IF comedy genius lies in being ahead of the game then Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield have just won the light entertainment equivalent of the UEFA Champions League.

Six years ago, in their Harry & Paul show, the duo played a pair of grizzled football legends, complete with mullets and satsuma tans, being interviewed by a woman reporter, “Abbey Wogan”. The reporter asks them questions, only to be met with silence and sullen glances anywhere but in her direction. She persists until one of them cracks.

“Where’s the bloke darling?” says Whitehouse’s character.

“Yeah, where’s the bloke love,” chips in the other.

“Sorry, what bloke?”

“The bloke we chat to about football, love.”

“I’m the bloke.”

There follows a minute of their robotic “where’s the bloke” ramblings until Whitehouse’s character kills the interview with: “Get the bloke, darling. Two sugars.”

Even after all these years, the sketch (which you can see on YouTube) is still funny because, in the wise words of Homer Simpson, it is true. We had perhaps forgotten how true until dropped into the strange world of one David Moyes, Sunderland manager and Scot, a world in which dinosaurs still roam and get paid very handsomely to do so (£3m a year in Moyes’s case, says the website msn.com).

Moyes was being interviewed by Vicki Sparks, a BBC Newcastle and Radio Five Live reporter (salary unknown, but likely to be a world away from that of the manager whose club is inching closer to relegation). She asked whether he had felt under more pressure with the club’s owner, Ellis Short, being in the stadium to watch the goalless draw with Burnley. “No, none at all,” Moyes answered.

He could have left it at that. He should have left it at that. Instead, believing himself to be out of microphone range, he said: “You were just getting a wee bit naughty at the end there, so just watch yourself. You still might get a slap even though you’re a woman. Careful the next time you come in.” No “where’s the bloke, love?” This was much worse. Sexist, patronising, vaguely menacing, if it happened in many another workplace it ought to have resulted in someone from HR waving a red card or a P45.

But this is Planet Football. Like LP Hartley’s past, Planet Football is a foreign country; they do things differently there. On Planet Football, Moyes believes it is enough that he “profoundly regrets” the comments, that he has apologised to “the girl” (she is 29), who accepted his apology, and he does not believe he should lose his job. Nothing more to see here folks, move along.

Except others, rightly, do not see it like that. Critics of Moyes’s comments included Wearside Women in Need (who called the remarks dreadful and appalling), Women in Football, Labour’s Shadow Sports Minister Rosena Allin-Khan (“Moyes cannot get away with these sexist threats”); and Gary Lineker (“inexcusable”). The Football Association has now asked Moyes to explain himself. It will then decide if he should face disciplinary proceedings.

Has Moyes simply been unfortunate in saying a stupid thing under pressure and being caught? Does the fact that he has apologised mean we should move on with his comments having no consequences? No. If this was the first time the game had been called before the court of public opinion for its attitudes towards women then fair enough, cut the sap some slack. But come on. After Andy Gray and Richard Keys’s comments about a woman referee? After the Malky Mackay text messages scandal? After the offensive emails of Richard Scudamore, the Premier League’s then chief executive? If football does not think it has a serious problem with women then the ba’ of decency is truly burst.

Most of these cases follow a familiar pattern. First, the story leaks. It was two weeks before the Moyes story was broken by the Daily Star, despite the footage coming from a pool camera and therefore accessible by several broadcasters. Second, the man at the centre apologises and he, or someone on his behalf, insists it is totally out of character. In Mackay’s case his agent, Raymond Sparkes, described him as “a good man, from a good family, with good values”. Finally, no long-term harm is done to the man’s career or earning potential. Keys and Gray still earn a crust in broadcasting (Keys was also on Twitter in January toasting his Sky Sports sacking after what he called “one of the biggest carve-ups in TV history”); Mackay has been appointed the Scottish Football Association’s performance director; and Mr Scudamore is now executive chairman of the Premier League.

But then it is little wonder there are no lingering consequences for the lumbering dunderheads of football. When a man running for president of the United States can be caught on tape boasting about grabbing women “by the *****” and still be elected to the highest office in the land then any notion of fairness and propriety has clearly dived head first into the shredder.

In Mackay’s case, the League Managers’ Association described his messages as “banter” (it later apologised). Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, using the now familiar script, said his remarks did not represent the man she knew and people should move on to the “important issues” facing the world.

No-one is saying that the biggest problem faced by women today is men who can’t keep crass thoughts to themselves. But the fact that they still have those thoughts, and keep getting away with expressing them, is just plain depressing. Football is a multi-billion pound global business. If it were any other organisation that regarded its female customers the way some managers and players look on women it would have been bankrupted years ago. And let us not even start on homophobia, racism, and all the other “isms” that still find a happy home in the chants. If the entire sport was a single team its mascot would look like Bernard Manning.

As the football agent Rachel Anderson told the BBC yesterday, Moyes’s comments are just one tiny example of what happens in football and life generally. So perhaps all those offended by his comments – men and women – should thank the Sunderland manager for doing us a favour. As tedious as it is to keep making the basic plea for women to be treated the same as men this latest row reminds us that sexism never goes away, it just finds a new stone to hide under.