Female MPS ‘just not good enough’ to host BBC news quiz

WHEN Ian Hislop suggested that female politicians were too “modest” to host Have I Got News For You, the backlash was swift.

Anna Soubry, the Tory MP, was first to announce that she had offered to present the show but had been turned down. “Still available, boys,” she said.

Now a female producer of the show has given her reasons for not booking Soubry and her Westminster colleagues: they are simply not good enough, but are too “greedy” and egodriven to accept that they should be panellists rather than hosts.

“People say, ‘It’s not difficult, I’ll do it!’” said Jo Bunting, a producer on Have I Got News For You for 13 years.

“I want the lights to come up and you see who the guest host is and you think, ‘Ooh, it’s Jo Brand, or Alexander Armstrong.’ I don’t think people are going to say, ‘Ooh, brilliant, it’s Anna Soubry’. It’s not good enough for our viewers.”

Bunting said the programme-makers have “asked every female politician endless times” to appear as panellists, but that most will only agree to appear if they can be the host.

“Ego, isn’t it? And money, I suppose. They’re not stupid and they’re quite greedy,” Bunting told Radio Times.

Of the 11 serving and former politicians to host the show, only one – Ann Widdecombe – was female. Paul Merton, a team captain, criticised her for being “arrogant”, saying: “Suddenly she thought she was Victoria Wood.”

This year Soubry tweeted: “A charming Ian Hislop called and invited me on the panel of #HIGNFY (again). I declined, not because I’m a woman, but because I’m a politician and not daft! I offered to present it but he turned me down! I’m still available, boys.”

Bunting did concede that the show “needs to up its game a bit” by bringing in more female writers and producers.

She also hopes to redress the gender balance in current affairs with her own all-female Radio 4 topical comedy show, Now Where’s The F In News.