The hysterical response that greeted the excessively silly Channel 5 game show The Naked Jungle was so predictable.

This was the show in which the naked host Keith Chegwin and his equally pink, unlovely guests lolloped around pretending not to be embarrassed.

Oddly, they all seemed to have been chosen for their unattractiveness. Or perhaps the producers simply could not find anyone more appealing who would indulge such a fatuous idea. Laughable?

Certainly. Dangerous or perverted? Hardly.

Yet, judging by the torrents of hypocrisy about collapsing television standards that have flooded over us since the distinctly flaccid event, you might think a corrosive new age of Sodom and Gomorrah was upon us.

Politicians and pundits have rushed to vilify Channel 5 and its chief executive David Elstein. Never one to miss a passing bandwagon, our culture secretary Chris Smith jumped on board and delivered a smack around the chops reminding them of their "moral duty to take account of the views of the public".

It seems to me that that is precisely what Channel 5 is doing.

They know there is an audience for this kind of moronic programming. Television is a ratings game and producers know that playing to the lowest common denominator gets ratings.

How else can the BBC explain away making anything as sordid as the Royle Family?

However, we like to believe we live in a free society in which, as adults, we can make our own choices about entertainment, especially in our own homes.

Sex sells programmes and producers will push the regulations to the limit to titillate audiences.

Which is why we finish up with so much soft pornography, laughable grappling, pretended fornication and faked orgasms. Nothing, surely, is more demeaning to the human condition than this kind of charade.

There is a market, too, for hardcore pornography and in a truly free society, there should be space, late at night, for a channel supplying it.

It is harmless and available on TV channels everywhere in Europe, except here.

No one suggests, and there is absolutely no evidence, that as a result, Europe is alive with rapists or sex addicts or that children are at risk.

Interestingly though, a recent Government survey in this over-regulated country of ours says that one in four girls and a third of boys has sex before the age of 16.

And Britain has more teenage mothers than any other country in Western Europe - more than six times the rate in Holland, that most liberal of places.

I am not suggesting a direct correlation between these figures and the lack of availability of pornography.

But I am suggesting that the intrusive, manipulative attitude of the state and all the do-gooders towards sex and sex education has produced a thoroughly unhealthy climate.

The rest of Europe becomes more and more bemused as we become a society of sexual sniggerers and keyhole peepers working ourselves into a frenzy over the likes of poor, sad, Keith Chegwin.