Saying sorry can do wonders for your rehabilitation - especially if you blame outside forces for your transgressions. So I hope footballer Ched Evans, as he peruses this week's job advertisements in his local newspaper, will find time to learn the lessons of a similarly odious, if forgiven, man: Fashion designer John Galliano. The unrepentant rapist learning from the repentant racist.

Evans has apologised not for what he did but for the "effects" that his rape has had on his victim. If he appeals, the precise reasons for this stance may emerge. In the meantime, he is a social and professional pariah, a man who is being hounded by a braying mob from every conceivable work opportunity for which he is skilled. Not even the justice system, which put him behind bars for almost two years, is enough to satisfy those who believe his crime was so vile that he shouldn't be given a second chance.

By contrast, the man who makes pretty frocks was this week welcomed back with open arms by sycophantic luvvies who insist forgiveness is the only decent way to treat those who have apologised for their truly upsetting crimes.

And yet what has Galliano apologised for? Being an antisemite, or merely spouting hateful antisemitic comments while under the influence of drink and drugs? We can call Evans a rapist, even though he insisted during his trial that his drunken victim was a willing participant in their sordid encounter. But can I call Galliano an antisemite? Am I able to echo a fellow darling of the fashion clique, Vidal Sassoon, who once memorably said that: "It's OK saying sorry but when you are drunk you say what you really feel"?

Is it enough, as so many giddy, excitable fashion journalists clearly think as the great man returned this week with a new collection, for a man to apologise not for what he said but for saying these things in a drink-and-drug-fuelled fug of madness? He has done his penance, they plead. He's really very charming, they cry. He's so cuddly with the magazine magnates that the rest of us worship, we really should allow him back into the gang, they insist.

Personally, I find both men repulsive. But if there are kind-hearted souls who want to employ them because they have served their time in isolation, have sort-of apologised and are still good at what they do - kicking a ball and sewing a thread - then, that's fine. I'm not party to it but I accept that it's right to give people another chance.

But it is extreme hypocrisy to suggest the racist can be forgiven but the rapist can't. Both men have suffered for their appalling acts and so both, reasonably, should be rehabilitated. In the Observer newspaper last Sunday, fashion journalist Melanie Rickey, wife of fashion PR guru Mary Portas, wrote an astonishingly gushing page about the thrill of seeing ''fragile poet'' Galliano's new comeback collection and that ''forgiveness is coming from powerful places'' even - incredibly - the Chief Rabbi, she implied. Six pages later, the paper's brilliant columnist, Catherine Bennett suggested Ched Evans should be treated the same as any celebrity convicted of ''discernible sleazebaggery… where clemency might be mistaken for approval''. She used the example of film director Roman Polanski as someone forgiven for having sex with a minor but it could equally apply to her colleague's inappropriate hero-worship of a man who, let's not forget (and perhaps Melanie has because she omitted this in her fawning profile) screamed ''f****** ugly dirty Jewish b******'' in a Parisian bar before telling two women their ancestors should have been ''gassed'', and ''I love Hitler''. He was handed a £2.60 fine. Yes, the decimal point's in the right place.

I'm not trying to compare the crimes - of course, violence against women is far worse than verbal abuse, no matter what stimulants are involved. I'm trying to compare our reaction to them. Role model who engages in rather meaningless and occasionally thuggish activity in a rarified bubble with lots of other men? Get lost. Role model who engages in rather meaningless activity with lots of women in a rarified world of champagne, air-kisses and self-congratulation? Welcome back.