MY brother married a girl from the Welsh valleys. My mother has lived in South Wales for 20 years.

For the first time in my life I wouldn't mind being Welsh and I am sure the feeling will pass quite quickly, so please don't worry.

I wish I was Welsh for one reason only so that I could make it quite clear that to take any umbrage at Anne Robinson's remarks about our Celtic neighbours is further evidence of a PC world gone mad.

The racism that developed in Britain, largely unchecked over several decades, and which was predominately directed against our Afro-Caribbean and Asian fellow citizens, was clearly intolerable and in some cases evil.

It needed to be rooted out of society and seen for the cancer that it is.

However the knife that was used to excise this pustule is flashing around all too randomly now and has sadly created a climate in which every casual utterance is dissected with, it seems, the express intention of extracting offence where none reasonably exists.

There is a world of difference between the nasty, unfunny racism Bernard Manning used to entertain a similarly Neanderthal audience at the expense of an understandably sensitive immigrant population and Anne Robinson's comments about the Welsh in BBC 2's Room 101.

If you haven't seen it, the programme invites high profile contributors to assign to the aforementioned room things, ideas, people and activities that they abominate.

The programme is hosted by the comedian Paul Merton. It is intended to be humorous.

Jeffrey Archer, TV chefs, cheese, footballs and opera have been recent guests' tongue in cheek and idiosyncratic pet hates for despatch to the room immortalised by George Orwell in 1984 (the book not the year!).

Having read the outpouring of righteous indignation from the Tafia, west of the Severn, after the first airing of Anne Robinson's contribution, I watched the programme to judge for myself.

The formidable and entertaining diva of dismissal, known for her deadpan insults and humiliation of the contestants in The Weakest Link, offered the Welsh for inclusion on the basis that they irritated her, because they were better than us in many areas including sport and singing.

Hardly the most hurtful of jibes! Her parting shot, clearly intended to be humorous, was "What are they for?".

I find it absolutely incredible that Huw Edwards, the newsreader, whom I had previously, and clearly erroneously, assumed to be a balanced individual by nature of his job, saw fit to demand that the BBC should not repeat the programme on the basis that Anne Robinson's remarks were offensive to all Welsh people, including himself.

Thank goodness the Beeb had the artistic courage to stand up to the PC thought-police and insist that the Welsh needed no more protection than any of the other groups or individuals lampooned in this light-hearted programme.

The whole question of genuine racial discrimination is damaged by incidents like this.

Beam me up, Scotty. Sorry! I mean "Englishy"!!