Genius. A hero from those times for all time.

A comedian so publicly funny but so privately tortured that seeing him on the screen simultaneously hurts your sides and your heart.

But does the Magna Carta mean nothing to you?

Well, does it?

Do the civil liberties and basic rights enshrined within and enjoyed by Hancock's generation and many before, to a greater or lesser extent, mean nothing?

Does no detention without trial, innocent until proven guilty, and rights to privacy mean nothing?

And does anyone even care? Is anyone bothered society is more Big Brother and Room 101 than Hancock's Half Hour?

Maybe not. After all, why should the man in the street – currently being filmed 300 times a day as he walks down said street –worry about being a star of CCTV unless he's doing something wrong?

Why should it bother anyone that Google keeps records of what they google?

And does it really matter if a handful of suspected terrorists are detained for a handful more days during police investigations if it allows us to sleep safely on public transport?

Well, yeah, it does. All these little things matter. Little things add up to big things. And big things have taken centuries to achieve.
Little shifts in the Earth's plates eventually create a different map. And maps cannot be redrawn easily.

What really set me thinking on this of late was not the revelation CCTV has only helped solve something like three per cent of crime. I can begrudgingly handle all that excess footage of me floating around somewhere (where does it go?) safe in the knowledge I never do anything interesting enough to make it worthwhile viewing.

And it wasn't the proposed extension of detention without trial. Bad idea, but unlikely to be achieved, I reckon.

Those things annoyed me but what I've found really really shocking is Calderdale Council's Hitler-like attitude to three people who allegedly dropped cigarette ends.

Smoking and litter louts are both things I can't abide but when three people are fined almost £1,000 on the strength of a council official's allegations something is clearly wrong.

These people all denied dropping the cigarette butts – biodegradable in any case, surely? – yet they were convicted on the strength of a council official's word. They were essentially told unless they could prove they didn't do the crime they would face the fine. Guilty until proven innocent. Convicted because a jobsworth said they should be.

A joke?

"Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you?" said Tony Hancock. "Did she die in vain?"

His timing, as always, was exquisite.

But in these times it doesn't seem so funny.