Aficionados of the kind of quality programming for which Channel 4 is rightly reknowned will be disappointed to learn it has pulled its planned "wank week" - a series of three late-night programmes dedicated to bashing the bishop and petting the beaver.

The short season was set to feature the London "Masturbate-a-thon" event, originally conceived in San Francisco as a way of undermining the very basis of US society through mass onanistic excess.

The loss of wood on Channel 4's part seems to be "a bid to avoid further controversy in the aftermath of the Celebrity Big Brother racism row", as The Guardian explains.

Furthermore, there's concern down at the channel about the negative publicity the wank week idea has already attracted. In August last year, former ITV big cheese Charles Allen used his MacTaggart lecture in Edinburgh to cite it as an example of falling standards at the nation's favourite TV controversymonger.

There is hope, however: Channel 4 may in the future broadcast the three self-love documentaries - which also include insights into compulsive male masturbators and girls jerking their merkins - although not under the "wank week" banner. ®

Bootnote

We have no confirmation that Channel 4 has also cancelled plans for a Celebrity Come Dancing spectacular in which C-list male celebs crack one off while dancing the Rumba with Natasha Kaplinsky. Watch this space.