The award for this year’s dopiest own goal goes to … Lisa Wilkinson

The self-important Ten star is at risk of becoming her own accidental comedy act.

Lisa Wilkinson arrives at the 62nd TV Week Logie Awards.

If only Lisa Wilkinson had followed the advice Ricky Gervais gave award winners when he hosted the Golden Globes in 2020. “If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to ­lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world,” said the comedian. “So, if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God … and f..k off, OK?”

The award for this year’s dopiest own goal off a soccer pitch goes to … Wilkinson. The Ten star’s imprudent comments at the Logies on Sunday night almost single-handedly caused the delay of the high-profile trial of Bruce Lehrmann, accused of rape by Brittany Higgins, a story that Wilkinson has pursued to boost her recent career.

Wilkinson has more than egg on her face for choosing to stroke her own ego rather than quietly respecting the trial of a man who is meant to be presumed innocent until found guilty by a court.

The link between Wilkinson and Gervais doesn’t end there. It is one of the more glorious ironies that the people who probably hate the famous comedian the most are the same people who have made him very, very rich. You won’t find these people in the audience of his live shows. And they might not watch more than a minute of his Netflix shows before they condemn him as vile and offensive.

But every morning, Gervais – an avowed atheist – must nonetheless say a small prayer to the moralising new puritans who are determined to provide him with material for his stand-up comedy.

As Gervais alludes to in his latest show, SuperNature, released on Netflix last month, the former working-class lad is very, very wealthy. He is reported to have struck a $40m deal with the giant streaming platform for his last two shows.

Gervais’s success underscores his importance. Any sane person will only direct a certain amount of energy towards the gruelling job of trying to take the new puritans – which includes people like Wilkinson – seriously. Eventually, there is an overwhelming need to lay back and laugh out loud at their madness.

In fact, I’m beginning to wonder whether people like Wilkinson exist for the sole purpose of providing goofball comments for others to laugh at. The Project star is at risk of becoming her own accidental comedy act, without bringing in the dollars of Gervais.

The British comedian would have some serious fun doing an ­impersonation of Wilkinson’s ego. Presumption of innocence? Due process? A fair trial? Going by Chief Justice Lucy McCallum’s stinging rebuke of Wilkinson’s Logie remarks, these ideas are increasingly treated as nothing more than fifth-place accoutrements to Wilkinson’s self-importance. “The implicit premise of (Lisa Wilkinson’s speech) is to celebrate the truthfulness of the story she exposed,” said the judge. “The importance of the rule of law has been set at nil,” she added later in her damning decision to delay the trial that was due to start next week.

Comedian Ricky Gervais.

“What concerns me most … is that the distinction between an ­allegation and a finding of guilt has been completely obliterated,” said McCallum.

Confronting these new puritans, who seem determined for society, not just them, to turn its back on the most fundamental truths, is important business. It can be done in different ways, by a judge pointing out the dangers, and by comedians who make fun of the absurdities around us. The jokes ­almost write themselves.

That’s not entirely fair. The funniest jokes sting when they cleverly skewer the pomposity of ignoring basic truths. And on that front, Gervais, who turned 61 this week, is a comic genius. Sure, not all his jokes land. But when he applies his laser-sharp creativity to expose the nuttier side to gender politics and social media witch hunts, he is pure gold.

One of his early riffs in SuperNature goes like this:

“If you’re the type of person to revel in someone getting cancelled for summat they said 10 years ago, you’re just ensuring that one day you’ll be cancelled for summat you said today. You can’t predict what’ll be offensive in the future. You don’t know who the dominant mob will be. Like, the worst thing you can say today – get you cancelled on Twitter, death threats – the worst thing you can say today is, ‘Women don’t have penises’, right?

“Now, no one saw that coming. (Pause) You won’t find a 10-year-old tweet of someone saying, ‘Women don’t have penises’.” (Pause) “Do you know why? We didn’t think we f..king had to!”

The dogged pursuit of some trans rights, in direct contradiction to science and biology, is the fattest of sacred cows that Gervais’s slices and dices for his audience.

And how could he resist, given the sheer level of institutional cowardice on this topic. Even the International Olympic Committee has chosen to ignore the innate biological differences between men and women, a point alluded to by FINA this week, when swimming’s world governing body announced an important and overdue new policy which excludes male-to-female transgender athletes from elite events if they transition after the age of 12.

When his critics accuse him of “punching down,” for making fun of minorities, Gervais points out that he is a white, heterosexual, multi-millionaire. There are fewer than 1 per cent of people like him, he says. “But do I whine? No! I just get on with it. I’m like Rosa Parks, know what I mean? Except that I fought for the right never to have to take a seat on a bus.”

More seriously, by mocking the trans bullies during his most recent stand-up comedy act, Gervais is punching up.

Gervais is an equal opportunity comedian. He talks about AIDS, death, cancer, the Holocaust, rape, pedophile teachers – and trans issues.

Again, there are different ways of pushing back against zealotry. After FINA’s decision, former swimmer Sharron Davies, who was a silver medallist at the Moscow Olympics, revealed how toxic the trans issue has become for her. A small, vocal group of trans activists have made death threats against her and her children, they have called her employers, trying to have her sacked. Having lost the gold medal to a testosterone-injected East German female swimmer, Davies has lobbied for science and biology, not trans dogma, to be the foundation for fair rules for women athletes. Mocking trans activists who bully people like Davies is the opposite of punching down.

In any case, it’s a bit rich for defenders of trans bullies to condemn Gervais for punching down. The blind ideologues are the latest manifestation of the broader left’s relentless ridiculing of people they regard as stupid – simply because they hold different views. This snobbery has become a systematic form of punching down. Like Gervais, many people, especially those in the media, do it for a living. Unlike Gervais, they believe what they are saying when they mock people they regard as dumb.

In any case, Gervais is an equal opportunity comedian. He talks about AIDS, death, cancer, the Holocaust, rape, pedophile teachers – and trans issues.

Some of Gervais’s critics are right. He is not polite. And that’s the point of comedy. It’s impolite, offensive, abrasive.

If you want polite commentary, buy a Hallmark card. Laughter is like love: where you happen to find it is deeply personal.

Sure, some po-faced quota-loving feminist somewhere may have chortled when Julia Morris, who opened the Logies, made a joke about having to wear a suit and not getting paid as much as men. But she also proved why Gervais is earning tens of millions for sending up yawningly humourless wokery.

His critics overlook that the person who reaches the most people, and therefore makes the most money by pushing back against woke politics, is the most ­effective at it.

Not for nothing, Netflix has changed its guidelines around “artistic expression”.“We program for a diversity of audiences and tastes; and we let viewers decide what’s appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices,” says the newly released policy. “If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”

The great divide between the new puritans and people who find Gervais funny won’t narrow any time soon. And that means Gervais will keep getting richer because these zealots are gifts that keep on giving. Closer to home, for observers of Wilkinson, and any Australian comedians brave enough to mock her, almost every day is Christmas.