DURING recent times, the notion that a person can be ‘cancelled’ – a word I must regularly accessorise with frilly quotation marks for my own sanity – has become a polarising topic of debate.

Generally, cancel culture applies to celebrities and public figures who make a bit of a faux pas or are perceived to have done something unacceptable, resulting in them being culturally blocked from having a prominent public platform and/or facing significant career-damaging fall out.

An example of this phenomenon in action is depicted in ITV’s latest mini-series Douglas Is Cancelled, which sees a respected television news anchor, Douglas Bellowers (Hugh Bonneville), fall from grace when he is accused of making a sexist joke at a wedding on social media.

This causes a public backlash fuelled by ‘woke’ Gen Z-ers, who subsequently call for Douglas to be cancelled.

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