I'VE NEVER been clear what satire is or how it differs from other forms of humour.

It's often prefaced with the word "political", which opens a whole new can of burrowing invertebrates.

Indeed, satire is often thought merely to be humour about politics, though more important phenomena like pop music can also be satirised, which then again shades into simple impersonation.

Ah-ha, as it were. My attempt to treat satire seriously is turning into a joke. Let me, therefore, get rid of this white coat and put on this big red nose (no, madam, I was not wearing one already) and cut straight, if I may, all other things being equal, by and large, to the chase.

To me, intuitively and without looking anything up (far too busy to press a button on a computer), satire is simply drawing attention to the inherent absurdity in some people taking themselves seriously. Nothing more serious than politics, hence its conjunction with humour to produce, apparently, satire.

I witter in the wake of a call - in the media sense, not literally as in a euphonic phenomenon - by Jeremy Paxman of Westminsterland for more (political) satire. He meant on television, but we can widen the definition to include the internet and the eternal delight that is print.

Formerly the resident comedian at Newsnight, Jeremy claimed that decent, ordinary ratepayers everywhere in England and the Other Bits were weeping bitter tears of despair about the political process and had contempt for politicians.

Until recently, I wouldn't have known what he meant. I have esteemed our politicians by and large, while finding the voters infinitely more risible. I told you about the old woman who said about independence: "But what will happen after alicsammin dies?" And of the person on television who was worried about independence bringing economic uncertainty. He was selling The Big Issue.

You couldn't make it up. All our fates are in the hands of such people. No harmless, innocent politician would make such irresponsibly surreal remarks. Or so I thought. The referendum campaign has made me see things in a new light.

Labour MP Jim Murphy's claim that an egg was orchestrated officially by the Yes campaign was beyond satire. At least I thought it was, until I saw a tweet comparing the incident to the assassination of Martin Luther King.

Again - and this is the nub of satire; join me here in putting our fingers on it - you couldn't make it up. That's the truth of satire. Writers of thrillers and science-fiction would never dream up an egg-throwing incident followed by allegations of a deliberate ovum-based campaign conducted by deadly serious people working from sinister headquarters in Glasgow. It's up to reality to create such flapdoodle, and for satire merely to bookmark it.

Satire reports, with poker face, that the world is mad. It's seriously funny. It's why I cannot watch television news any more. It sounds just like satire. At the same time, as the Paxmeister remarks, actual satire has disappeared off our screens.

True, there's a show planned for BBC iPlayer on referendum night, featuring fabulous Frankie Boyle. But that'll be it till the next independence vote in December (sorry, folks, but it'll have to be staged again because so many people are going to spoil their ballot papers by instinctively putting a positive tick at "Yes" instead of the legitimate X; you read it here first).

As one of the few modern people with a computer, I can also exclusively reveal satire is thriving on yonder internet. It's not just tweets, where brevity is the soul of Twit. Check out BBC Scotlandshire, Dateline Scotland, and our own heraldscotland's Impolitic. The first two satirise broadcast news that, as we've noted, already sounds like satire. And so we come full circle.

Taken in the round, then, satire is the taking down of people taking themselves too seriously. Reactionaries can't do satire, because they're usually bitter and hateful, which is why Better No' has nothing to match the massive Yes outpourings on yon YouTube and elsewhere.

Shame really. But it's the truth. You couldn't make … well, you know the rest.