Nor did he mention the necessity for settling defamation cases in a court of law Instead, he presided over his own kangaroo court. He declared me guilty, passed sentence of deportation within 24 hours, and commanded his security forces to execute the order.Later that evening, Sara and I were visited in our hideaway by Fred M’membe, bearing a bottle of Black Label My admiration for him rose even further. He also brought the news that The Post had hired a lawyer to apply for a judicial review of the detention order. The next morning, I learned that a judge had stayed the deportation order “Stay in hiding,” advised Fred. “We cannot be sure that this government will obey a court order. We have previous evidence that they consider themselves above the law.”How right he was. Shikapwasha declared that the deportation demand remained in force, as did the manhunt As I write, the court case is under way.

I’m supposed to be there, but if I went I’d be arrested on the High Court steps and bundled out of the country.I am accused of insulting every Zambian, by supposedly calling them animals. One might just as well claim that a person who says that “the nation is going to the dogs” has called every citizen a dog.Today, The Post published my latest satirical piece, as usual Under the heading, “Baboon”.. “Yeah but.. no but.. ohmigod… shut up!!!” might not seem the most persuasive of retorts to those that see BBC3 as a self-indulgent waste of £80m of licence-payers’ money. But the words of the almost incomprehensible tracksuit-wearing teenage girl Vicky Pollard have proved a surprisingly eloquent justification for the existence of the Corporation’s youngest television channel, which will be celebrating its first birthday next month

“Yeah but.. no but.. ohmigod… Which must come as a relief to Stuart Murphy, 32, the BBC’s youngest network controller, who has spent the past 11 months trying to convince Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, that the channel is worth persevering with.The minister rejected BBC3′s initial blueprint after being unconvinced that the network would be sufficiently ground-breaking to justify the public expense. The station’s future is still under review and Murphy is currently drawing up a document for Jowell, laying out its achievements in its first year.

“I’ve had a couple of conversations with her and she seems great, an intelligent woman and very supportive,” he claims. “Her main thrust is that you’ve got to take creative risks, which is absolutely what I’m about and what I get off on.” Murphy’s own assessment of his first year isn’t entirely convincing “I think it has been good actually.. erm… well not good actually, I think it has been really good,” he says.He faces up to his difficult task from his glass-walled office on the sixth floor of Television Centre, where he works alongside the controllers of the more established channels and Jana Bennett, the BBC’s director of television.Murphy can point out that his schedule of original programmes has landed 13 television awards and a further 24 nominations. But the channel has had more than its share of teething problems and Murphy was forced to overhaul that schedule completely only months after launching because viewers complained it was a muddle. He now has four million people tuning in every week, with a larger audience in the target age group of 25 to 34 than the rival E4 (which, it must be remembered, is paid for only by those who watch it).

BBC3 attracts a 1.3 per cent audience share, rising to 2 per cent among its target age group.Nevertheless, the only four programmes on the channel to have achieved audiences of more than 700,000 last year were EastEnders, Absolutely Fabulous, Fame Academy and 24 – none of them a BBC3 product, and all intended as bait to lure viewers to the fledgling network. “It was always going to be a really difficult channel to launch,” admits Murphy. “It’s going into a market where the commercial model for digital channels is single genre and ours is multi-genre.”When Jowell makes her appraisal, she may well conclude that BBC3 has been rather more successful in some genres than others in achieving its stated ambition of reaching, “discerning, media-savvy young viewers.”Comedy has given BBC3 its highest profile. The hidden-camera show 3 Non Blondes failed to impress critics but is soon to be screened by a leading American network and even prompted an enquiry from Jennifer Lopez, who wanted to buy the US rights.