'Yes, rape is always a crime; how much of one depends on the context. On that, I am firmly in the Judy Finnigan camp'

Let me be clear: I have no wish to defend former Sheffield United footballer Ched Evans, who was jailed for five years in 2012 for raping a 19-year-old girl at a hotel near Rhyl.

Evans, whose imminent release has prompted controversy, sounds like a sordid individual who took advantage of a woman after a friend and fellow footballer had slept with her.

I’m glad he’s in prison and I’m sure Judy Finnigan takes the same view. But that didn’t stop her from trying to introduce some nuance into the debate by arguing that the footballer should be allowed to return to his club because his victim was ‘drunk’ and the rape was ‘unpleasant’, but ‘not violent’.

Cue a public lynching by Twitter, the 21st century equivalent of the medieval mob, whose users love nothing more than to take snippets and half-understood pieces of information, whip themselves into a self-righteous frenzy and then hurl abuse at their victim, without stopping to think or listen.

In the face of a torrent of loathing, Judy was forced into the inevitable ‘unreserved apology’ for the ‘offence’ she had caused.

I don’t blame her. I’ve had a few monsterings from this lot myself and for a group of people purporting to abhor violence against women, they can be shockingly unsisterly.

In particular, when it comes to the subject of rape, they are intolerant of any view but their own.

They see no difference between a cold, predatory rapist and an evening of drunken debauchery between adults that goes badly wrong. To them, the man is always depraved and evil. Because rape is rape — and the circumstances are irrelevant.

Yes, rape is always a crime; how much of one depends on the context. On that, I am firmly in the Judy Finnigan camp.

Rape, like all wrongdoing, has many shades of grey. It’s like committing violence: there is actual bodily harm and there is grievous bodily harm. There is manslaughter and there is murder. All have different jail sentences.

The Twitter mob don’t like such nuance. They argue that if there is even the hint of an extenuating circumstance surrounding a rape, victims will not come forward for fear of being blamed.

That is nonsense. We’re not living in the Sixties where some men considered a miniskirt an invitation to assault and where society shunned and punished women who were attacked.

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Attacker: Ched Evans was convicted of rape and received a five-year jail sentence in 2012

The fact is that there is a world of difference between a stranger who through the use of violence actively sets out to defile and humiliate a woman and one who oversteps the mark in an already intimate situation.

Both are wrong. But one is more wrong than the other. The punishment should reflect that. And it insults genuine feminists to pretend otherwise.

Women need to accept ownership of their behaviour. Assaulting someone while they are drunk is a vile act of cowardice. But it is also incumbent on my sex not to put themselves in such a position when heavily inebriated.

That is not to say that if something awful does happen, they are to blame; but that they have a responsibility to look after themselves.

And that means not getting so blotto that they can’t even remember what happened — the all too familiar refrain in so many failed rape prosecutions.

If I go to a nightclub, get drunk and invite a man home, I should hardly be surprised if he tries it on.

I can still change my mind, of course, but if it then all goes horribly wrong I would be hard pushed to argue I was wholly the innocent party. A knife- wielding maniac breaking into my bedroom, however, is totally different.

Trouble is, the zealots don’t do context. Especially not on Twitter, where every thought has to be compressed into fewer than 140 characters.

Only a deliberately obtuse person would think Judy Finnigan was trying to defend rape. She was simply trying to have a reasonable conversation about a serious and complex subject.

Little did she imagine that such balanced thinking would see her branded a witch. And I’m sorry that she felt the need to all but apologise. But that’s modern Britain for you.

First Lady next, Amal?

Strange that a lawyer as brilliant as Amal Alamuddin (aka the new Mrs Clooney) should have chosen to take her husband’s name.

Most women I know with pre-marital careers (myself included) keep their birth name at work for practical reasons as much as anything else.

Would it be too cynical to suggest that, given her husband’s political ambitions — some are talking of him as a future U.S. President — Alamuddin might have been deemed to be too exotic for Midwest American electors?

Or it is simply the case that having bagged the century’s most eligible bachelor, she simply wants everyone to know.

The Office of National Statistics reports that women’s life expectancy is falling in relation to men’s — because of workplace stress.

I can’t say I’m surprised: feminism has earned us a place at the table, but it has as yet failed to solve the conundrum of how to combine work and family without either one suffering.

As far as I can see, there’s only one sensible solution. This whole sexual equality thing should be taken to its logical conclusion: we women should get ourselves a . . . wife.

I prefer pop stars spicy not raunchy

If it weren’t for former Spice Girl Mel B, this series of The X Factor would be unwatchable.

Her abrasive persona cheers up proceedings no end. At 39, she’s the pop equivalent of Lady Grantham: a wise old head with an acerbic tongue.

This week, her fellow former Spice Girl Mel C (left) lashed out at Rihanna, saying that she would never let her daughter watch the singer’s videos as they are too overtly sexual.

‘Vulgar and narcissistic’ were her words, and she’s spot on.

The Spice Girls were sex symbols in their day, but always far more sauce than raunch.

But all that has gone: sadly, today’s female pop stars are little more than musical porn stars.

These days it’s a brave man or woman who admits to having a drink during daylight hours.

For a politician, it’s especially foolish — unless, of course, you happen to be Boris Johnson, who told this week’s Radio Times: ‘I can drink an awful lot at lunchtime.’

This idea of the midday boozer chimes well with Boris’s public persona. Nigel Farage, too, likes to promote an image of a man who is never knowingly under-refreshed. Both are, of course, full of the warm, brown stuff.

If either had any real experience of the thing they so desperately seek — power — they would know that the chances of a decent lunch are few and far between.

Bob's been polished

If Channel 5 were going to go to the trouble of updating Bob the Builder’s look (right, before and after), why didn’t they go the whole hog and give him a name to match: Bartosz the Builder, surely.

Naked ambition

Kristina Rihanoff’s semi-naked performance on Strictly wasn’t raunchy, just laughable — like everything else on that show.

The last shred of irony or self-knowledge it might have possessed vanished with Brucie.

What’s left are grinning, perma-tanned cruise ship entertainers prancing around in sequins to poorly executed covers of popular hits.

‘Don't destroy my Wolf Hall,’ novelist Hilary Mantel implores the BBC, which is working on an adaptation starring Damian Lewis as Henry VIII.

Destroy it? The thing’s 674 pages long and practically unreadable.

It will be vastly improved by the introduction of a charismatic leading man and a little judicious editing.

Leonardo's Mona Lisa, grand old lady of the Renaissance, must have witnessed a few rum scenes.

No wonder she remained characteristically nonplussed by the presence of Beyonce and Jay-Z as they cavorted around the Louvre snapping selfies.