Is there no relief from this irritable jowell syndrome?

Imagine this. You are sitting at home watching the BBC Six O’Clock News. Sophie Raworth (for it is she) introduces an item on university top-up fees and hands over to political editor Andrew Marr, who is outside Number 10. “Well, Andy,” she says, “will Tony Blair get his way?”

“Look at it this way, Sophie” he replies, his hands playing the invisible piano accordion that is the prop of every television reporter. “Blair is trying to pull a very big rabbit out of a very small hat. So far, he has hold of only one ear, and the creature, in the shape of Labour rebels, is filling the receptacle with those noxious little pellets called droppings. So will we all catch myxomatosis? Who knows? Andrew Marr, Downing Street.”

Now, do you a: scream “What a load of balls!” and hurl your remote at the screen?; b: scratch your belly, yawn, and pop another Malteser in your mouth? or c: mutter to yourself, “Pull the other one, it’s got wossnames on it”?

Think carefully, your answer could make the difference between a creditable 2:1 and a coveted first. Yes, you could be among the first to graduate in television watching, a course proposed by Tessa Jowell, minister for culture, media, sport, shopping trolleys, you name it. She has called for lessons in watching TV and says they would benefit Britain as much as science and maths classes. She compares the discipline of understanding the media to understanding great literature, and says she wants a nation of active and informed consumers who are able to spot the bias in TV news bulletins.

Is there no end to the vapourings of this extraordinary woman? (I almost said foolish woman, but the more media savvy among you might have detected a bias.) Like Cleopatra, custom cannot stale her infinite variety. Since Labour came to office and thrust her into prominence, she has variously given a public demonstration in how we are to wash our hands; mounted a “body image summit”; called for the Broadcasting Standards Authority to count the number of fat and thin women on TV; and embarked on a tour of the country, during which she stopped off in Manchester, Birmingham, the Eden Project and Tyneside and described each as “the New Bilbao”.

Those of us who wonder why she is allowed out on her own, let alone trusted with a ministerial portfolio, may find a clue in her employment record. Before entering politics she was a psychiatric social worker. Could it be that she came away persuaded that we are all in some way mentally deficient (I beg your pardon, have learning difficulties) and in need of tutoring, counselling, mentoring and, if all else fails, frontal lobotomy?

But don’t laugh her off. Someone is bound to take her seriously. In a contest between truth and fiction, always back truth, it will beat anything you can make up. So when I suggest that the University of Tooting Bec has established an Adam Faith chair in TV watching (so named because of his famous last words, “Channel 5 is all shit, isn’t it?”) don’t bet that it hasn’t happened. And when I add that the London Borough of Camden is advertising in The Guardian for a media bias and detection tuition officer, can you be sure I’m not telling the truth? So unselfconscious and unaware is Ms Jowell that in calling for courses in TV watching she says she wants people to “take greater personal responsibility for what they watch and listen to”. Leaving aside the question of who on earth she imagines takes responsibility for this already (when were you last strapped into a chair and forced to watch “I’m a celebrity, ain’t I a piece of work?”), wouldn’t it be wonderful if government in this country also allowed us to take personal responsibility for what we eat, what we drink, what we say, and how we wash our hands?

History has a 200-year-old lesson. In 1703, Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, stood on the pillory before London’s Temple Bar after being fined and imprisoned at Newgate. This common punishment for dissidents resulted from the unauthorised publication of his popular satirical essay “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters”. But instead of hurling rotten vegetables, passers-by toasted the pamphleteer and threw flowers. His triumphant experience bore further fruit in the form of a poem, “A Hymn to the Pillory”, in which he openly referred to the authorities as “nimshites”.

The word has since disappeared from usage, but we get his drift. We don’t need Ms Jowell to tell us how to watch television or how to spot media bias; what we need is a Daniel Defoe to cry defiance, to mock the modern thought police whose recent achievements include pulling Kilroy off the air, firing a Liberal Democrat MP for speaking her mind, sacking a prison officer for being rude about Osama bin Laden, and – sinister word, this – investigating journalist Richard Littlejohn for taking the mickey out of gay policemen.

And, as would surely happen, when the authorities put our latter-day Defoe in the pillory, we would turn out to applaud him, throw flowers, and burn the effigy of the nimshite Jowell.

Or would we? I have a terrible feeling that Britons are growing to love their chains and might queue to enroll in media watching courses.