I'm listening to a rather good Five Live phone-in on whether Borat is offensive. I was lucky enough to go to the premiere last night and I have to say it is one of the funniest films I have ever seen. It doesn't just go near the edge - it goes way over it. But I barely stopped laughing from the first frame to the end, 81 minutes later.

As for the idea that some have put around, that it is in some way antisemitic: utter nonsense. Yes, the running theme of the film is that the Jews are nasty money-thieving killers who secretly rule the world - and it begins with the supposed annual Kazhak festival, the Running of the Jew, when a Jewish icon is chased and beaten by a crowd. But anyone who can't differentiate satire from propaganda has a serious comprehension problem.

A chap has just rung in to say it's like Nazi antisemitic propaganda. Regular readers of this blog know that I am hardly soft on antisemitism, but really. What rot.

It has nothing to do with the fact that Sacha Baron-Cohen is Jewish and so it's somehow ok for him to make such jokes; a Jew can certainly be antisemitic. It has every intention to do with the fact that the film is a clear satire on antisemitic attitudes, and I defy anyone with the ability to understand English to see the film and not to realise that.

But imagine if it had been a satire on Islam. There’d be outrage and all sorts of threats. We don’t need to imagine it, because the Danish cartoons row shows what happens, as did the Rushdie fatwah.

Free speech almost demands now that such a satire is produced, if we are to demonstrate that such illiberal attitudes do not set our cultural agenda. Or do they?