We’ve entered the offence Olympics – and everyone’s desperate to win a medal

From Meghan Markle to the PC-brigade’s Halloween costume clampdown, when will we hit peak hypersensitivity?

Brimful of anger: sombreros are considered ‘culturally insensitive’ costumes at Sheffield University (Getty)

Ten years ago, it seemed relatively simple to avoid causing offence, but now it’s a minefield. In some quarters it’s even considered an act of cultural vandalism to wear the wrong hairstyle (corn rows on white people – Romeo Beckham, please take note), and now even fancy dress is under the spotlight.

During Halloween, Sheffield University banned students from wearing “culturally insensitive” costumes, describing them as acts of cultural appropriation. The student union produced posters showing Arab costumes, American-Indian headdresses and Mexican sombreros with the slogan “my culture is not your costume”. This follows advice issued to universities by the NUS, who said “we want people to check and double check their costume to avoid the exploitation and degradation of others. Don’t let racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and ableism be the real horror this Halloween”.

That message might play well with the woke generation, but it obviously didn’t filter through to guests attending Jonathan Ross’s annual Halloween party, where Jimmy Carr dressed as a female sex slave from The Handmaid’s Tale, “Judge” Rob Rinder as Anne Boleyn and Strictly’s Craig Revel Horwood in full drag as Cruella de Vil.

Why should we be concerned about offending Mexicans and Arabs, while it remains perfectly OK for men to dress up as cartoon women? As far as I’m concerned, it’s permissible, but there seems to be a lack of logic from the NUS. We mustn’t offend trans people, but parodying an entire gender is OK?

Dressing up has become a political statement, a chance to get it wrong, to cause distress because you’ve chosen a kilt, a sari or a loincloth. It’s cultural correctness taken to ludicrous extremes. I can see why Prince Harry choosing to wear a Nazi costume caused offence on so many levels (crass posh manners, lack of tact, insensitivity to war veterans and Jews) but the humble sombrero?

Times are changing – the revelation that years ago Justin Trudeau blacked up in fancy dress, not once but twice, demonstrated a high level of naivety on his part – but it didn’t offend enough people to stop him getting elected, albeit with a reduced majority. Are modern students flag bearers for a fairer future or simply insufferable snowflakes? What’s simply poor taste and what’s not acceptable seems to be in a state of permanent flux. Younger people talk of unconscious racism, but is that simply a catch-all phrase describing hyper-sensitivity?

Currently, journalists cannot write anything even slightly critical about the Duchess of Sussex without being labelled racist on social media. Given that early on, she claimed not to read her press coverage, it seems extraordinary that the Duchess now seems to find what’s written about her intolerable. Some of her sensitivity might come from being an exhausted new mother, having to travel to foreign countries, dress up and work and be exposed to probing photographers’ lenses on a daily basis, but it’s also typical of the woke generation that want to police fancy dress.

Opinion about whether Duchess is a whinger is divided, and tends to depend on age – generally, older people find it a lot of fuss about nothing. Given that the Duchess has broken with tradition and voiced her feelings, which led to a group of female MPs writing her a letter of support (have they nothing better to do?), it was surprising to hear the following on one of BBC Radio 4’s comedy shows the other week – a female comedian asked why Meghan was moaning about the “racist” press, when “it’s not as if she’s stop and search black”.

I found that apposite and funny, but should I have found it offensive? Meghan, like a huge number of Brits, is mixed race, and yet she describes herself as black. I am half Welsh, but I have never described myself as Welsh. I wonder why?

Every day, there are new examples of obstacles to be navigated in order to avoid causing offence. In Bristol, a picture of new mayor Marvin Rees on the front of the local newspaper caused outrage in some quarters. Critics complain the cropped photo resembled a police mug shot and made Rees “look like a criminal”. They said the previous mayor, George Ferguson (white), would never have been shown in this way. Rees is the UK’s first black mayor and the first black elected mayor in the EU. Like the Duchess of Sussex, he’s mixed race, with a white British mother and a Jamaican father. Interestingly, he describes himself as mixed race, not black.

As a former newspaper editor, I look at his photograph (taken when the mayor was making an important policy speech) and for the life of me, I can’t see what’s wrong – but I am white, so maybe that’s the problem. Yes, it’s cropped, and the expression serious but it’s impactful and gets the message across that this new mayor has a fresh agenda. That’s not how it was viewed by deputy mayor Asher Craig who called it “crass and offensive” and Sandra Gordon from Bristol’s Commission for Race Equality, who called it “offensive and inappropriate” saying it reflected the institutional racism of the press.

In the past, the Bristol Post has been accused of racial insensitivity, and current editor Mike Norton apologised for a front page (before he was in charge) showing mug shots of 16 black men convicted of dealing in crack cocaine with the headline “Faces of Evil”. Norton said it had damaged relations with the African and Afro-Caribbean community and that times had changed.

Having responded to initial criticism of the front page as “ludicrous” Mike Norton bowed to pressure and this week, apologised, saying it was “a knee jerk reaction… we got it wrong’’… “there was no deliberate attempt to undermine Mervyn Rees”. Is Mr Norton being bullied into apologising when he has done nothing wrong? Now that sombreros are capable of causing huge upset, that seems likely. Where will all this end?