TARRING us all with the same big, clumsy brush has always been one of the concerns surrounding the on-going debate over press regulation – and John Cleese is becoming chief tar-brusher.

As much as I admire his work, Cleese is in danger of becoming more over-the-top and disturbingly manic than Basil Fawlty after a bad day at the hotel.

The row over how to control the press rages on despite Lord Justice Leveson's long inquiry which was triggered by the phone-hacking scandal at News International.

At a rally organised by the Hacked Off campaign group, Cleese declared with all of Basil's pomposity: "In the case of editors, I think it's almost entirely cold-blooded lying."

There's nothing like a good generalisation is there? Close your eyes and you can see Sybil filing her nails and sighing: "Oh, calm down Basil."

It comes in the same week that the Daily Telegraph reminded us why press freedom is so important, by exposing Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw for being willing to sell their unfluence "under the radar" to a fictitious Chinese private company.

We need a sense of perspective: an acceptance that a minority of national journalists behaved abominably, but without leaping to the madcap conclusion that every editor in the country is a terrible, shameful monster who deserves to be tarred and feathered.

I know lots of editors – most of the them running local papers, making a genuine difference to their communities – and I wouldn't describe any of them as cold-blooded liars.