WHAT a strange reaction in arty quarters to the arrest of film director Roman Polanski in Switzerland.

The Swiss Association of Directors called it 'a grotesque judicial farce'. That nation's Association of Film Directors and Script Writers said it was 'a slap in the face for the entire cultural community of Switzerland'. France's cultural minister Frédéric Mitterand was `dumbfounded' that `a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them'.

Yes, Polanski has had remarkable tragedy in his life, escaping the Krakow ghetto as a child, then in 1968 enduring the murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate at the hands of Charles Manson's deranged `family'.

Does any of this excuse the fact that nine years later, as a 44-year-old man, Polanski, by his own admission, had sex with a 13-year old girl while she was entrusted to his custody as a model on a photo shoot? Surely not. If some ordinary Joe did what he did, we would call him a predatory paedophile and want him locked up, as Polanski no doubt would have been had he not fled US justice in 1978.

Since then, he has been a fugitive whose cinema has continued to draw plaudits the world over, almost as if his sins, for some, have been washed away in the brilliance of his art. But how can we ignore the charges brought against Polanski just because he has eluded justice for 31 years and made some great movies in the meantime?

Gary Glitter

I had already been thinking hard about this subject even before Polanski was detained in Zurich. In an outspoken interview last week, popstrel Elly Jackson, aka La Roux, said she still listened to Gary Glitter's records despite his conviction in Vietnam for molesting girls aged 11 and 12. That shouldn't seem an unusual viewpoint but somehow it does. Glitter's music is rarely heard these days. One exam board which used I'm The Leader Of The Gang (I Am) in GCSE coursework dropped it from the syllabus. It was almost as if this ridiculous yet uplifting pop music was tainted by the deeds of its creator.

How odd that the world has felt able to fete the work of Roman Polanski yet loathe the craft of Gary Glitter despite the similarity of their offences. Could it be that we have different standards of forgiveness when it comes to high art and low art?

We are now quite embarrassed to recall that we were once mildly amused by pop producer and all-round rentagob Jonathan King, jailed for four indecent assaults against 14 and 15-year old boys.

By common consent, it seems, we can no longer laugh at Chris Langham - jailed for downloading indecent videos of children in 2007. A new series of political satire The Thick Of It is being made, but Langham is not wanted for it.

Even 50 years on, it is difficult not to think of piano basher Jerry Lee Lewis as the man who scandalised England by arriving here with a new wife who was just 13 years old and his cousin to boot.

Our lingering impression of Chuck Berry is not just that he is one of the prime architects of rock `n' roll, but also the man who settled a legal action by a group of women who claimed he installed a video camera in the ladies loos of his restaurant.

I say enjoy Polanski's films, dust off your old Gary Glitter records. We can love the art but revile the artist.

We're all victim of the meddling civil servants

I suspect there may be hundreds of thousands of parents who, like Detective Constables Leanne Shepherd and Lucy Jarrett, enter into informal child-minding arrangements with friends and family.

An Ofsted inspector investigated reports of `illegal childminding' when it was discovered that each of the two friends looked after the other's child while they were out catching proper criminals.

The tip-off is alleged to have come from a neighbour. What a nice neighbour! But Ofsted investigated despite there being no suggestion that children's welfare was at risk, or even that the taxman was being cheated.

No, actually the taxman HAS been cheated here. Someone drawing a wage from the public purse has taken time to persecute two working women for making sensible childcare arrangements.

Next time a child dies because social workers did not have the resources to intervene, remember that elsewhere there is a civil servant with so much time on their hands that they can seek to criminalise people simply trying to earn a living and do the best for their kids.

` Tweet