The Spectator - February 08, 2018

ROD LIDDLE

Sometimes men deserve to be paid more

which the question was posed: can women

really be funny? I thought this might prove

time for some laughs. Hell, of course they

can be funny — they’re frequently hilarious.

Just give them a map, or watch them park-

ing. But the comedian, the least humorous

person on Planet Earth including Philip

Hammond, just screeched back: ‘That’s not

funny! You shouldn’t even ask the ques-

tion!’ Perhaps the woman comedian was

approaching her menses and thus pos-

sessed of an irrational fury. If so, I think the

presenter, the excellent Sarah Montague,

should have let us all know. ‘And joining

us on the line from Hades is Roz Harridan,

who is about to come on.’

I say Today was an entirely women-only

zone, but it wasn’t quite. At the end of the

show they read out the names of the pro-

gramme editors and studio producer — and

there was a bloke’s name there. As a for-

mer boss of the show, I had a guess at why

this would be. When I was there the staff

were pretty much split 50-50 between men

and women, perhaps with a slight female

bias. And women were represented equal-

ly throughout each of the BBC’s ludicrous

grading system on the programme.

But in my time, the male producers

earned considerably more than the female

producers. Why was this? Institutionalised

sexism and unfairness on the part of me, the

editor? No. The staff on Today work three

kinds of shifts. A tiny minority work a con-

genial nine-to-five shift on a planning desk.

But the rest of the producers do either an

11-hour day or a 13-hour night. Those night

shifts are a killer, literally and metaphori-

cally. Working through the night is seriously

injurious to health and can be catastrophic

for family life — and so the extra money

paid to the people who did these horrible

shifts seems to me entirely just.

Now, both sexes were meant to do the

night shift —after all, you can’t put a decent

edition of Today out without a team work-

ing overnight. But during my time, more and

more women presented compelling (to the

BBC) reasons for why they couldn’t work

overnight — mostly, but by no means exclu-

sively, because of child care. And so they were

made exempt. One after another came to me

and said: ‘I’m pregnant, can’t do nights, sorry.’

Or, ‘I’ve got kids — can’t do nights’. Or even

simply — ‘The doctor says I can’t do nights’.

The Today hand-over meeting between

the two teams was at eight o’clock in the

evening. And I would watch as the largely

female day team greeted the sallow, red-

eyed, zombified young men turning up for

their third of three consecutive night shifts.

I ought to add that some women were happy

to do nights, but far fewer. So that’s why

men, back in 2003, earned more money than

women: they did the same job, but at a dif-

ferent, much less congenial, time.

And so after three hours of women-only

interviews on the To d ay programme last

Tuesday morning, perhaps the most reve-

latory and informative nugget of informa-

tion came right at the end, just before the

pips: they had a bloke working overnight,

because that’s what blokes do. And very few

people will have picked it up.

A great shame, really, because it is just

one — among a million — examples as to

why the gender pay gap is a myth, a fabrica-

tion. There is an earnings gap between men

and women, but not a pay gap. Do the same

job as men and you will be paid the same

amount of money.

SPECTATOR.CO.UK/RODLIDDLE

The argument continues online.

I

t is 100 years since women got the vote
and I have been joining in the celebra-
tions, on public transport — lightly tap-
ping attractive women on the knee or gently
massaging their lovely shoulders and saying,
cheerfully, ‘Well done, babes!’ Some react
with anger and irritation to my heartfelt con-
gratulations, especially when I ask for their
phone numbers so that we might discuss suf-
frage further — which is, I suppose, an indi-
cation they did not really want the vote in
the first place. Certainly it imposes a terrible
pressure upon them — they are forced, every
five years, to make a clear decision.
The statistics suggest many resent this
imposition deeply, with women twice as like-
ly as men to remain ‘don’t knows’ until the
final minute: you can see them all, on poll-
ing days, making their way to the booth in
a pretty little cloud of confusion. They are
actually more likely to vote than men, and
much less likely to know what they are vot-
ing about or for. I think, then, that this rep-
resents progress of a kind. It is also 100 years
since working-class men got the vote, but
nobody seems terribly bothered about that.
The BBC has been in one of its fairly fre-
quent states of oestrus over the event (much
as it was when Nelson Mandela died and the
organisation wore black armbands and kept
showing black people singing ‘Nkosi Sikelel’
iAfrika’, which means‘Shoot the white farm-
er and rape his wife’, I think). I took part
in a debate on the World at One about
the #MeToo business, but I was up against
four women, so was restricted in attempt-
ing to promulgate my considered thesis
that #MeToo is basically affluent, entitled
women whining about next to nothing.
The next day the Today programme was
an exclusive women-only zone — present-
ed and produced by women and with only
female guests, an interesting idea presum-
ably taken from the BBC’s Brexit coverage
where only Remainers are allowed to ask
questions or answer them. I wondered if this
innovation might be developed and extend-
ed so that we might have a BBC programme
entirely produced by, presented by and the
interviews consisting solely of cretins. But
then I remembered — hey, there’s PM!
The Today show included a rather frac-
tious interview with a female comedian in

It’s also 100 years since working-

class men got the vote – but no one

seem s to be t er r ibly both ered

‘She’s trying to attract male

supporters to the cause.’