"I have a friend who is still, despite my urgings to take up something easier and less stressful – mining, perhaps, or heifer-slitting at an abattoir – a teacher. At the moment she is trying to mount a defence against a wave of bullying that seems to have begun without any readily identifiable cause and is breaking over several year groups at once.

Because it is not stemming from a handful of wrong ’uns who can be caned, talked to severely, counselled, sent to the Priory or whatever it is they do to wrong ’uns these days, and the few individuals they have found seem to be bullies in one group and victims in another, the teachers are trying to deal with the school’s problem en masse – assemblies devoted to discussing the issue, and whole lessons spent trying to explain Why Bullying Is Wrong.

The main problem the teachers have, my friend explains, is that there is no example of how things might be done instead. At first, I didn’t know what she meant. Adults don’t bully each other as a matter of course, do they? Except for all those times at work when a boss exerts their control unfairly or too extensively over their underlings. Or those in abusive relationships that begin with what you might call bullying and end, generally, in physical or mental violence. Apart from them.

When you take a step back and look at the wider culture, it rapidly becomes clear what my friend means. Bullying abounds – with the recent trolling horrors on Twitter and the stories of persecutions ending in suicide on Facebook and other social networks – in cyberspace. Much of television, too, depends on bullying for its LOLs and ratings. It is the lifeblood of shows like Big Brother and I’m A Celebrity... Gordon Ramsay, the king of the playground, is back soon with a new f****** series – need I f****** say f****** more? Gregg Wallace and John Torode shout the contestants down on MasterChef (listen, darlings – if you don’t feel it’s macho enough for you, go and present something else. Or join the marines. Just stop aurally assaulting me). And of course anything Simon Cowell touches depends on the exploitation of weakness and vulnerability in others – he gets paid around £60m a year for doing so.

Lucy Mangan: "We live in a culture of bullying"