There's an article in today's Evening Standard about good ol' Russell. Some woman whose daughter died of cancer was "horrified" by Russell's joke about "that kid who's away for a while in school and then you have a special assembly and they say don't mention he's always wearing that baseball cap", you may remember it.. I was paraphrasing.
Anyway, the paper's attempt to bitch about BB even more was neutered by Russell's eloquent comeback. Russell pointed out that(as we know from that interview Menty posted) his mum had cancer three times between his ages of 6 and 16, and that he uses humour as a weapon "sometimes it's the only weapon we have". He also pointed out that he didn't mention any specific illness. SO THERE.
I agree on the pandering to Cleo, btw. He was quite happy to let people call Dirk a grumpy old sod, but any reference to Cleo being mental was shot down.