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Much has been debated over George Hook’s sacking (that’s what it effectively is) by Newstalk over his blundering observation that a rape victim may have contributed to to her own assault.

In the furore which continues a week and a half after he clumsily used words for which he later humbly apologised, apparently quite sincerely, the right to freedom of speech has been severely tested.

For the record, I don’t know George Hook, but I can’t stand him on radio or television.

That makes me no different to thousands of people who form opinions about public performers they have never met and know nothing about their behaviour in privacy.

Hook may be an angel in his house, the most entertaining company in the pub, but that’s irrelevant to punters who only know him from public performances.

He has fans, there’s no doubt of that from his survival on radio and tv over the years.

But I’m not one. For one thing I can’t stand his voice. More importantly, I can’t stand that he is deliberately controversial for the sake of it. His provocation irritates me.

Hook is the kind of person who I believe would deliberately argue black was white if it made him a celebrity.

I had one really excellent way of keeping him out of my life. In a split second I could twiddle the channel-change knob and I was no longer listening to George Hook.

Everybody in Ireland had the same facility. If you didn’t like what they guy was saying, simply switch over!

It’s why I didn’t hear him apportion some blame to the rapist’s victim and why I didn’t hear him apologise later.

So I rely on what other people reported on the developments.

(Image: Seb Daly / SPORTSFILE)

From what I gather, Hook in his blunderbuss manner, suggested that the blame might partially lie with the 19-year-old girl, who went to a stranger's bedroom for consensual sex, and then was raped by his pal.

In his truly remorseful apology, Hook acknowledged a grave offence and a failure to put across in the correct words what he meant to say.

You know, I kind of understand what he was about.

I have daughters and grand-daughters. They live in the real world, a world that has much good but also a lot of evil. I hope they live on the good side, and have the care, if evil lurks, to know when it threatens and to make their best efforts to evade it or at least limit as much as they can the prospects of it invading their space.

I think Hook meant to say something similar, but in his inevitable provocative manner he mucked up his words and appeared to place some of the blame for the rape on the victim.

Public fury directed towards Hook was understandable. Even the digging that went into his chauvinistic offences of the past was understandable.

What I fail to understand is the intolerance, following his expressed deep remorse, which has continued. It’s not just in the looney Left which loves to jump on any bandwagon lashing an established media figure. It has come from several respectable organisations, including the National Women’s Council of Ireland and some of Hook’s own work colleagues.

Newstalk management suspended him – as suspense, as I said earlier, that I feel will be permanent – but does anybody really believe they did it from a lofty position of moral integrity.

You can bet your life they didn’t. Blatant commercialism forced the decision when Dalata Hotels pulled its sponsorship from the Hook programme and Tesco said they were withdrawing their adverts.

What effectively has been happening is an old man has been suspended from his job, and probably lost it, and has been silenced.

Not even our colleague Kitty Holland, who was abhorred by what Hook said, agrees with this. She has argued in the Irish Times that views like Hook’s must be challenged and changed. Simply silencing them will not give our daughters a safe, free world.

Nobody likes what Hook said about rape, not even he when he reviewed his words.

Silence is not the answer, especially in a nation where the fight for freedom included the right to have free speech.hat makes me no different to thousands of people who form opinions about public performers they have never met and know nothing about their behaviour in privacy.