UNDER normal circumstances, ITV’s This Morning is fertile ground for mickey-taking.

Never once have I refused a playful dig at Rylan Clark-Neal or Ferne McCann filling their showbiz news with stories about themselves.

It’s the show that gave Richard Blackwood and Paul Ross live rectal examinations, booked The Osmonds to test high-street leaf blowers and revels in features such as that “bondage for beginners masterclass”.

But, although I don’t say it often enough, it fills the daytime brief perfectly and handles the serious stuff well.

So it was on Wednesday when they had Noel Edmonds on the sofa peddling his ludicrous views that cancer is caused by “negative energy” and can be cured by a box emitting “pulsed electromagnetism”.

This all stemmed, of course, from his tweet asking a cancer sufferer: “Is it possible your ill-health is caused by your negative attitude?”

Far from being figures of fun, Noel Edmonds and his kind are dangerous.

They dress up mumbo jumbo as hard science and invent preposterous notions that, conveniently for them, rely more on faith and beliefs than on anything actually anchored in reality.

The warning signs he’d go full David Icke, short of donning a turquoise tracksuit, have been there for years.

He has long believed in cosmic ordering and is convinced he’s followed around by the souls of his dead parents in the form of two melon-sized celestial orbs.

And anyone who caught Sky1’s 2008-09 series Noel’s HQ will recall just how unhinged he can be.

We could simply ignore him. And, of course, everyone is entitled to their beliefs.

But the danger I spoke of is that some poor, gullible, desperate cancer patient will heed his advice, abandon proven treatments and buy that miracle box he’s promoting.

So it was crucial for This Morning, having given him a platform, to debunk his claims.

And the dismantling was beautiful to behold.

Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby began it, getting him to admit he’s known the director of the company behind the £2,300 EMPpad medical gizmo for 30 years and exposing him as little more than a snake oil salesman.

They branded him “insensitive” for his tweet and then, with Noel on the ropes, had him side-stepping the question: “Would you ask that to a child who had cancer?” like Maradona carving through the England football team in the 1986 World Cup: “I think you’re missing the point here.”

It was resident medic Dr Ranj Singh who delivered the knockout blow on the issue of negative thinking causing cancer: “That’s really unfair and a simplified way of putting it.

“And let’s talk about what we are calling ‘energy’. Unfortunately the good science and the evidence doesn’t stack up, it doesn’t support that.”

Noel’s reply was the final straw for me: “I agree, we don’t understand energy. That’s why we’ve got quantum physics, that’s why we’ve got a bunch of people in CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) trying to understand it.”

In fact, his attempt to validate this “negative energy” nonsense with the science undertaken at the Large Hadron Collider made me realise an important truth.

Sometimes, just sometimes, giving Rylan a friendly pummelling won’t suffice.

Spudulikes…

Tim Roth’s perfectly measured performance in BBC1’s Reg.

Naked Lunch and Caravan Palace rounding off a brilliant Tonight at the London Palladium series.

ITV4’s superb 1: Life on the Limit documentary.

Mark Wright’s 30-yard Soccer Aid screamer (but where was the wall?).

Extra Gear host Rory Reid’s backhanded compliment to Stephen K Amos: “You’ve been as entertaining as I was expecting.”

Love Island playing Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries to Nathan’s climactic under-the-duvet “leg humping”.

And the ITV2 show’s banter on Scott and Malia’s first date. “What do you do for a living?” “I’m a singer-songwriter.” “What do you sing then?” “Songs.”

Spuduhates…

Peaky Blinders’ viewers being asked to believe Tommy would shop his entire family.

Z-listers flooding into Big Brother in a desperate bid for Y-list fame.

EastEnders resurrecting Christine, Les the undertaker’s Ruth Langsford alter-ego.

C5 awarding Up Late With Rylan an hour-long Best Bits on 5* channel.

Laughable BBC2 drama Versailles’s dialogue: “You think it’s hard being a king? Try being a king’s brother for a day.”

Love Island’s Rykard going all Valentino to Rachel: “Seriously, you are the bangers.”

And Chris Evans seemingly claiming credit for the advent of on-demand TV in dismissing Top Gear’s lousy overnight ratings as “irrelevant”. Would they still be irrelevant if it was pulling in 5million overnight viewers, Chris?