Today I resigned from The Critic following an inquiry that concluded I had abused my power as a sketchwriter by dangling a sub-editor from the window by his ankles and yelling, “Call that Photoshopping?” I undertook to respect the inquiry’s findings, and as a man of integrity I am keeping my word. But this is a total farce and everyone involved should have their head held down a toilet. 

As a sketchwriter, I worked with outstanding sub-editors, and I value their contribution enormously. The jumped-up little pricks. 

But the British public expect sketchwriters to exercise rigorous satirical oversight, to prevent jokes being unpicked and to raise the game of underperforming website monkeys. They know that sometimes this means holding someone against a wall by their throat and threatening to kill their family if they don’t do their bastard job and put the sketch online. 

The Kafkaesque saga I endured was shorn of the safeguards that most senior media executives enjoy. Normal rules of evidence and procedural fairness were applied. When the editor ordered an investigation into my case, I expected, quite reasonably, that I would be given the names of my so-called victims, so I could call them late at night and tell them I was pouring petrol through their letterboxes. 

I never once swore at my fucking useless staff

Instead I was subject to a rigorous internal process for months on end, fuelled by warped and fabricated accounts of my behaviour by people whose only basis for being called “eyewitnesses” was their presence in the room at the time. In any other magazine, normal HR guidance would have been disapplied. In my case, claims should have been put to me in writing straight away, giving me the opportunity to respond by slamming some people’s fingers in desk drawers until they withdrew their statements. 

The only warnings I received about my behaviour, if you ignore the warnings that I’m saying didn’t happen, were informal tip-offs from the deputy editor that I had someone’s blood down my shirt, and a WhatsApp from the books editor that people could hear the screaming from the street. 

Far from a climate of fear gripping my sketch, staff working on it were always cheerful, saying things unprompted like “you’re a genius!” or “this is your best yet” and “please let go of my hair”. 

Despite these clear flaws in his obviously biased report the investigator, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, concluded that, over two and a half years, I never once swore at my fucking useless staff, let alone threatened, targeted or threw anything harder than a brick at them. 

Contrary to leaks suggesting more than 24 formal complainants about my behaviour, there were in fact only 15, many of them just whiny cry-babies who can’t stand the heat of a proper sketchwriting operation.

The inquiry accepted that in setting high standards and making one sub-editor stand on the desk with a doughnut in his mouth while the rest of the staff did press-ups around him, I had not intended to belittle anyone. No one at the time raised my conduct from the meeting. Mr Blofeld did not conclude that I had thought it would ever come out in public — the usual legal requirement under the definition of bullying in a journalistic environment.

He accepted that I had not personalised my criticism of staff — quite honestly, they were all as bad as each other — nor intended to create a situation where I might myself face some kind of disciplinary procedure. I am genuinely sorry that my actions have now led to me having to resign. That was never my intention.

This precedent sets the playbook for unimportant people on pitiful wages to target bosses who kick them down the stairs threatening to break their legs unless they think of a better fucking headline. If that is now the threshold for bullying in journalism, then I am a bully. But it is the sketch-readers of the country who will pay the price. And, it turns out, me.