Yesterday I happened to catch something that very nearly propelled hot coffee out of my nose: renowned author Salman Rushdie’s appearance on BBC’s The One Show. Yes, BBC’s The One Show. It seems unlikely, doesn’t it? But alas, it’s true.

It gets worse: table tennis was involved. Table tennis and questions. You know, the typical stuff – what he’s always asked. Mostly what he thinks of gaudy, intellectually baron television programmes. And guess what – Rushdie likes The X Factor.

Even for The One Show, it was bad. It made me want to remove the contents of my head with a spoon. I was sure the entire world had gone mad and that everything I’d previously perceived to be good was actually very, very bad, and that everything that I’d once thought to be bad was, well – still bad. Maybe even a little worse in fact.

Why Salman, why?