The BBC"s arrogance, rank amateurism, and contempt for the actualitie is set to cost you, and each one of the 23m people with a TV licence about £335 each. In a nutshell, their woke idiocy = your money. Because if Donald Trump's extraordinary $10bn legal action against the UK’s bloated, anachronistic, and decidedly average state broadcaster is successful that's how much you'll be shelling out.

Yep, cancel that cheeky winter sun break in Turkey, you’ll need the money to pay for the BBC’s lies. And we know they are lies because the BBC bosses have told us so. Quick refresher: The BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Panorama doctored and spliced video to make it appear Trump called for violent insurrection in the 2021 Capitol Hill riot.

He did not.

Even the BBC has reported “In Trump's speech he said: ‘We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.’ More than 50 minutes later in the speech, he said: ‘And we fight. We fight like hell.’

“In the Panorama programme the clip shows him as saying: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol... and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell."

It cost the jobs of Tim Davie (BBC Director-General) and Deborah Turness (Head of News) who both resigned from the BBC in November.

The BBC’s chairman Samir Shah has already apologised for Panorama’s “error of judgment” saying that it “did give the impression of a direct call for violent action”.

But this has not been enough for Trump who smells blood after the BBC played so moronically into his fake news agenda.

Could this colossal crisis - entirely of the BBC’s own making - hasten the end of the ridiculously out-dated mandatory tax that is the licence fee? Fingers crossed.

There is a creeping narrative, peddled largely by his enemies, that Trump’s case is unwinnable and is actually just mischief-making designed to discombobulate the Beeb and put a shot across the bows of those who would discredit him.

Oh it will definitely do that.

But why unwinnable? Florida libel laws state only that an action for defamation need only contain a False Statement of Fact, it must have been published, the perpetrator must have shown carelessness or malice, and the result must have caused reputational damage.

Seems all present and correct to me.

Anyone who thinks Trump isn’t in this to win big money must have missed his case against CBS which netted him $16m and a similar defamation case against ABC News which won him $15m.

The problem for media companies who libel very very rich men is that that even if there was no case - and in this instance there very much is - they can tie up lawyers for years and years in a Jarndyce vs Jarndyce way, crippling and potentially bankrupting the defendant.

And the BBC, despite trousering almost £6bn-a-year in licence fees and commercial activities is not cash rich. This is not a fight the BBC wants - it seems whatever happens the BBC loses - money or reputation, and probably both.

The Panorama mistruth emerged from a report on BBC bias written by Michael Prescott, who spent three years as an independent external adviser to the broadcaster’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC).

The “accidental error” defence likely to be put forward by the BBC would of course carry so much more water if the occasions of peddling a leftist, anti-Trump agenda were not legion.

Prescott’s leaked memo also produced evidence of the BBC’s Arabic service’ bias over its coverage of the war in Gaza, and of “effective censorship” of the BBC’s coverage of the transgender debate.

More pertinently Prescott, one of two independent editorial advisers sitting on the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee at the time, watched the Panorama programme and was struck by its “distinctly anti-Trump stance”, with 10 Trump critics featured against just one supporter.

This somewhat holes any Beeb “fair and balanced” argument below the waterline.

In truth I hope Trump is not successful - because it just means you and me shelling out for BBC idiocy.

And in truth the $10bn figure is a headline grabber and not likely to ever be realised (actually split over a $5bn for defamation and $5bn for violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act).

But make no mistake this will not be cost neutral.

Expect a settlement counted in millions, perhaps tens of millions.

And expect the same numbers to be calling for the ending of the licence fee.

If the Beeb wants to play woke politics they can do it on their dollar, not ours.