This is an urgent appeal: if any readers are in possession of a spare sense of humour, please send it to Glasgow, because it appears numerous Rangers supporters have lost theirs. There is no time to waste. The situation is critical. It is a code red.

This refers, of course, to the news that Falkirk have been moved to apologise to Rangers and suspend their PA announcer after he had a mild dig at the Glasgow club's current bedraggled state and called them "Sevco Franchise" when reading out the football scores over the Tannoy, Sevco being the name of a company used in the purchase of the business and assets of Rangers in the summer after the club was consigned to liquidation.

So far, so very harmless. Or so you would think. Instead, Rangers fans collectively channelled their inner Helen Lovejoy and found the time to make complaints to Falkirk, who promptly suspended the offender and then launched an investigation. Which begs the question: an investigation into what exactly? As far as can be made out, a bored employee did an ill-advised football joke about a football team. What are they looking into? His motives? Who he is really working for?

For once, The Man gets a free pass here, even if this is another blow for the Ban-tocracy Movement. In the current climate of working yourself up into a hot tizz over absolutely nothing, fans of certain clubs seem to be losing perspective at an alarming rate, to the extent where you cannot even make a classic liquidation-based gag without being hauled over the coals. There comes a point where it is not a football club, it is a cult. That is rarely a good look.

Though perhaps the debate is not whether football has broken its funny metatarsal, or whether it ever had one in the first place. This sort of thing has been going on for years, like the time Norwich City had to act all contrite because some eedjit flashed a message up on the scoreboard that read "Manchester United 1-0 Scum", Ipswich Town uneasily playing the role of "Scum".

The skill is to know your audience and pick your moment, which is what West Ham's pitch announcer Jeremy Nicholas singularly failed to do after an FA Cup quarter-final against Tottenham Hotspur in 2001. It was the year that Fabien Barthez had tried his taxi trick on Paolo Di Canio and West Ham felt their name was on the cup. Instead they were beaten 3-2 by their neighbours, but there was one final indignity for West Ham's supporters to endure as they filed out of the ground. "Good luck to Tottenham in the next round!" parped Nicholas, hopelessly misjudging the mood. Now that really was something to get annoyed about.