The main challenge facing a court jester is that of keeping the heid. The last official jester in Britain, Muckle John, lost his job - but kept his head - when his boss, King Charles I, was beheaded in 1649. Several other jesters got it in the neck, literally, when they crossed the dangerous line between amusing and offending.

What prompts these musings is that England's first official jester for more than 350 years was appointed this week. Nigel Roder - professional name Kester the Jester - beat six rivals by juggling and joking his way to victory. The advertisement for the job read: ''Jester wanted. Must be mirthful and prepared to work summer weekends in 2005. Must have own outfit (with bells). Bladder on stick provided if required.''

''This is a real job,'' said Tracy Borman of English Heritage. ''He will have to amuse and provoke, although failure to do so will no longer risk beheading.'' Roder said he was proud to be No 1 national fool, though how he could claim that honour when Sven-Goran Eriksson is still around is a mystery.

The office of court jester has an honourable pedigree, stretching back to the early thirteenth century. With their colourful three-pronged hats and mock sceptres, the early jesters were simply fools whose slapstick routines probably seemed hilarious after gallons of mead had been consumed. Later jesters were extremely bright social commentators who were able to get away with a lot, not just because they were licensed by the court but because they were experts at reading the monarch's mood. Shakespeare's fools were rapier-tongued deflators of bombast who did hilarious take-offs of public figures, as well as indulging in clever wordplay.

Jesters were also given the role of reminding the monarch of his or her vulnerability and mortality. The bladder on the stick spoke of human frailty, and the grinning skull was the ghost that haunted the royal feast.

When Oliver Cromwell overthrew the monarchy in 1649, the court jester disappeared from court and country. Plain Mr Cromwell did not do humour. And who needed reminders of their mortality while he stalked the land?

Today's unlicensed iconoclasts and satirists who ridicule the pretensions of the powerful are still in danger of losing their heads in totalitarian countries. Taking the mickey out of Hitler or Stalin or Ceausescu was not advised. The knock at the door in the middle of the night was a terrifying summons for poets and satirists. In 21st-century Zimbabwe, it is not recommended to put Mr Mugabe's sense of humour to the test.

Jesters save the political and religious day for us. My all-time favourite is the incomparable Jonathan Swift, dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, who mocked the powerful to devastating effect. His brilliant attacks on political and ecclesiastical leaders who exploited the poor ensured that this particular joker in the pack would never gain a bishop's hat. Mr Kierkegaard of Denmark was another whose brilliance provoked complacent political leaders and manipulative prelates to uncontrollable fury.

In our contemporary, consensus-driven democracy, independent satire is more needed than ever. The problem confronting the ordinary jobbing satirist, though, is that modern political life is itself surreal. One prominent American columnist complained that he gave up writing satire when Henry Kissinger was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

There is still a role for the public jester, the oddball who points out the emperor's see-through Y-fronts. The opening of the new Scottish parliament cries out for the presence of an iconoclastic wit. Every party political conference should have a painted japester who outwits the control freaks and the

on-message, colour-co-ordinated, speaking clocks who send young men and women to war on spurious grounds.

Every procession of cardinals and archbishops at the Vatican should contain a man from the ministry of silly walks, wearing a frock, with lipstick and suspender belt. At one of the big Buddhist festivals in Bhutan, jesters with huge wooden phalluses mingle with the crowds as a reminder that spirituality is as flesh-and-blood earthbound as it is heavenly. Something tells me that this won't catch on at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

And in our death-denying culture, in which the shopping mall has replaced the temple, there should be an honoured place for the brilliant one who holds up a looking glass to our smoke-and-mirrors unblessed assumptions, and places a death-mask in our line of vision.

Meantime, Tonga's former court jester has agreed to pay $1m ((pounds) 547,000) to settle a legal dispute with the Pacific state. The island nation had accused the king's former jester, American national Jesse Bogdonoff, of mismanaging a $26m ((pounds) 14.2m) trust fund. Lawyers for the ex-jester - what a wonderful phrase - said: ''I think this settlement is a relief for everybody.'' The scandal is said to have caused great anguish for the 85-year-old king, who's not laughing any more.

Unlike many jesters in history, Mr Bogdonoff has done just enough to keep his head on his shoulders. But uneasy lies the head that wears the cap with bells.