Six people on the panel, one of whom was a woman and one of whom was…Eddie Izzard.

Shortly before the Brexit referendum, I was invited to appear on Question Time. Knowing how much of a cage-fight such occasions can be, I asked the producer if there would be another woman on the panel. I didn’t want to be the only one. “Yes, of course, don’t worry,” came the reply. 

In retrospect, I was being a bit feeble; I was a big girl and I could hold my own. It was just that, in the past, I had always much preferred shows when there was another member of my sex taking part. A dash of oestrogen dilutes the gamey testosterone with which our political class is so richly imbued. Besides, it was hardly controversial to expect half the human race to occupy a third of one current affairs panel. 

Welllll not to you maybe, but to the fans of gamey testosterone…

Anyway, I got to Brighton and was sitting in the green room where all that night’s guests were assembling. Nigel Farage was there in a natty velvet-collared check coat, comedian Eddie Izzard sported a pink beret and there was a Tory Transport minister among the rest. But no female guest. Where was she? 

She asked the producer. He said they stopped looking after Eddie said yes.

I was dumbfounded. Did a pink beret and matching lippy really qualify Eddie Izzard to be a female panellist? Did anyone seriously think that someone who lacked all of the key milestones and experiences of a woman’s life (not to mention the matching female genitalia) was qualified to take one of only two places reserved for a woman? Astonishingly, the answer was, clearly, yes. In the eyes of the BBC, at least, although not in mine and not, you can bet, in the minds of the majority of viewers who were about to tune in. 

But we’re considered demonic for seeing through those eyes.