STICKS and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me.

This, however, doesn’t apply to footballers.

These rough-hewn men, many of whom disguise their horny hands and hairy arms under a variety of expensive clothes and hideous tattoos, are exceedingly touchy if they are called unacceptable names by their fellow gladiators.

There is a continuous row about the Chelsea captain John Terry. There always is.

There is the ugly aggressiveness, boiling over into raw hate between Manchester United and Chelsea. And now even a referee has been accused of joining in.

What are these names which so upset the men of delicate sensitivities? Here the matter gets complicated. You can call a footballer, on or off the field, a pig or a stinker.

You can certainly question his parentage.

You can call him a bastard (even if he isn’t a bastard) or a f***** or a c***. He would bear these insults with equanimity and they would only be so much water off his sponsored shirt. But on no account must you call him a black bastard – or a white bastard, if it comes to that. No, not even if he is a bastard and happens to be black (or white as the case may be). If you commit this heinous crime of “racism,” our overpaid hero will run off in tears complaining to the authorities.

There is something strange about this, and even unmanly, and it reminds me of schooldays and the extreme derision heaped upon the boy who went crying to the teacher if another boy called him names. Stranger still is the fact that footballers will cheerfully kick the hell out of each other, causing even severe and career-ending injuries. Now that for me is truly hurtful and it should be penalised heavily and stamped out of the beautiful game altogether.

But name calling – is it so terrible?

This name-calling and the outrage it produces is not restricted to the football field. A rather surreal mood, an altered state of priorities, has descended upon our society and the way we live now. You can get away with all kinds of offences and misdemeanours, but don’t be guilty of “racism” – closely followed by that other mortal sin, “sexism” – or you’re surely for the chop.

Of course, I find it offensive when I hear people being abused. It is particularly hurtful to be abused oneself. But I find it hard – and nonsensical – to be asked to discriminate between one term of abuse and the next.

For example, I’d rather – if there were any choice in the matter – be insulted by the phrase “white trash” than find myself disdained as a “f****** s****hawk”. In fact, I’d rather suffer any invective that’s going round the block than be called a liar, a coward or a traitor.

Forgive me while I labour the point because – as sure as there are Yorkshiremen in Leeds – if I don’t, then I’ll be accused by all paid-up members of the politically-correct politburo of committing a racist offence.

Why and how has it come to this? Part of the answer is that there has been a revaluation of values throughout society over the last 40 years or so.

We used to conduct our lives according to traditions of etiquette and politeness. Now these things are despised as old-fashioned, fuddy-duddy and, worst of all, “elitist”. Instead, we have the phoney “crimes” of racism and sexism – only because we’ve forgotten our manners.