he was great at the BAFTAS and makes me wonder - has Jonathan Ross' light been finally extinguished by the Mail?

It's been extinguished by himself, surely? He's got the most atrocious attitude in showbiz.

Well, as Ross' first television employer (he was junior researcher on the original No Limits) I think he had some great abilities; then copied Letterman for The Last Resort and declined since then with flashes of brilliance when he covered his real passions (Japanese movies etc).
But the Mail deliberately set out to destroy him and the weak BBC - whose backbone was removed by the Birt regime - allowed populist tabloids to dictate their employee support.

Well, the loathesome Mail did its best, that's quite true, but I found Ross's radio and TV shows horribly self-indulgent for quite a while before that. And, even after the silly 'scandal,' he could have emerged looking very employable but instead he's behaved like some kind of sulky teenager, making a point of saying he doesn't have any regrets at all. Bearing in mind his toe-curlingly pervy interviews with female stars who clearly didn't find him amusing or attractive, and his deluded view of himself as some kind of stand-up comedian instead of someone who relied on good scriptwriters, that attitude strikes me as depressingly immature - and imprudent - for someone at his stage in his career. So while the Brand thing was hyped up by the tabloids, he'd been an accident waiting to happen for several years, IMHO, and I'm really bemused by his response, because he DID used to be an appealing presenter who, when he dared to just be himself, had some talent.