Grab your lifejackets, folks, because the Good Ship BBC is officially sinking. For the best part of a century, the Beeb has been the proud home of the Boat Race – a relationship dating all the way back to their first radio broadcast of the contest in 1927, a time when a ‘trigger warning’ was just a friendly bit of advice from your local gamekeeper. But no longer.

Why? Because the BBC’s new head of sport, Alex Kay-Jelski, showed “very little enthusiasm” for the event – one of the most iconic fixtures of the British sporting calendar, no less – deeming the historic clash between Oxford and Cambridge on the Thames as “elitist”. Heaven forbid the national broadcaster showcases a 200-year-old tradition involving two of our finest and most prestigious universities. But no. That’s far too proudly British for the modern BBC. ‘Tradition’, it seems, is a dirty word over there – right up there ‘basic impartiality’ and ‘good comedy’.

The company is showing such a bewildering willingness to stick two fingers up to their own heritage that it makes me wonder: will the rot stop here?

We’ve already seen the Six Nations bleed over to other channels. Are they going to surrender Wimbledon because strawberries and cream are too bourgeois? Will they bin the World Cup to avoid broadcasting the St George’s Cross – an image apparently more terrifying to BBC executives than the dictionary definition of a woman?

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It’s an absolute farce. We are being legally extorted – under threat of a criminal record, no less – to fork out £180 a year for a TV licence. For what, exactly? To watch them systematically dismantle every ounce of British sporting heritage we hold dear? To fund endless repeats of Strictly Come Dancing and dramas from Victorian England where the five main characters are – of course – all different races, historical accuracy be damned.

Let’s not pretend that any of this is a surprise either. For years, the BBC have been slipping into a virtue-signalling, tradition-despising, reputation-destroying sludge from which there may be no escape.

Years of behind-the-scenes scandals and Gary Lineker’s terrorist-sympthasing, anti-Semitic bile has cemented the BBC as little more than a shambolic, self-sabotaging mess. It’s a circus run by clowns who are so busy looking down their noses at the British public that it’s no wonder the company is following their gaze: straight into the gutter.

Ditching the Boat Race is just a symptom of the wider disease: a complete and utter disdain for the people who pay their wages. They sneer at our traditions, roll their eyes at our heritage and scoff at our values – and we shouldn’t put up with it anymore.

Whether the Boat Race pulls in mega viewing figures anymore is besides the point. It’s one of the few longstanding sporting spectacles that brings people together – a golden thread in our national tapestry that actually makes Britain, well, Britain.

If the national broadcaster no longer sees the value in preserving the cultural heartbeat of this country, then why on earth should this country keep footing the bill to keep their lights on?

Licence fee payers aren’t just being short-changed, we’re being taken for absolute mugs. It’s high time we ended this state-sponsored extortion racket and gave the British public a full, unreserved refund.

Cut the cord, defund the lot of them and cast them adrift into the ruthless commercial waters they despise so much. Without our mandated millions keeping them afloat, I give the Good Ship BBC a fortnight before it sinks without a trace.