The new two-part documentary, Stephen Fry:

Out There (Monday, BBC Two, 9pm) is about homophobia around the world, but Stephen Fry is not necessarily the best person to point out to other countries what they are doing wrong. There is too much of the British empire about him, too much of the colonial master who thinks he knows best. Well spoken and well armed with bons mots, he is like a gunboat that is a bit rusted and sagging and has been sent out do ­British business abroad.

Not surprisingly, some of the people he goes to see in other countries, particularly those that have only relatively recently shaken off colonial rule, resent the arrival of the British know-it-all. One of them, a government minister in Uganda, tells Fry to stop interfering in the affairs of his country, which on the face of it is a perfectly fair point. And then you ­realise this is Robert Mugabe's trick in Zimbabwe too - blame the old ­colonial power to distract attention from the behaviour of the colony.

In Uganda's case, the behaviour is disgusting: a blatant attempt by the government to make itself popular by telling lies about gay people. They are also considering a new law that would make homosexuality punishable by death and require every citizen to surrender to the authorities anyone they know to be gay within 24 hours.

As Fry found out, this has resulted in a part-sinister, part-hilarious culture in which government ministers promote the most ridiculous untruths. Particularly stupid was Simon Lokodo, the minister of integrity and ethics, who Fry deflated with great skill. Fry seems to have realised you can try to demolish a ­homophobe's arguments with facts, but, like ­someone who believes in creationism or crystal healing, they will cling to their faith. A much better strategy is to use humour to expose them - human rights usually change to the sound of laughter.

Some of the younger generation in Uganda are already doing this and openly mocking their leaders, but the danger is we forget to take the danger seriously and assume most of the world will continue its benign progress towards gay rights. Fry's point is that countries like Uganda, and Russia, are now at serious risk of going into reverse.

Even in Britain, says Fry, no assumptions should be made that all will be well. We do have the remarkable sight of a Tory Prime Minister fighting hard for gay marriage and survey after survey showing widespread acceptance of gay relationships as equal to heterosexual ones. But as Fry pointed out, gay rights are a remarkably recent achievement (in Scotland, for example, homosexuality was not decriminalised until 1980). And only the other day, a survey also found that one in six gay people have been the victim of a homophobic hate crime in the UK in the past three years. One in six. In supposedly progressive, lovely, understanding Britain. As Stephen Fry says, we must always be on our guard. Somebody out there hates us.