THE big news this week isn’t really news as far as I'm concerned.

At last the rest of the country has come round to my way of thinking – that Jonathan Ross is a moron.

The comedian, whose gigantic ego is overshadowed only by his ridiculous floppy-fringe and outlandish dress sense, has really done it this time after leaving lewd messages on the answerphone of 78-year-old Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs with comic Russell Brand.

Now you'd expect this sort of behaviour really from Brand. He is, after all, a self-confessed sex addict and former junkie who makes his living out of shocking his audience.

As a wise man said to me this week: “Isn’t he that one full of whiskers that shouts ‘Hare Krishna’ all the time? Oh, he deserves locking up anyway”.

Brand’s young fans won’t be easily put off by such behaviour, in fact it’ll probably make him more famous in the same way Kate Moss’s earnings went up a couple of million the year after her infamous cocaine scandal.

But Jonathan Ross certainly has a lot more to lose.

After all he’s supposed to be the captain of the BBC’s flagship entertainment show, a respected prime-time, mainstream television presenter... all of which are used to justify why he gets paid a whopping £18million of licence payer’s money.

And what makes the whole Andrew Sachs debacle all the more baffling is that Ross professes himself such a private family man.

Someone who has daughters himself and surely could imagine how mortifying it would be for his own father to hear lurid details of his granddaughters’ sex lives when they were older. That not only makes him a hypocrite, but an insincere one at that.

Sachs, who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers, wasn’t looking for publicity, he was simply minding his own business when the childish pair pounced. A less deserving victim would be hard to find.

But as despicable as their behaviour was towards a mild-mannered elderly man who certainly didn’t deserve it, Ross is guilty of a far more heinous crime in my eyes: he’s simply not funny. Maybe they’d have been forgiven more easily had the prank been mildly amusing, but it wasn’t.

Not that I‘d expect anything less from Ross.

Many a time I’ve cringed behind a cushion as he slimes up to a young good-looking singer or actress, leering over her at any opportunity. He’s just as bad with male guests, often speaking over them and trying desperately to prove himself the funnier – which he often fails at.

The worst is when the American guests are on and you can tell they don't quite “get” his attempts to be entertaining. I often find myself hoping that they don’t think we’re all like that.

The only reason anyone watches him anymore is because he somehow manages to get all the best guests.

But with his future in question after his 12-week unpaid suspension, that could be changing fairly soon.