The BBC will regret cancelling Michael Vaughan

How cowardly of the BBC to axe Michael Vaughan from Test Match Special for the winter Ashes series on the basis of two words – ‘you lot’ – he might or might not have said more than twelve years ago. 

Is this really how the BBC wants to play this? Anyone can make accusations of any type against someone famous that can’t be proved either way and then sit back and watch their life implode?

If so then what’s to stop me, for example, from using this space to recall that in 2003 BBC Director General Tim Davie told me something deeply transgressive about, say, the trans community? 

Davie might very vigorously deny my claim – I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if he did, in fact, given I have just this moment invented it – but that’s hardly the point. If proof is no longer required to make an allegation stick, then he’d have no alternative but to resign or be fired.