What is so grotesque is that Miss Hunt evidently thinks she has behaved in a perfectly reasonable way. Miss Thatcher had failed to recant in a manner acceptable to the BBC, which is, apparently, the self-appointed arbiter of what is appropriate behaviour. If the Jonathan Ross affair confirmed how out of touch its executives have become from most viewers, this affair has exposed a McCarthyite world of denunciation and arbitrary punishment of those who do not hold an approved opinion. No doubt Miss Hunt and her colleagues regarded her interview as a triumphant exposition of the progressive creed. To many of us it was downright sinister.