In the context of most everyday public transactions, nothing makes the heart sink like the words 'You can always write to our head office and register a complaint.' Most of us just slink away, angry, defeated and resigned.

However the truth is that, when done en masse, making a complaint can be a powerful tool. It can actually make a real difference. Hopefully a wider realisation of this will be the silver lining in the cloud of controversy caused by the whole BBC Ross/Brand farrago.

Via phone and email, 10,000 people have made known to the corporation their disgust at the Andrew Sachs radio broadcast. The BBC News led with this figure on its main 6pm news bulletin. It was a major component to the story. Only after this did the politicians weight in, presumably because they smelt a critical mass.

Making a complaint is the nearest the majority of the public ever gets to voicing its opinion. In some respects it is as near to a holding a referendum on a single issue that we will ever get.

It is an especially important instrument when it comes to voicing opposition to those who are responsible for setting the cultural tone of our society. It is in this area, after all, that most people feel particularly powerless.

Their feeling is justified. While there remains the sense (however degraded the practice might be now) that politicians can be chucked out of office for their acts, those who administer the cultural agenda are, for most people, invisible and untouchable.

The cultural establishment has, over the past decades, been remarkably successful in setting a tone of public discourse which brands public feelings of disgust, anger or violation as simply the ravings of the provincial and reactionary. 

This brand of nihilism - because that is what it is - makes those who feel affronted easy to mock. Columnists and commentators too can be easily dismissed as having axes to grind.

But ten, twenty or thirty thousand people bothering to complain starts to have an impact - especially when such complaints are made to bodies like the BBC, which rely on those same people to stump up the money for their very existence. It makes them nervous if nothing else.  

As the phone companies say, Reach Out and Touch Somebody Today. Complain.