But there is no vestige of levity in recent sex scandals involving Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris. Rather than hypocritical politicians hoist on their own petards, these two were remorseless predators who exploited their celebrity and zany public personas to systematically abuse the impressionable and vulnerable. Despite the sickening scale of Savile's predations, these scandals can be compartmentalised: he and Harris and the others were thoroughly rotten individuals prowling the self-contained, otherworldly sphere of show business.
The implications of the latest sex scandals are far wider and therefore more disturbing.
A just-concluded investigation of paedophilia involving every police force in the UK resulted in 660 arrests. Only 39 of those arrested were registered sex offenders. This may be just the tip of the iceberg: investigators identified a further 10,000 individuals whom they suspect of dealing in or consuming child pornography.
And there's increasing evidence that a paedophile network centred on Parliament and the upper echelons of the civil service operated with impunity for several decades, secure in the knowledge that any attempt to investigate their activities would be stifled at birth.
While this sounds straight out of True Detective (albeit thus far without the ritual murders), there is some substance to it. It has emerged that 114 files relating to paedophiles in high places have disappeared and were presumably destroyed. They included a 40 page dossier compiled by a Tory MP and personally handed to the Home Secretary.
Liberal MP Cyril Smith weighed 184kg and, as enormously fat men tend to be, was regarded as a jolly, big-hearted, larger-than-life sort of fellow. In fact, he was the subject of no fewer than 144 complaints of abusive behaviour towards boys. Smith, who died in 2010, was never prosecuted even though police now admit the evidence against him was overwhelming.
The reverberations of this scandal have already shaken a few pillars of the establishment. Baroness Butler-Sloss, a pioneering figure in the British judiciary, was appointed to conduct an overarching review. The Government either didn't know or didn't care that, as Attorney-General, her late brother opted not to prosecute a senior civil servant who, despite apparently being a deputy director of MI6, was careless enough to leave an envelope full of child porn on a London bus. Butler-Sloss herself was already offside with child protection campaigners for overturning decisions authorising local authorities to share information on child sex offenders.
Not surprisingly, the Baroness was gone by lunchtime.
One wonders where it will end and what state Britain will be left in. Already erstwhile national treasure Stephen Fry has been hammered for criticising the open-ended nature of the investigations and championing the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Police, meanwhile, are increasingly concerned that they will be inundated to the point of dysfunction by the rising flood of allegations of historic abuse.
One thing seems certain: in 50 years' time West End audiences won't be tapping their toes to Jim'll Fix It: The Musical or The Predators of Parliament.
