Quite the weirdest thing about journalism these days is that some old fart can tell a couple of off-colour jokes during an Oxford college dinner at which a few ‘snowflake’ students take offence and quit the hall, and the whole thing becomes headline news in The Times.

Yes, that’s The Thunderer I’m referring to – the nation’s organ of record, now so uncertain over what to record as to devote most of a page to a ‘story’ no sane journalist would once have considered fit for other than the district news pages of some country weekly.

Remember those? I used to write them. “The Townswomen’s Guild held its monthly meeting on Friday, Mrs Georgina Jelly in the chair. A recipe for rhubarb and ginger wine was delivered by Miss Prudence Snobes, after which was welcomed Dame Letitia McTavish to talk on ‘Scaling the Heights – Reaching New Peaks of Sexual Ecstasy’.”

Only joking. ‘Keeping Hubby Happy with Kunzle Cakes’ was more the measure.

On the opposite page, perhaps, might have been a report of a black-tie dinner – I went to many such – at which some “lively entertainment”, as we styled it, had been given.

Often these were sporting ‘dos’ where the post-prandial act told blue jokes which, come to think of it, are generally speaking the only really funny ones.

He might also have led the chorus in a few rugby songs, when the ‘ladies’ present usually joined in with all the vigour of the blokes, if with less knowledge of the words.

Fast forward to 2019 and the annual sports dinner at Brasenose College, as it was described by reporter Jack Malvern in The Times last Thursday.

Actually, the description was chiefly the work of an unnamed reporter on the student newspaper Cherwell, a source properly identified, I was glad to see.

Such news value as there was in the story arose from the objections of some of the sportswomen present to the content of a poem read out by the guest speaker, the retired county cricketer Don Topley, 55.

Me neither. Mr Malvern happily puts the ignorant in the picture by telling us that ‘Toppers’ (natch) played for Essex, Norfolk and Surrey and “gained prominence in 1984 when, as a member of ground staff at Lord’s, he came on as a substitute for England against the West Indies and made a spectacular one-handed catch that was disallowed because he had a foot outside the boundary”. Oh, yes. I remember now!

The poem was called Never Trust a Cricketer and featured a series of limp jokes chiefly arising from the double meanings that exist for the word ‘balls’.

Mr Malvern quotes a number of the lines in full which might be judged to lack consideration for the sensibilities of the newspaper’s female readers. Bring on the smelling salts!

Bearing in mind the dreadful effect the poem’s utterance had on the ‘girls’ of Brasenose – that’s what they call themselves, by the way – I certainly shan’t be risking offence to the women of my parish.

According to student Sophie Brookes, Toppers began by mentioning the growing popularity of women’s cricket, “Then, without any further comment, he goes on [sic] to read the poem. A few girls walked out halfway through because they felt so uncomfortable.

“The whole experience was worsened by his rambustious way of speaking and the unashamed expressiveness and pride with which he read his poem.”

A good word ‘rambustious’, by the way; even though it’s American and my dictionary’s definition of it – “full of youthful energy” – hardly fits a man of 55.

Toppers sensibly declined to comment on the story. One hopes that he enjoyed his dinner, as Jack Malvern told readers, the later-to-be-disgraced politician John Profumo did when he attended.

He also mentions David Cameron and Michael Palin as other guests in the past, without noting that both were Brasenose men.

For Palin, indeed, the college is almost a family fiefdom. Reading his published diaries, Travelling to Work (2014), I thought it an odd coincidence that his son, William, should have secured a place there in 1988. Then, blow me, his daughter Rachel had the good fortune to gain one as well, in 1991.

All entirely on merit of course.