I don’t like Vanessa Feltz much either. I would prefer a more serious journalist or presenter, like Julia George (nee Botfield) who replaced her for several weeks in 2006, I think, when she was sick. Pretty much any other BBC London presenter could do the job better, and has done, IMHO, both during Feltz’s and Gaunt’s times in the job (but not Lesley Joseph, yuck). None of them are either rabble rousers or twittery chat show types.

The concern about smoking is not whether the children grow up to “be perfectly well-adjusted people”, but whether they grow up to suffer long-term health problems such as lung cancer and ischemic heart disease, or the unpleasent ailments of cough, nausea, headaches, sore throats, irritation of their eyes or dizziness throughout their youth.

But yes, we could say that banning foster parents who smoke is a step too far; why not just insist that they must never smoke in the house and in front of the foster placements?

Although foster carers are not really employees of the state - they get a meagre childcare allowance, but no actual renumeration for looking after someone else’s children - it is not inconceivable that the existing smoking ban could be extended to cover the homes of such carers, as a workplace.

The main thing though, is that foster carers need to be able to provide refuge for vulnerable children. Children who have been neglected by their own families, for example, need to know that they will be safe in their new short- or long-term placement. Clean air really should be their right.

I haven’t listened to Jon Gaunt for years, but although I used to disagree with him almost all the time, I did have some respect for him in that he actually spoke his mind. Although I found some of his views infuriating, I could at least listen to him, unlike Vanessa Feltz who replaced him.

If you employ someone like him to host a radio phone-in show, you have to expect his views to offend some of the people some of the time - and virtually every group in society will have a claim on being offended at some point. Why start with the suspensions now?

Wasalam.