Man up! It’s your right to be the kings of club

■ OVER the last week much coverage has been given to a report in The Lancet (the distinguished medical journal) that the West’s population is in sharp decline.

Hardly surprising when you consider that in Britain alone 11 million have been aborted in the last 55 years and the size of families has been steadily shrinking.

WHAT a lot of silly fuss has been made about the Garrick Club, below right, being a men-only one. Why on earth should it not be? It would be a different matter if public money were involved but if a group of chaps want to get together at their own expense and relax then what exactly is the problem? Do we have any difficulty accepting theWomen’s Institute?

It is a simple fact of life that men can enjoy a drink with the guys and women a “girlie” evening without its seeming remotely odd so why get all offended about a private members’ club offering exactly that sort of facility? I don’t remember anybody complaining when the University Women’s Club in London was for years strictly just for women.

The whingeing and whining emanating from the screeching sisterhood has actually caused two eminent men, pictured above right, to resign from the Garrick: Simon Case, the Head of the Civil Service, left, and Sir Richard Moore, head of our intelligence service, right. Scaredy cats!

Simon Case even whimpers that he joined only to ensure that women could become members. OK, so then surely the logic of that is that he should stay and keep trying? It is a wonder that we haven’t heard Moore telling us that his purpose in joining was only to spy on the members.

BEFORE they threw me out for joining the Brexit Party, I was a member for 20-odd years of the Carlton Club. When I first joined it did not admit women as full members, only as associates with a much-reduced subscription. I had the honour of being the first woman full member when that finally changed, which meant that I paid a lot more in membership fees but all I got in return was access to a bar that was previously prohibited. No wonder many of us preferred the status quo.

When I first left university I belonged for a few years to the Oxford and Cambridge Club, which back then in the Seventies had a “ladies annexe” but at least we were treated as ladies whereas when I stayed there a few years ago I, by then a pensioner, was left to carry a heavy suitcase up a flight of stairs on my own.

Doubtless the staff thought I might be offended if they offered to help. Welcome to the world of women’s emancipation.

The men of the Garrick Club should simply pull up the drawbridge, defend their territory, repel all boarders and then enjoy a well-earned brandy.

Pictures: PA; GETTY I THOUGHT it quite impossible for the Child Maintenance Service to fall any further until recently I heard from a man who, upon receiving a claim from the CMS, said he was not the father and asked for a DNA test. I had always been under the illusion that was a basic right but it appears I am wrong because the CMS refused to release details of the mother and child under data protection rules and therefore said he had to pay anyway. And ministers couldn’t care less.