I have taken a fence.

I think Top Gear has set a fairly standard tone for itself over the past ten years or so that it has been on the air. No-one who watches it regularly will ever be particularly surprised by what they're doing on there - you expect the unexpected, and if you're a fan you're normally delighted. If you're not, you probably don't watch. A solid principle for much of television.

It's funny, though, that in an episode last week that contained insults towards the Germans, many derogatory references to Australians as part of the main feature and a joke about Richard Hammond's profound head injury, it was passing references to Mexicans that would really have any special attention paid to them. I don't know anyone who has even been to Mexico, and I don't think I've ever met a Mexican. The Top Gear comments could very well be true

The Mexican ambassador's feigned outrage was probably the first thing he's had to do in this country in the past seven years save for a keynote speech at an international tequila distributors' convention at Heathrow airport, and ample opportunity for the 'offending' words to be played over and over again on radio and television. I would far rather the man had admitted to being humiliated than offended.

In today's papers Steve Coogan weighed in - not a funny man, but a comedian nonetheless. A man who has made a lot of money out of getting people to laugh at him and others too. If him sticking his nose into the debate that's raging between third-rate commentators in second-rate newspapers isn't offensive, I don't know what is.

But Top Gear? It's benign Sunday evening entertainment - Bruce Forsyth, not Jonathan Ross.