Petard hoisting

Ah, the modern BBC world of mock democracy. How many letters and emails of complaint did it take to save 6Music from the chop ?  What was the scale of the write-in that saved the Asian Network ? There were two "live" complaints about the Russell Brand Show on Radio 2, in which he and Jonathan Ross made prank calls to Andrew Sachs - once the Daily Mail heard about it, there were 30,500 before the BBC stopped counting and started firing.

Complaints about Jeremy Clarkson's exhortation to shoot strikers on The One Show yesterday reached 21,000 and the BBC probably wishes it could stop counting.

Presumably the BBC Trust will reverse proposed cuts to local radio if the numbers outstrip those received to save 6Music.

And yet we go on with this spurious "engagement" with the audience. The laughable Today Man/Women of the Year "contest" was an early victim of  write-in campaigns. This year's Sports Personality of The Year has become Sportsman of The Year, as cowed sports producers, packing cases for Salford, missed an obvious issue with their short-listing.  John Sergeant gracefully left Strictly Come Dancing when it became clear the country was prepared to waste phone bills to ensure he won.

We don't run this country on phone-in voting or online polls - and I rather admire that sort of distanced democracy; it, at the least, stops us hanging people.

An alternative for the BBC would be to allow licence-payers a limited number of complaints a year, a little like tennis players' appeals for video reviews of line-calls.  Four or five should do it - against a licence fee of under £150, that seems fair.

• Monday update: Clarkson complaints stand at 31,057.  At 30,500, Russell Brand, Lesley Douglas and R2's compliance head were fired.