In reaction to an independent BBC review on taste and standards commissioned after offensive comments about actor Andrew Sachs created a public outcry, the BBC Trust has said that the most offensive language should only be used in “exceptional circumstances” on BBC One between 9 and 10 p.m.

Editorial guidelines should clarify that BBC should not make programmes that “celebrate or condone gratuitous, aggressive, intrusive and humiliating behaviour,” the Trust ruled, recognizing that “licence fee payers can distinguish between comedy and satire, which they appreciate, and unjustified humiliation, of which they disapprove.”

The study, which polled 2,700 participants, finds that viewers don’t want more censorship or regulation.

“Most people value the creativity of the BBC and accept it may sometimes result in people being offended.”

What do you think? Should BBC allow swearing on air?

As the annual chore of filling in tax returns looms on the horizon again, many taxpayers might be reflecting longer than usual this year about just where the money is going.

Since the last time he ripped open the blue cellophane HMRC envelope with a sigh and started hunting around for his P60, Joe Public has seen billions of pounds going to the banks, thousands if not millions being used to bankroll the expensive tastes of MPs — and now he sees the BBC clamming up about how much it spends on stars from that other effective tax, the licence fee. 

Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, to which the National Audit Office spending watchdog reports, is fuming because the BBC will not reveal how much it pays its big-name radio presenters. 

The BBC Trust says it keeps salary details confidential because it has legal obligations to staff and that disclosure would raise questions over data protection and privacy laws.

The generosity of BBC salaries has been a long-running theme, especially since it was reported last year that Jonathan Ross receives some six million pounds a year. Newsreader Carrie Gracie raised eyebrows more recently when she revealed she gets 92,000 pounds a year.  

The Corporation says it merely pays the going rate and in some cases less. It has launched a comprehensive redundancy programme and has confirmed that its stars’ salaries will be cut when contracts come up for renewal.

BBC Director-General Mark Thompson has staunchly defended the licence fee, calling it a “critical part of this country’s investment in the creative industries”.

But is it enough? After the jaw-dropping revelations about the way MPs spend public funds, taxpayers are perhaps rightly suspicious about what happens to their money behind closed doors.

Should BBC salaries remain confidential?  Does the BBC have a right to withold information from the National Audit Office? 

After a week of media frenzy, the BBC hopes it has taken action to end the crisis caused by the crude prank call made by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand on the latter’s Radio 2 show.

Brand has quit and Jonathan Ross has been suspended after the presenters left lewd comments on the answerphone of 78-year-old “Fawlty Towers” actor Andrew Sachs. The head of Radio 2 Lesley Douglas has also resigned.

The outcome it would appear has left no one happy. Most commentators feel the BBC took far too long to act on an issue that had clearly angered the public with more than 30,000 people making a complaint.

Many newspapers feel Douglas was unjustly sacrificed, taking the rap for mistakes made by production staff she had little or nothing to do with. The Daily Mirror said she was a “big loss to weak BBC”.

What it means for the BBC is unclear. Its governing body, the BBC Trust, says lessons must be learned and editorial guidelines tightened without jeopardising creativity and “edgy” programmes.

Those like the Daily Mail, a regular critic of the broadcaster, want the corporation to go further, citing other “highly offensive” jokes, including one about the Queen, that have appeared on the BBC since the row erupted.

Others worry that fear of causing offence will make the BBC safe and irrelevant.

Did the BBC get it right? Should Ross have been sacked as an example that the BBC has lost the plot on what is acceptable or has the whole affair just been ridiculously hyped by the media?

The furore over offensive phone calls made by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand to actor Andrew Sachs shows how society has forgotten how to behave itself, the Independent said in an editorial.

“Exactly what has happened to good manners and basic courtesy,” it asked on its leader page. “And isn’t it time they made a return?

The episode casts Britain in a “very shabby light” and raised the question: should a public service broadcaster employ such individuals, the paper added.

The incident was “ugly, cheap and nasty” and highlights a wider issue of falling standards in modern broadcasting, wrote John Harris in a column for the Guardian.

“Perhaps the spectral presence of Mary Whitehouse has hung around our discourse on broadcasting for too long,” he wrote. “Agreeing that too much TV is getting ever more coarse and idiotic doesn’t strike me as a sop to the authoritarian right.”

The Times used its august leader columns to discuss the incident under the headline “A Sorry Affair”, the same headline used by its sister paper The Sun in its “Sun Says” column.

“Some will say that humour that doesn’t offend isn’t humour,” the Times said. “Cutting humour is designed to draw blood. Lenny Bruce drew plenty. But there is a wide gulf between comedy and malice.”

The editors’ failure to delete the offending section of Brand’s pre-recorded show before it was broadcast “should mortify the BBC”, it added.

“SACK THEM!” screamed the front page headline in the Daily Mail.

“Even by the standards of this puerile, smutty pair, this was a disgusting and gratuitously cruel way to a treat 78-year-old Andrew Sachs,” the paper said in an editorial.

“Is there any reason why we should be expected to go on paying this vile man (Brand) - or the executives who judge his filth fit to broadcast?”

When it was disclosed two years ago that TV and radio presenter Jonathan Ross was on an 18 million pound three-year contract, many both inside and outside the BBC reacted with dismay.

After all, wasn’t the BBC pleading for more money from the government and higher licence fees from the viewer at the time?

Comments were made in the House of Commons. But the BBC chiefs defended the salaries, without confirming the amounts.

Now a report commissioned by the BBC Trust, the independent body that sets the standards and benchmarks for the corporation, has backed the salaries, saying they are in line with the going rate.

“Some might find this surprising,” the trust’s chairman writes in the Daily Telegraph.

While acknowledging the BBC’s special funding status, he said it was working hard to keep its pay costs down.

Can the BBC afford to pay its stars up to six million pounds a year? Should it allow its pay salary to follow commercial rates, or should it concentrate on finding new talent?

Would it be a big loss for the BBC and viewers if it let stars, such as Ross, switch to other channels in search for high salaries?

Send us your comments.