here's a different perspective on the debate from Jan Moir of the Daily
Mail - copied more for amusement than anything else
Not enough women on panel shows? Don't make me laugh!
Who is funnier, men or women? After thousands of years of civilisation,
you would think we had moved on from this stone age level of gender
debate, but no. Here we go again.
This week it is the turn of Victoria Wood, who says radio and television
panel shows are 'too male-dominated' .
The comedienne, once the highest-paid funny woman in this country, feels
that females struggle to compete in these 'testosterone fuelled' shows.
Women are just as funny as men, says Wood.
So why can't they get a fair crack of the on air comedy whip? Well,
maybe it isn't fair, but who cares?
There are many, many thousands of groups of women in this world who are
deserving of our sympathy for their sexist plights,
but British
comediennes with an airtime grievance sure ain't one of them.
And anyway, perhaps the lack of women on programmes such as Never Mind
The Buzzcocks, QI or The News Quiz has nothing to do with female guests
supposedly not being funny enough.
Isn't it far more likely that they are just too smart to want to be on
such dreary, egocentric panel shows in the first place? Especially if
they are fronted, as they always seem to be, by that blowsy, arch
boy-bore Stephen Fry?
My idea of hell? Being forced to watch or listen to endless re-runs of
Fry and a swarming smarm of his posturing fellow He-Comics as they try
to out-funny each other.
There is a whole dank substrata of the entertainment industry that seems
to be devoted to worshipping the supposedly ad hoc bon mots that drip
from the lips of Jimmy Carr, Jack Dee, Alan Davies, Phil Jupitus, Frank
Skinner, Russell Brand, Sean
Hughes and - coming up fast in the outside
lane - James Corden, who is far too pleased with himself for comfort.
Really. I've heard funnier weather announcements than Alan Davies in
full comic flight.
And men like Jupitus and Hughes are only ever seen behind the desks of
panel shows. Have they even got legs, I wonder?
Who finds these men amusing, except a few male undergraduates who have
never been kissed?
Which makes it all the more surprising that someone such as Victoria
Wood feels excluded and wants to join in the panel game action.
Surely the woman behind Dinner Ladies and Acorn Antiques is far too
witty for the kind of adolescent banter that dominates these shows? I
bet they have asked her a million times and she has always turned them
down.
Yet Wood's complaint echoes the one made by Mariella Frostrup last year.
Despite, or perhaps because of, appearing on the show
herself, Frostrup
felt women were only invited to appear as a token presence to be
ridiculed by the 'testosterone- driven' team captains, Ian Hislop and
Paul Merton.
That phrase again! Look, ladies. What most of us demand of comedy,
whether it is testosterone or oestrogen-driven, is that it is funny.
Sadly, the funniest thing about Mariella Frostrup - surely tokenism's
ultimate token woman - is her insistence that we take her seriously as
an intellectual.
Ultimately, why do women such as Wood and Frostrup waste time
complaining that the entry policy on panel shows is sexist?
It is rather like a battalion of deranged, angry women beating down the
door of a gentlemen's club only to find, once inside, a cache of old
duffers supping turtle soup and complaining about their prostates. Was
it worth it? Of course not.
Surely it is beneath them and their feminist wish for comedy equality
at
all costs. Why drag ourselves down to the level of Jimmy Carr?
Yet, increasingly, any form of perceived exclusion - from politics to
panel shows - seems to rob women of any common sense.
They go berserk! 'Let us in,' they shriek, without contemplating whether
they really want to be inside this corroded comedy world in the first
place.
Sometimes it is not what is sexist, but what is significant that is
really important.
In the meantime, what do you call a really intelligent, funny,
quick-witted, hilarious man on a panel show?
A rumour.
Boom, and may I say it again, boom.