As if it had not done enough apologising, the BBC has issued another  mea culpa. Stars of the  Beechgrove Potting Shed, a Radio Scotland phone-in gardening programme, had to say sorry after advising listeners how to propagate Amsterdam's favourite strain of cannabis. The presenters had thought the caller was talking about cabbages. It seems unlikely that the Dalkeith Dahlia Society would have been offended by this mix-up. Over on ITV, the bad language of John Lydon provoked only 100 complaints from among 10 million viewers. That figure suggests Britain is less shockable than America, where the national television watchdog denounced as 'crass and deplorable' Janet Jackson's decision to flash a breast during the Super Bowl. Although MTV viewers overcame their horror sufficiently to make the episode the most searched-for event in internet history, 9/11 included, the British can fairly claim to be less prudish.  The only curious thing is why anyone assumed that Mr Lydon's utterance of the words 'fucking cunts' would cause widespread offence. Equally robust language can be heard in Whitehall, where Sir Richard Mottram, formerly Stephen Byers's Permanent Secretary, was once reported to have regaled a colleague with a trail of expletives, concluding: 'I'm fucked. You're fucked. It's been the biggest cock-up ever, and we're all completely fucked.' Those of nervous disposition can only be grateful that Sir Richard was not involved in WMD damage limitation, or, for that matter, in eating raw fish eyes on primetime television.  As for Mr Lydon, his real use to moralists was to fuel the broader charge that  I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! has coarsened the national discourse and hastened social decay. This argument follows a familiar timeline, beginning with Chaucer, moving on to  Lady Chatterley's Lover and progressing to Jim Davidson and Pot Noodle ('the slag of snacks') via Roy Jenkins ('the father of the permissive society'). With the exception of unpleasant advertising campaigns, none of the above offers any evidence that the parameters of vulgarity are being pushed wider all the time.  The opposite is true.  I'm a Celebrity is the new variant seaside postcard, complete with improbably breasted women and, the departed Lydon apart, weedy men. As George Orwell wrote, Donald McGill's cards were intended as a 'skit on pornography' rather than the real thing. In the same way, Jordan and friends, emblems of British smut, signify repression rather than sexual licence. Those further horrified by the programme's sub-Attenborough respect for wildlife should also feel pleased. At least the contestants were eating the local fauna, rather than mating with it.  Viewers finding reality television shocking should stay away from Edward Albee's new play,  The Goat or Who is Sylvia? In the oddest, and most disturbing, production on the London stage, Jonathan Pryce plays a starry and happily married architect who, on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, falls in love with a bearded quadruped. Albee chose his mechanism for taboo-busting carefully. Though bestiality is hardly an alternative to the Tupperware party, it's at least more defensible than cannibalism, or paedophilia.  The recent Sexual Offences Bill took only a modestly dim view, pronouncing that 'sexual activity with animals is generally recognised to be profoundly disturbed behaviour' and introducing a maximum two-year sentence. While it is true that the average citizen would rather be cast away on a desert island with Lord Brocket than even contemplate such revolting conduct, apologists for what is more politely called zoophilia attempt to rationalise their preference.   Consent is not an issue, they argue. Nor is it impossible that a compliant herbivore would rather be wined and dined by a nicely mannered architect than finish up as goat stew. With the notable exception of Jeffrey Dahmer, crimes against humans are not linked to bestiality. The practice, commonplace among Greek Gods, is also popular with bored American rural workers. According to the Kinsey Report, around 50 per cent have cruised for livestock, as opposed to 8 per cent of the general male population. Such figures, though hardly plausible, have prompted trend-spotters to declare bestiality almost as mainstream as  Blind Date.  Albee's point is different. His goat is a metaphor for all illicit dreams, desires and compulsions that strain the liberal understanding, and his purpose is to explore the limits of tolerable behaviour. We are all, in the message of his bloody conclusion, self-appointed moralists prone to tip over into intolerance when old certainties collapse. The Broadway critics were not all kind. Some of his audience, adopting the John Lydon strategy, walked out, repelled both by the goat and a secondary hint of gay incest. Though London reviewers rave about the play, the Almeida theatre auditorium empties silently at the end. Albee has rediscovered something increasingly absent from modern Western societies. It is the ability to appal.  That realisation is, in itself, a shock to those primed to believe we live in perpetual outrage. If al-Qaeda is quiet, or Geoff Hoon-baiting palls, we can always be petrified by the state of Jennie Bond's hair. When the chief UN inspector hints that the nuclear-arms bazaar is beyond control, and politicians blow holes in the rule of law, there is something consoling about a grandfatherly Sex Pistol mouthing playground swearwords through snaggle teeth. Revolt and anarchy are fine, as long as they involve no problem   that cannot be solved by Ant and Dec.  Anaesthetised to horror, we have become afraid to confront any of society's demons, or our own. Are we prejudiced? Obviously not, though somehow, as a report on the death of a black schizophrenic, David Bennett, will illustrate this week, the NHS may be racist to its heart. Lacking in compassion? Clearly not, despite this newspaper's report on the exponential rise in women prisoners, with the consequent tragedies of motherless children and suicides.  Intolerant? Multiculturalism rules, yet somehow 19 Chinese nationals drowned cockle-gathering on a Lancashire beach, in the same week that fear of eastern European 'gypsies' eclipsed Britain's need for incoming workers and its duty to offer them welcome and the means to go to work and come home alive. Homophobic? The suggestion is insulting, but the fact that the 2001 census has exposed a swath of Yorkshire, from Redcar to Hartlepool, as a gay-free zone suggests some glitch, of integration or disclosure. Even if the fault lay only in the coy phrasing of the question, Massachusetts sounds bolder. Its Supreme Court, in insisting that the state legislature must grant full marriage rights to gay couples, last week edged a conservative nation towards constitutional crisis.  Britain, less polarised, steers a middle course between tolerance and oppression, without ever quite knowing where to draw the line. In that confusion, the debate on whether society grows crueller and cruder centres on trivia. FCUK posters and Gucci adverts with the double G logo clipped from a model's pubic hair are nasty, not corrupting. Those who add John Lydon, and reality television in general, to the list of influences corroding society are merely endorsing the perfection of their own values. Edward Albee would regard such certainty as perilous. His lesson is that prejudice can make fanatics of us all.