03/04/2014 This Week

tonight This Week presents the Westminster Muppet Show. Cameron and

Miliband trade insults at the dispatch box, calling one another a

dunce, and a Muppet. Why didn't we think of that? While Nick Clegg and

Nigel Farage conduct their own Statler and Waldorf sideshow. This

Week's own Fozzie Bear, otherwise known as Quentin Letts, heckles them

all in return. Normally they are in the margins, but this week they were

centrestage, Nick and Nigel. I said Muppets, not puppets.

Are there too many Miss and Mr Piggies across the UK, and will

telling them to eat seven portions of fruit and veg a day help? Great

Gonzo journalist Rachel Johnson is famous, rich and hungry. Miss Piggy

might look rich, but it is the poor who are porky in today's Britain.

And Miss Piggy is rarely seen without her make-up, but are women

under too much pressure to look good, on and off camera?

Broadcasting icon Angela Rippon cleanses, tones and moisturises. The

only person I take fashion advice from is Michael.

Evenin' all. Welcome to This Week, a week when, as Nick and Nige shook

no-one about with their in-out, hokey-kokey debate on Europe, a

Saharan chickpeasouper snuck up and annexed much of London and the

South. And I don't remember being offered a referendum on that.

Indeed, unlike the good people of Crimea, we weren't even given a

rigged vote. Mind you, becoming a desert has its advantages. Diane

won't have to spend yet another Easter recess on a Caribbean beach

now that Hackney Marshes resembles a tropical lagoon. Just as it was

running out of steam, Michael will be able to expand his choo-choo

franchise to camel trains. Funny Business Secretary, Vince the Cable,

is mounting an export drive to sell sand to the Saudis. If he prices it

as low as he did the Royal Mail, it'll probably be snapped up by the

dune-load. And the sandstorm was the perfect cover for burying bad news.

While the rest of us struggled to see or breathe, Culture Secretary

Maria Miller snuck out a 31-second apology for being less than helpful

with Commons officials investigating her expenses, which only proves she

can be economical with the time as well as the actuality. Speaking of

nails in the coffin of public disolusionment, I'm joined on the

sofa tonight by two portions of your five-a-day. Think of them as the

fruit and the veg of late night political chat. I speak of course of

#sadmanonatrain, Michael "choo choo" Portillo, and back by no public

demand whatsoever, #baffled, Diane Abbott. Your moment? Well, following

Sir Michael Wilshaw's announcement that he believes there should be

more rigour in nursery schools and playgroups, which I think is a

well-intentioned policy, the fact is that children from disadvantaged

backgrounds by the time they get to primary school are 19 months behind

the brightest children. They arrive at school with very limited

vocabularies and find it almost impossible to catch up. So I think

this initiative is much more valuable than anything at the top

end. Because you get in early. Yes. It is a statist intervention,

absolutely replacing the family where the family is not working. I

was shocked that one of the organisations representing nurseries

said children should be allowed to play and develop creativity, as

though you can develop creativity if you have a minimal vocabulary. The

French elections at the weekend. There were disturbing things, like

the National Front doing well and the Socialists losing 150 towns. But

in Paris they elected their first female mayor, and that was my moment

of the week. Their first female mayor who is Spanish, and the new

Prime Minister of France is Spanish as well. Sort of an aristocrat, a

gentleman. Thank you. We shall see how it goes, with interest.

Now, we like to think we're a healthy bunch here on This Week.

Diane was previously Labour's spokeswoman on public health and

Michael's certainly a pink smoothie. And given that there must be at

least five grapes in a bottle of blue nun, we're operating well

within the current guidelines on what constitutes a healthy diet. But

when academics claimed this week that we should be eating at least

seven portions of fruit and veg a day, we were worried. So we sent

Mail on Sunday columnist Rachel Johnson down to the greengrocers to

stock up. This is her take of the week.

I am about to go and do my weekly shop at the local greengrocers,

where I am like a kid in a candy shop. I liked a bit of roughage.

Like most women in Notting Hill, I eat so much leafy green stuff that

my body is probably photosynthesise in as I speak. But my recent

experience of spending time with families who live below the bread

line for Sport Relief, serious face, was a complete revelation for me. I

did not see a green vegetable for days. The first thing I have eaten

is that less Sagna that in this chilly. You can't afford the fruit

of the veg. It's all frozen or out of the tin. That is a leak. So my

first reaction, on hearing that academics have suggested we should

be eating seven, or even more portions of fruit and vegetables

every day was, they must be having a laugh. It is hard enough for people

on a tight budget to manage five a day, let alone increase it. The

truth is, public health messages aren't getting through. In the

houses I stayed in, they either couldn't or wouldn't eat fresh fruit

and vegetables. In the food bank I visited, there was no fresh fruit

and -- fruit and veg but a lorry load of sliced white bread and loads

of cans. The root causes of obesity are poverty and ignorance. If you've

got no money, it's impossible to eat healthily. It takes a lot of money

to be skinny. This country is becoming like America, where the

poor are fat and the rich are thin. It's going to cost time and money

but unless Nanny gets a grip on our nation of consumers, poor old

Britain is going in one direction, undernourished but super-sized.

And from Andrea's Fine Fruit Vegetables in Chelsea to our own

little collection of apples and pears here in the heart of

Westminster, Rachel, welcome back. Diane, do you agree that the root

causes of obesity are poverty and ignorance? But also the kind of

heavy marketing of really unhealthy food at people. I agree with you

that the messages aren't getting through. And what it requires is up

extreme measures. If you take smoking, the most successful thing

about smoking was banning it in bars and ending advertising. We need

similar measures with food, because the messages do not get through to

the people who should be hearing them. We banned smoking in bars and

public places. And junk food advertising on children's TV, which

has already happened. In Canada, they banned it completely and the

amount of calories children are eating in Quebec has plummeted since

they stopped advertising fast food. And you ban it online. They have

too, because the market is so fractured. You stop the companies

that are manufacturing that junk from using websites attractive to

children to try to market it. That is how you stop it. They have these

websites which children think our games but they are actually selling

them junk. The thing about that the city is that it is costing the

health service million -- billions. It leads to diabetes, hypertension,

cancer, and the drugs for that alone are 10% of the NHS budget. So,

Michael, it is the fault of the people providing it. Personal

responsible T plays a big part. Rachel identified poverty and

ignorance, so ignorance as to be tackled. If ignorance is a cause,

then the government telling people what the right thing to do is must

be the right thing to do. It may take time for that to come through.

Interestingly, you also put your finger on the lack of availability

in certain districts of proper food. You mean fresh produce? In areas of

Chicago, for example, there has been a kind of revolution. There were

shops where you could not buy anything fresh, but someone took the

experiment of setting up shops where you could buy fresh food. They have

spread through the poor ghetto neighbourhoods and that enables

people to come more educated. You also made an assumption that eating

fresh food is more expensive. I'm not sure that's right. A lot of

processed food is pretty expensive. To follow up on that, were there no

Greens in the family that you were with because they couldn't afford

them, or they didn't care? It was a combination of lots of things. It is

a complex issue. It is about time as well as money. Vegetables, as you

know, when you go to the fridge and CM aubergine, and then you see

something that is quick and you can put in the microwave, you are not

going to start preparing the aubergine. Very often, they don't

know how to cook. Show them a vegetable and they are not sure what

to do with it. I did not find that. It was a sort of lassitude. Which

doubles, they have to be fresh coming have to keep them, repair

them, cook them, which requires a certain degree of knowledge about

cooking and the preparation of food. It is much easier to buy a microwave

meal. They were buying them for ?1, putting them in the microwave. If

you went to a shop, it would be more expensive to buy one vegetable, like

a Swede was ?3. Was that in Chelsea? Not in Chelsea, in Deptford

high Street. That was their budget for a day. You are talking about the

nanny state, my libertarian friend, and for me when it comes to

children's health, if you have to choose between the nanny state or

the Pontius pilot state, where you wash hands, I choose the nanny

state. Let's look at the nanny state and what it should do. What

government advice has actually worked? It has always got to be a

mix of things. But what advice has worked? Advice on its own doesn't

work. Five a day hasn't worked. I think, of the years of advice about

smoking, it had some impact. I agree that interventions that banned

smoking in certain places have been important moments along the way, but

information probably did have an impact. In the end, we made seat

belts compulsory. We made wearing helmets on motorbikes compulsory.

That was government intervention. And we banned smoking in public

places. Despite the brouhaha about it, I suspect a referendum now would

out with a vast majority wanting to stay where we are. In the end, it

was not really a device that had much effect, it was direct

intervention. Diane has reached four banning things straightaway. It is

because I'm a socialist and you are a libertarian. I am not a

libertarian. What I said earlier about education, I believed in the

state intervening where families have failed, so I am not that much

available Terry and in this case. I think you could reach for seeing how

the government, with companies, could drive technological change.

You could have a tasty fizzy drink with no sugar in it. There is more

profit made out of heavily adulterated food. Clearly,

government advise that you should not take this drink which has got 24

teaspoons of sugar in it, that would be good advice. But for years and

years, governments on both sides of the Atlantic have said we should

follow a food pyramid which was heavy with carbohydrates at the

base, and small with protein at the top, and nearly all the new medical

advice coming out suggests that is wrong.

We should be eating ex exclusively a plant based diet. Spend our entire

day chewing our kelp fritters or whatever it is. It has upgraded the

importance of protein in the diet. There was nothing mentioned about

protein. Protein is very expensive as well. If you go to a food bank,

as a family, you are allowed one protein item, per week, per family.

That is one tin of tuna. You cannot eat healthily on a very low budget.

The problem is processed food and snacks. You are right. You can't

walk down a street without half a dozen opportunities to eat. When I

was a child the only snack you could get was a hamburger, that was a big

deal. I think nanny has to get a grip. She should tax sugar. Of the

she should subsidise vegetables. Vegetables should be available in

food banks. Perhaps the Government should think about issuing foot

stamps which are exclusively for fresh produce. In America food

stamps are fratd traded for God knows what, but exclusively for

fruit and veg. The Government took on the tobacco industry on both

sides of the Atlantic. Over time it won the major battles it fought. Is

it time, as I think Diane and Rachel are suggesting, is it time to take

on the food industry? It's time to move forward. I don't think I would

go far as either Rachel and Diane as reaching for the word "banning." We

didn't ban anything. Diane wanted to ban. Upstream measures. You used the

word ban. I was teaseing you. When you have children, they watch

advertising. Then they clamour... Why don't you ban it outright? The

habit starts in childhood. If children are accustomed to healthy

diet. That is why school dinners are so important. It's like cigarettes.

My child at seven would run home from school telling me about the

evils of smoking. She need to run home and talk about the evils of

sugar. I don't agree with Michael. We should take on big sugar. It's

poisoning all of us. It's a bloody health time bomb, excuse my

language. It's late. Kids looking at Cuppy Delight ads on the TV will pay

the price. We will leave it there. As I said, it's late. Thank you,

Rachel. Now, it's late, Tory MP Mark Menzies on a Brazilian fact-finding

mission late! That is how late it is. So drink up your dregs of Blue

Nun - before the Welsh decide to ban it. Because waiting in the wings,

broadcasting legend Angela Rippon is here to discuss whether society puts

too much pressure on women to always look their best. And, if you'd like

to test our ability to ignore all your tedious complaints - bring it,

on The Twitter, The Fleecebook and the Interweb. Now, of course,

sometimes we do get it very wrong on this programme - for which we always

offer a fulsome apology - April Fool! Ha ha! What? That was Tuesday.

Still, it was better than Michael's prank last year when he took us off

air by turning all the studio clocks forward an extra hour. Yep, none of

you lot even noticed. Anyway, to celebrate the joys of spring and

healthy living, we sent the Daily Mail's Quentin Letts down to the

Chelsea Physic Garden for his round up of the week at Westminster.

# In an English country garden... # Hello there. The clocks have

changed, spring in the air, along with some of that Saharan smog dust

and I can get on with planting my seven a day of vegetables. What was

that? Also time to keep an eye on the Westminster wildlife.

Head Gardiner, George Osborne, is in rude health these days now that the

green shoots of the economy have started to grow. We are digging for

Britain though to fight our way to full employment. That's our George,

isn't it, he is a bardser in, an optimist, they are always glass half

full types. -- Gardiner. Full employment is quite a phrase. What

do you mean? What we mean by full employment, this is the best place

in the world to create a job. Best place in the world to get a job. We

are saying we want to have the highest employment rate of the

world's largest economies. Details, details, Robinson you impertinent

man, get back to your sproutings. Whoops - sorry about that! Labour is

scrambling around in the debt trying to resow the economic agenda worried

the Conservatives are nibbling into their juicy poll lead. Oh, get out

of here! There was a palpable sense of relief in the Labour hot house

this week when the National Audit Office produced a report saying the

Government undersold the Royal Mail. This has given the opposition a

chance to try to dead-head that fading bloom, Vince Cable. Vince!

The truth is, this has been a first-class disaster for the

taxpayer and those he once he referred to gamblers are laughing

all the way to the bank. The least he could do today is apologise. The

conclusion the report reached was that we had successfully achieved

our objectives, it's an important one. What has happened under this

Government is we've taken a loss-making public enterprise and

turned into a highly successful, respected public company. At Prime

Minister's Questions, that sage Ed Miliband said the Government had

lost a mint on the Royal Mail sale. Prime Minister, David Cameron, said

that time would prove him right, sorry about the puns no, worse than

the desperate behaviour at Prime Minister's Questions. It's basic

maths, Mr Speaker, not so much the wolf of Wall Street, more the dunce

of Downing Street. I will take a lecture from almost anyone in the

country about the sale of Royal Mail, but not from the two Muppets

who advised the last Chancellor. Forget Muppets, Westminster had a

mole problem. An independent Scotland could keep a pound after

all in exchange for nuclear subs remaining. Oi! Oi! Oi! There was a

sort of civil war between Tory and Lib Dem moles over the Government's

position of the future of on shore wind farms, mole on mole. Gotta. The

BBC tried to find an alternative source of wind power another hour of

the Nick and Nige show. Let's govern ourselves again, stand tall. You

isolate Britain, a Billy no mates Britain. It would be course it would

be Billy no jobs, Britain. Billy no influence Britain. The debate

between the two men was a much more prickly affair. They were fighting

over immigration and Vladimir Putin. They got at at each other like chin

chill yas trapped in a box. 200 people dieing in Syria, being killed

in Syria every single day, Nigel Farage says he admires, he admires

the way that Vladimir Putin has played, as if it's a game. I don't

admire Putin. I said he outth witted and out classed you all over Syria.

You did say you admired him. The question was, which current world

leader do you admire, as an operator, I would Putin. . The

result, immediate opinion polls gave it to Nigel Farage by two-thirds.

Nick Clegg, given his recent weedy standing I reckon he will be pretty

happy with a third. Is is is's quite enough gardening.

I'm exhausted after that Clegg/Farage debate. What a week it

has been. Hello, you two, are you coming to join me for a kcuppa,

would you like that? I think we deserve it, don't you? Shall we be

really naughty and have one of our seven a day? There they are. I think

that pink one looks really healthy. No animals were harmed in the making

of that film. Miranda is with us. What did Nick Clegg get out of these

two debates? Well, I think that although last night didn't go so

well, it was still the right thing to do. It was a gutsy thing to do. I

think that will be recognise by the audience to whom Nick Clegg was

talking because the thing about these debates is that Farage and

Clegg are never going to agree on anything that they were discussing.

In that sense, it became clear last night, slightly less the first one,

it is a bit of a dialogue of the deaf. About those who are seriously

concerned about what would happen if Britain sleepwalks towards leaving

the EU, they will be pleased he stuck up for those arguments, I

think. Most of us, you think, what he got out of it was that most of us

think he is a gutsy loser? I think it was an honourable defeat.

Sometimes, you have - Sounds like the Scottish football team? Well...

I think Clegg made the right call despite everything. It has given him

quite a lot of exposure. It has promoted Farage, but the victim of

Farage getting so much publicity is not Clegg, so much Askam Ron.

Yesterday, was quite an interesting Question Time, PMQs, if you hunt in

today's papers you can't find any coverage about PMQs, it is still

about Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage. About the debate. It cemented Mr

Farage in the eyes of the nation. Twice he has had prime-time

television. Not to himself, but shared with only one other

politician. It has made him a national figure? He was... He was

something of a national figure. This cemented it? Yeah. You might argue -

I wouldn't argue - it's all to the good. Our best chance of winning out

right is for UKIP to attack the Tory vote. The pollsters will tell you

that. I don't think Clegg completely lost. I think he made important

points. There will be people that will be glad that he took it to

UKIP. Even if on the night Farage is the winner, I think Clegg benefits

from it. Mr Clegg's position on Europe any different from Mr

Miliband's position on Europe? I think that Nick Clegg believes very

strongly in the European Union as - Doesn't Mr Miliband? I don't know. I

don't know if he does in the same way. He does. He has not been. He

wouldn't. In fact he is much... If the politics changed surely he would

want. Clegg is bullish on the need for European reform. You can't...

That complicates the message at the moment. You have to come out as the

most pro. How concerned should Mr Cameron be be about Mr Farage's

success? Very. As Diane says, that is the way that the Conservatives

will lose if the Conservatives do lose. Tory MPs are terrified.

Absolutely terrified, I'm there every day. They are terrified of

UKIP. Farage, Mr Farage is a kind of new phenomenon in British politics.

Because he is a populist, we had these before. He is a mainstream

populist. Yeah. He is antiwar. Interesting he took an antiwar line

against the Lib Dems, that is a clever thing to do. He is

anti-establishment, he claims to be. He is obviously anti-Europe. He is

anti-, and he was arguing last night that immigration is OK if you're

rich. It's the poor that get hit by immigration. How do you combat that?

Look, I think it's really healthy to have all this out in the open

because there is no doubt that his message, I profoundly disagree with

it on Europe, on immigration, on Britain's place in the world and on

engagement verses isolationism, it has enormous resonance, it is a a

huge challenge to the political establishment actually that the

arguments will be lost by default unless we take him on. The word on

the street is that the Tories will combat Farage by going for him

personally. Allegedly there is more than enough. I think, in a way the

public has discounted that Farage might be dodgy in a lot of areas.

That might not help them. This may not be a Tory problem. Auto lot of

lines he takes, that I read out, they will have some appeal to

lukewarm Labour supporters? They will have some appeal. The people he

is an electoral problem for is the Tories much he can take vote of us.

He will win in places where we pile up votes anyway. He will not take

votes off us in London. Right, Royal Mail, we need to move on.

Do you agree that the sale of Royal Mail was a lousy deal? Not

necessarily. I think it was a tricky thing to pick the level at which you

could guarantee success. One of the key things they say they've achieved

is to make sure the investors who are now he and are those who will

stay long-term. You have a lack of symmetry, because you fear much more

that you will not be able to sell the shares, and then you fear you

will sell them too cheaply. It would be a catastrophe for a government to

not sell the shares, so it aims low. Also, the people advising you are

obviously interested in buying the shares, which is a problem. I don't

think Royal Mail has been very different from many privatisations.

It is a long time, so people don't the member that most were sold too

cheaply. Also, I think there is a lack of expertise in the government.

They were doing major privatisations every year at one time and they got

good at it but now there is no expertise, no corporate knowledge.

They were not a little under priced, which I could understand, but the

taxpayer lost ?740 million. Up to ?1.5 billion. That is not marginal.

You can never get the price right. That is not the issue. You either

overprice, or you under price and you lose money, as happened here.

Surely, the worst thing was that there were 16 preferred bidders who

were given preferred status, given more shares than others because they

were meant to be long-term shareholders. And 50%, they flipped

into macro weeks. They conned the government. - -- they flipped into

macro weeks. They go on being the same. According to Vince Cable, the

hedge fund is not involve any more. Ed Miliband pics themes that

resonate. He did it with the energy price freeze, Royal Mail, student

tuition fees. So why is there such unhappiness on the Labour

backbenches? First of all, you are always fretful in opposition. But

the Labour leader back up significantly again. We are nervy. I

think the Budget bounce is over. People would like to see a bigger

majority. The response to the budget was quite weak. The whole business

about the energy price freeze has withered on the vine. No, it is

hugely popular. You don't care. I wasn't going to say that. I think

the Fox has been shot because the government has found ways to get

some of the bills down and many companies will freeze the bills

themselves. This team has gone out of that. Maria Miller made this

apology today. What did you make of it? Completely inadequate, given the

strong language used about Perl. It is not just the misdemeanour over

expenses but the idea that she was trying to block investigation. It

looks extremely bad. The Independent Commission, her report was that

?54,000 in expenses should be paid back. But when it comes before other

MPs, the trade union fellowship, that is kicked aside. It is like the

expenses scandal never happened. I don't know whether they are a trade

union fellowship because some of the opposition would like to see Maria

Miller in trouble. But I do think that for a Cabinet minister to be

involved in noncooperation, blocking an enquiry, is a very serious

matter. For a frontbencher to have to make an apology to the House of

Commons is a very difficult matter. I think it is pretty much

unsustainable, I would have thought. It is the lead story in tomorrow's

Times. Now, when This Week first signed an

exclusive contract with Michael Portillo, hopes were not high. Who'd

want to hear the bitter ramblings of a former Defence Secretary who

thought the SAS was the military wing of the Tory party? A man who

dared to win, and then lost to Stephen Twigg, making poor Stephen's

eyeballs roll right back in the process. But with Diane it was

different. We always knew someone who's managed to avoid power as

successfully as Diane has must be able to speak truth to it on the

This Week sofa. And with that in mind, we cast our eye over the

week's news and put the unreasonable expectations placed on women in this

week's Spotlight. Feminist groups claimed a male scalp

this week with the closure of a lads magazine, but do declining magazine

sales mean we've turned a corner in the way women are portrayed? A pop

singer thinks so, criticising an airbrushed picture of herself. We

don't all have to look perfect, she claimed. And Emma Watson certainly

thinks we have a dangerously unhealthy attitude to the female

image. She tweeted a picture showing the vast amounts of make up she

needs just to look good for the world's press. Maybe it won't be

long before we see her no make up selfie, with female celebs and

civilians posting such pictures to raise money for charity. But is it

depressing that women without make up are seen as radical or brave? So

how much does society still judge women especially by their looks? And

is it a sad fact that women in the public eye often feel pressure to be

easy on the eye? We are joined by Angela Rippon. As David Frost would

have said, what a joy. Thank you. Through your career, have you

noticed, have we become less or more obsessed with how women in the

public eye appear? I don't think really there's much difference. It's

very interesting. Why do we wear make up to start with? Presumably

because we want to make the most of ourselves and feel good about

ourselves. It is interesting that we are having this discussion about

women wearing make up when two men in the studio are wearing make-up.

Michael wears his all the time. If you go back in history to the 17th

century, men wore as much make up as women, if not more. In my career, I

have been on television for 48 years, I can look back to my

mother's generation. Women would not go out without wearing a hat, and

Norwood men. There have always been attitude towards the way people

look. I don't know that it is worse now than before. If anything, it

might be better because you can make up your own mind whether you want to

be somebody - and I know Diane is shaking her head and will disagree

but I don't care - I think you can make a choice now as to whether you

wear make up or not. That is the big thing. But I think young women are

under more pressure than ever, and younger, to be more sexualised, to

be perfect. That is why we have more plastic surgery in this country than

any European country. I had a young woman in Hackney who died a few

years ago because she went to have silicone injected into her bottom.

Young women are under more pressure. And the rise and rise of those

magazines. But perhaps they are doing it because the technology

allows them to do it. The rise of the celebrity magazine and some of

the newspaper online websites. Back on the Daily Mail again! When Emma

Watson says there is an unhealthy obsession about how women look, you

don't think it is new. I think there has always been an obsession with

members of the human race to want to look their best. If they discover

they can look nicer by wearing make up, that is what they want to do.

The emphasis on perfection, the perfect figure, the perfect skin,

the perfect look. That is so difficult. And the technology makes

it possible on print or online but almost impossible in real life. So

many of those photographs are airbrushed. I think there is a lot

of pressure on young people but I also think we are being patronising

to young people. Many young women, yes, they want the perfect bust,

face, bottom or whatever. So do young men nowadays. The greatest

increase in plastic surgery in this country has been among men, in terms

of the percentage of people having plastic surgery. It has risen from a

small base to quite a lot. But young girls can make that choice. There

was a paradox that at the beginning of the show we were talking about

obesity and now we are talking about the obsession with looking good. Two

different things are happening in society. One has never seen so many

people who do not give a dam about how they look, how they dress, their

figure and so on. But with young women, the rise in self-harm,

anorexia, universal that 40 years ago. That is to do with being

obsessed with how you look. And most depressingly, in some parts of

society, the way they are more and more abused by men, boyfriends,

contemporaries. You think it was different in Victorian times? You

just didn't know about it. It was different in the 1980s and 1990s. If

there is a premium on youth in this country, is that the reason why

there are always arguments, particularly at the BBC, about

whereas older men continue in front of the camera there are few older

women? No, I don't think that has anything to do with it at all. If

you want women who are older, of my age, my generation, who have the age

and experience in television, you have to go back to the beginning and

say that when I was reading the news, when Sue Lawley and Anna Ford

were around, Esther Rantzen, Gloria Hunniford, there was only ever a

handful of women 30 years ago. The names that I have mentioned, we were

the handful. If you want women now in their 60s with age and

experience, you only have that tiny pool to choose from. If you look at

all of the young women in television now in their 30s and 40s, there are

dozens of them, in front of the camera, behind the camera. And they

are going to be there all the way to the end of their careers. We do not

have the equivalent of Barbara Walters, a mainstream TV presenter

into her 70s, still doing mainstream programmes. We don't want you to

work until you are 82, Andrew. I work on mainstream programmes and so

does Gloria. She is in her 70s and I am 69. And you think that many of

the women now in television, there are more opportunities, but they

will continue? Of course, because everyone of them is there on merit.

There is not an area of television now that doesn't have a woman

playing a leading role, whether in politics, economics, science, sport,

whatever. They are all they're doing a brilliant job and they will not be

got rid of. What about the woman who got sacked, and proved it in court,

because she aged? Maybe it was. There was a man who tried to do it

as well but I think he lost. Having said it was ages, it was proved it

was something entirely different. Before you scream about age, you

have to think there might be other reasons. You are doing some work

with outsiders. I co-chair a committee set up by the Prime

Minister. My committee is creating dementia friendly communities

throughout the country, and I also spearhead the work we are doing

getting dementia awareness into schools, to create a dementia

friendly generation alongside dementia friendly communities, so

people with dementia can live well with the condition within the

community. And a brand-new programme called amazing Grays. These are

people in their 60s who are well champions, Olympians, top of the

class in what they do, who take on challengers from young people in

their 20s and 30s, and do not write off the 60-year-olds. They are

surprisingly brilliant at what they do. Thank you.

That's your lot for tonight folks, but not for us, because it's

Gentleman's Agreement night at LouLou's. And, just like Vince,

we're off to stuff taxpayers' money into the G-string of lap-dancing

spivs and gamblers, and claim we've not been made to look like a fool.

But we leave you tonight with, what else, but a This Week gag about the

16th century English reformation and the historic rejection of papal

authority in all matters ecclesiastical. Nighty-night, don't

let Her Majesty bite. # Comeback

# Baby, comeback # I won't you please come back?

# Oh, won't you please come back # Baby, come back. #