isabelrogers.org

Today on Twitter there is a discussion started by Viv Groskop (again!) about whether there has ever been an entirely female panel on Radio 4’s Any Questions. There was: I remember. It was so unusual, and caused such a memorable evening in our house when I was a teenager, I wrote a poem about it.

Sex and politics

Our Liberal family sat to eat
accompanied by Any Questions.
The panel: four educated, erudite
professionals who augured well
for informed opinion. But
my father noted that, perhaps,
they had gone too much the other way.
I blinked and observed
all political shades seemed
to be represented. The Liberal
looked puzzled and said,
as though to one stupid and/or deaf,
“But they’re all women.”

It was then that illusions
cracked round a number of things,
including confusions
between lacking and talking bollocks.
I do not recall a comment of equal weight
any time the panel had balls enough
to achieve a full complement of eight,
plus, of course, the Dimbleby two,
making a double-figured
totally mathematically-based
secure assumption of …
something or other terribly logical,
apparently too obvious to explain.