Women need to be as bossy about sex as they are about picking up socks!

Just one pearl of wisdom from the celebrated guests who’ve lit up 70 years of Woman’s Hour

HOW to get what you want in bed. The best tactic to deal with a female rival. And the only way to keep your waist youthfully nipped in.

These words of wit — and more — can all be found in the Woman’s hour archive, which celebrated its 70th anniversary at the end of last year. Now a new book collects the show’s sharpest and funniest words of wisdom, from everyone from shirley Conran to Katharine hepburn…

LOVE AND SEX Jilly Cooper, 2016

‘You’ve got to be brave as a woman. You’ve got to ask and say: “Please, please, please pick up your socks.” it’s the same with sex. Women are very bad at asking for what they want. They think men should know and should bumble along finding out. if i was coming back in another life i would ask people to do things. Very nicely, but one tends not to do it.’

Author Erica Jong, 2014

‘The generation of the sixties, in whom i have to include myself, believed that sex was a panacea. We were forbidden to have sex, therefore we thought that when we were allowed to have sex, it would solve all our problems.

‘What we discovered was what men had always known. There is a difference between lust and love, there is a difference between lust and friendship. We now could go out and have all the sex we wanted and we discovered that sex indiscriminately used becomes a kind of servitude and bondage.’

Britain’s first female MP, Nancy Astor, 1956

‘i Adored being rich. i remember someone yelled out one night: “Mr Astor’s a millionaire, ain’t he?” And poor Mr Astor looked very embarrassed but i looked up and said: “i pray God he is, that’s one of the reasons i married him.” ’

Nora Ephron on the perils of internet dating

‘i did go into [an online] chat room just to see what it was. i tried for weeks to get into the Over 40 Room … it was always crammed full of people. Finally i got into it and it seemed to me to have a lot of 14-year-old boys in it pretending to be over 40. No one could spell, so i left because i do not see myself living happily ever after with anyone who can’t spell.’

Edwina Currie, 2016

‘when i went to university there was a notice on the wall saying the college doctor would give a talk on relationships to the first-years and i thought: “i come from Liverpool and i’ve been to America, so i don’t need to do anything like that.”

‘But there was an almighty row afterwards because he was talking about contraception to unmarried virgins in Oxford. i thought he did something responsible but there was all sorts of fuss about it and it was thought a very naughty thing to do but by golly, we’d been listening and we took advantage.’

MARRIAGE Germaine Greer, 1999

‘most men had more self-preservation than to think marriage to me was a going concern.’

Katharine Hepburn in 1991 on her five-year career break to look after her lover, screen idol Spencer Tracy, even though he remained married to wife Louise throughout.

‘The last five or six years that i was with spencer, we lived in the same house. he wasn’t all that well and i thought i should be in the same house with him and i was. i think marriage is difficult from that point of view if the two people are very close together all the time and they cease to interest each other. But if they don’t cease to interest each other, then i would say it’s a very lasting friendship.’

Dame Vera Lynn recalls meeting future husband Harry Lewis. Their marriage lasted 58 years

‘i DON’T think we really took to each other at first sight. he told me he didn’t like my singing — he thought it was “corny”.’

Journalist Julie Burchill, 1999

‘In MY experience men are desperate to get married. They’re desperate to make you settle down. They want to marry you from the moment you meet them and then you have to dump them.’

GROWING UP TV’s Anne Robinson

‘i was trained from kindergarten not to be a team player.’

Designer Mary Quant

‘AT The age of six, i was in bed with the measles. i’ve never really lived down the disgrace of it, but i cut up a bedspread to try and make myself a dress in a completely new shape. it was a bit of a disaster. i used a pair of nail scissors.’

FAMILY MATTERS Chat show host and actress Oprah Winfrey on not having children, 1999

‘i wasn’t mothered well. i know there are lots of people who weren’t mothered well and that makes them have the desire to do it, but i never felt i could make up for not being mothered. i always felt that i don’t know how to do that.’

TV presenter Janet Ellis, 2016

‘MY mother was very scathing of people that label their children – “the clever one”, “the singer”, etc — because that doesn’t give you any freedom to be anything else at all. i had that as a watchword with my children and they then constantly surprise me with what they want to do.’

Jenny Pitman, the first female trainer to win the Grand National

‘Quite honestly, my horses meant more to me than close family members.’

HEALTH AND LOOKS Joan Collins in 1986

‘i CAN still get up and i can still do 150 sit ups, probably because i’ve always done 150 sit ups. if i’d stopped, i couldn’t.’

Singer Carly Simon on being treated for breast cancer and having a mastectomy, 1999

‘You feel as if you’ve been in some kind of a battle, and you have your battle scars. Losing a breast for a woman is traumatic. When you’re in the public eye you have people kind of looking at you saying, “Oh, i wonder which one it is?”. But you can

adapt to almost anything. I think having two breasts was always overrated anyway.’

Sharon Osbourne on her weight battles, 2004

‘Eating is a worse addiction than drinking. It’s a terrible addiction to have and it never ends. I just don’t think you ever get over it.’

FRIENDS Journalist Jean Rook, 1966

‘ I am relentlessly, burningly, nearly murderously ambitious. If it came to a choice between getting where I wanted to be and treading on my best friend, I wouldn’t give my best friend a 50-50 chance.

‘one fellow fashion editor is genuinely a close chum. If she were ill, broke, unhappy, I’d run my blood to water to help her out. I mean that. But when we’re on a job together I’d all but break her leg before she got a better story than me. I’d fib to her, put her on the wrong scent, give her the wrong contact. She would — and has — done the same to me.’

HOME TRUTHS Yoko Ono, 1973

‘a housewife has to be a secretary, an ambassador, all sorts of things. a house is almost like a country and you have to play 20 different roles to run the house.’

Conservative leader and future PM Margaret Thatcher, 1976

‘Fortunately, we have a small house and so it doesn’t need a great deal of attention. of course things get untidy and a house always does when it’s lived in. That’s just inevitable and things aren’t kept as perfect as otherwise one would wish.

‘ But then we are all doing what we want to do and when we all get home at night we talk about it.’

AGEING Chef Marguerite Patten, 93

‘don’T underestimate the old. We’re quite with it. In spirit I could be jigging around and doing Strictly Come dancing and anything you like, it’s just that my legs won’t let me.’

Actress Felicity Kendal

‘When everything begins to look a bit random, hit the gym running. That’s my advice.’

Chef and author Prue Leith, 2016

‘I don’T know if they’re not getting enough but I often say to older women at signings, “If you don’t like sex in a novel don’t buy this one but if you do like sex in a novel there’s a bit of bonking in the potting shed.” Which book do they buy? They queue up for the one that’s got bonking in the potting shed.

‘I think there’s a lot of evidence that older women don’t only enjoy reading about sex, they like sex. There’s a myth that after 45, women like to sit in the corner and knit. It’s nonsense. They still go dancing, they still ride horses, they still do everything, so why on earth wouldn’t they still like love?’

GRIEF Nigella Lawson on her relationship with her first husband John Diamond, who died of cancer in 2001

‘I Think that most relationships, I’m afraid, are built around that thing where the woman takes charge of the looking after, to some extent, and I think maybe John would have been more scared of illness as an observer than I am in that way.

‘I was speaking to someone about this, and he said that he thought in all marriages or long- term relationships, there was a central question which is: “Whose turn is it to be baby?” and that the difficulty when someone’s ill is that it’s only that person’s turn to be baby.’

AND NOT FORGETTING… Shirley Conran, author of the bestselling book Superwoman

‘a Superwoman is not in my opinion a woman who can do everything or who tries to do everything. I think these sorts of people are a pain in the neck. a Superwoman is somebody who specifically doesn’t try too much, who knows her own limitations and sticks within them.’

Extracted by Maureen Brookbanks from Woman’s Hour: Words From Wise, Witty and Wonderful Women by Alison Maloney, published by BBC Books on March 2 at £9.99. © Alison Maloney 2017 To order a copy for £7.49 (offer valid to March 2), visit www. mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640. P&P is free on orders over £15.