at home will sit there laughing at their expense. It's cheap and easy television, requiring only a sadistic producer and a steady supply of the dim and gullible whose only crime is the sad little ambition to be famous.

And we are part of it. Because we watch and we laugh.

Though actually, I could never watch Ali G because I couldn't bear to see his victims struggling to be polite to such an idiot. But then I don't like practical jokes either - dread April Fool's Day - so that puts me nicely out of step with the times. But not with Victoria Wood.

"There are so many good writers and good performers, it's a shame people can't just write a script and have other people learn it," she says.

And, of course, when she does a stand up routine and laughs at anyone, it's usually at herself. We laugh with her, not at her. It's very funny - and a reassuringly long way from Bedlam.

EDUCATION Secretary Ruth Kelly has promised a zero tolerance approach to low level disruption in schools. In this category, she includes problems such as students using their mobile phones in the classroom.

To those of us who were barely allowed to breathe in our classrooms and who could be punished for using the wrong sort of pen or just for looking out of the window, the image of a classroom where children are able to conduct telephone conversations in the middle of lessons is all a bit mind boggling. More so, somehow, than the horror stories of drugs and knives and large scale anarchy. There will always be the uncontrollable rebels, hard to control in any age.

But the mobile phone problem seems to smack of ordinary - probably quite decent - children being allowed to do as they like, which is always where the trouble starts.

Many schools ban mobiles on their premises. To enforce that takes a confident school with the support of parents. But it's a start. And as more and more teachers leave the profession because they spend more time on crowd control than teaching, a phone-free classroom seems the least they deserve.

WONDERFUL pictures of Iraqis emerging from the polling booths, raising a triumphant, purple-inked finger to show that they've voted. Of course, the election wasn't perfect but it's still a triumph.

And gives a whole new meaning to the phrase of giving the finger to terrorism.

YES, it was pretty brave of former Culture Secretary Chris Smith to admit that he has been HIV positive for 17 years. It might have been even braver if he'd done so years ago - such as when he has part of the Government.

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