Mark Millar, comic book writer, Scottish, Coatbridge boy, £25million in the bank after selling his business to Netflix, bit of a legend, said something interesting the other day about cancel culture. There was a time, he said, when it meant everything on telly and in movies and in books became safe and benign, but he says it’s all over now and writers can start being edgy again. Can he be right?

The case Mr Millar makes looks convincing on the surface. He says cancel culture was definitely a thing (there were some, remember, with sand in their ears, who said it never was). He also said it meant writers, producers and creatives feared a backlash if they released controversial material but that it was pretty much a youth trend and the world is more relaxed now, and popular culture can start to be more dangerous again.

He is not alone in his view. The comedian Ricky Gervais was getting his star on the walk of fame the other day and said something similar to Mr Millar. “We’ve had a few weird years of cancel culture, people telling you what you can and can’t laugh at or talk about,” he said. “But we pushed back, and we won. I’d love to claim that it was due to my unrivalled genius, but truth be told, it’s a cocktail of luck, persistence and a little bit of pushing against the tide.” So that’s two big figures in popular culture telling us it’s all over.

But let’s take a minute shall we. For a start, it’s significant who’s talking here. As I say, Mr Millar sold his empire to Netflix for £25m and Mr Gervais is also someone who’s not short of a bob or two. Same thing with another public figure who’s spoken out against cancel culture: JK Rowling. The mob did bay for her, and some people did stop speaking to her, and there were calls for her to be ejected from Harry Potter, her own creation. But in the end, like Gervais and Millar, money is a shield and Rowling was too rich to cancel. It’s a good thing that Gervais........

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