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I want to say something, or rather two things about lockdown, not about whether it’s right or wrong or should stop now or never or when, but about people's freedom and right and responsibility to say what they think and not be cowed.

The first thing is that is not the exclusive domain of the virologist or epidemiologist or indeed economist to take a view and express a preference for a set of priorities. “Leaving it to the scientists” is fine once you have decided what outcomes you want, and privilege...

... but science doesn’t have a monopoly on what those outcomes should be.

The second thing is that it is not immoral – or selfish or materialist or whatever – to be very worried that the cure may be worse than the disease. It might be wrong, but it’s not morally wrong.

Nor are such people “bored” or “impatient”. I thought it was a bit much to hear Piers Morgan “remind” us – as if it were his contribution to world peace – of the sacrifices made during the second world war. “And all we have to do, is stay at home and watch TV for a few weeks.”

Leaving aside the fact that Morgan would go insane if he was denied the chance to be on TV for a few weeks, this comparison is just pure bullshit.

The calculation made by the forces and their superiors in the second world war was that our way of life was worth saving, even at the cost of risking millions of lives, young lives, and inevitably sacrificing hundreds of thousands of them.

Since the election of Donald Trump, and the rise of Orban and Salvini and other populists in Europe, many have invoked the spectre of the 1930s to sound alarm bells about the direction democracy can turn, if not checked by technocratic intervention.

I think those warnings were overcooked but the idea that those conditions and politics can return is not fanciful. We are still the same species, with the same weaknesses and vanities and needs. It absolutely could happen here.

Many people are now worried, and I think reasonably so, that sufficient economic damage could be done to return us to the material conditions of the 1930s, the abyss into which rushed such terribly tempting but destructive policies back then.

If you think, as most people do that the chronically unaddressed economic woes and despair of the Rust Belt gave us Donald Trump, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

If you really believe that “austerity” such as it was after 2009, killed over 100,000, but relaxed about extending lockdown indefinitely, you have no idea what kind of measures are going to be necessary to right the ship even after the debt already incurred.

I am only a comedian and it’s not for me to argue one way or another, at least not aggressively and assertively, about what should be done and when.

But I do feel very strongly that people like myself – who have aged parents and young children, with their whole lives ahead of them - have a right to insist we give the former the protection they need but the latter the chance in life they deserve.

And like I say, this is not because I'm bored. I am frankly having the best few weeks I can remember. I get to eat with my family, walk the dog and enjoy the sunshine. It's been fantastic. But it's not real life, and one day, it has to start again.

/ends