The ITV sports presenter, Adrian Chiles, was in trouble this weekend after making a throwaway comment about Polish builders ahead of the England football team’s crucial World Cup qualifier with Poland tomorrow night. He outraged the PC brigade by inferring that if England were to win the game it would have a detrimental effect on the work currently being undertaken at his house by Polish builders.

Those humourless modern day puritans who, along with their equally dictatorial and boring colleagues from Health and Safety, dictate modern life didn’t get the joke but I wonder how many Polish folk took exception to Chiles’  comment?

Looked at from a different angle it could, in fact, be construed as a compliment. The fact that people refer to the hardworking Poles as their default builders is actually more a dig (no pun intended!) at the indolent English.

Perhaps he should have expanded his comment a little more; that many English are nowadays so lazy, so spoilt, so decadent and so reliant on state handouts that they cannot be bothered working and instead sit back, welfare-state purchased fag and beer in their hands watching Sky TV whilst Johnny Foreigner does it all for them. Just try finding a reliable English tradesman when you need one in a hurry. These days they are as rare as hens’ teeth in many parts of the country.

Perhaps the dullards who took offense at what was clearly a harmless joke (at least to anybody with half a brain) might like to consider that before they start criticising people like Chiles who, after all was only hinting at the unpalatable truth.