WHAT are we to make of a prime minister who tells a press conference that cuts to the BBC were “delicious”?

Well, if you are the cartoonist Steve Bell, what you make of him is a giant condom.

David Cameron has for sometime now been represented in this unusual manner by Mr Bell, partly because of the smoothness of the prime minister’s skin and his “well-upholstered, upper-class plumpness and his big, watery eyes” that were “more and more bound up in his baby-bottom complexion”, as he wrote this week.

Well, whatever the reason, and however odd or possibly offensive it may seem to some people, I am enjoying the joke. The same cartoonist, by the way, popularised the notion of John Major wearing his underpants on the outside, and gradually bequeathed to Tony Blair the one staring mad eye he had always given Margaret Thatcher.

Anyway, however pleasant this diversion may be, it is time to return to my point. Is it seemly or fitting for our prime minister to say that we are all in this cuts and freeze business together – “including, deliciously, the BBC”?

Perhaps it was just one of those damn duff things, regretted the moment it was out of his mouth; maybe it is what passes for a joke at Eton.

Who knows, but do remember that before he entered politics, Mr Cameron worked as an ITV publicity manager and profession-ally briefed against the BBC. Recall, too, that he is close to Rupert Murdoch and his media conglomerate.

It is possible to worry that these attacks on the BBC represent some sort of payback for the support the Murdoch media empire gave David Cameron during the General Election (unblinking all-round backing, but not enough for the Conservatives to win outright).

Mr Cameron needs to watch himself here. The cuts his coalition suddenly imposed on the BBC were carried out for what seemed to be ideological reasons as much as financial ones.

Overnight, more or less, he imposed a 16 per cent budget cut and a licence freeze for six years, plus he ordered the Corporation to take over responsibility for funding the World Service.

Such swift and capricious cuts suggest a Government making things up on the spot, while also attempting to appease its powerful friends in the media.

Still, the BBC is a permanently divisive topic. I visited the website of my favoured liberal-minded Sunday newspaper to read the responses on this topic, and, my, what a lot of anti-BBC vitriol there was.

Alongside contributions from those, like myself, who were concerned that the BBC would struggle to maintain its role as a quality broadcaster, and could eventually be shoved into a public service ghetto.

What’s more, Murdoch’s Sky has just nicked the wonderful Mad Men from under the BBC’s nose. Now this is getting serious.

• ONE of the pitfalls of column writing lies not in what you include, but what ends up being missed out.

This does not arise when abusing prime ministers and the like, for they tend not to respond. It is the inclusion of more local topics that runs this risk.

Last week’s thoughts on the BBC documentary A Life Without Work drew a slightly miffed note from Pam Elliott, of the City of York Family History Society. She felt that the efforts of her charitable organisation in tracing Mark Addy’s roots had not been given due prominence in my column.

Which is another way of saying that they didn’t get a mention at all.

Many apologies to Eureka Moment Pam, as she might perhaps now be known following her pivotal appearance in the programme.

Archivist and study centre manager Pam says her organisation was approached by the producer Guy Smith as long ago as January.

“After weeks of research we eventually concluded that Rowntree had used pseudonyms in his study to protect the identities of the eight families,” Pam points out, adding that it was the society’s members who did the great deal of detective work that went into making the link.

Hope that clears things up.