Bring on the girls! They are stealing the show A

DOMINIC Cummings, the former head of the Vote Leave campaign, has now said that Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union could turn out to be an error.

This was newsworthy in itself but he got bigger headlines when he went on to describe Brexit Secretary David Davis, who is charged with negotiating our departure, as: “Thick as mince, lazy as a toad, and vain as Narcissus.”

The Using English website says that someone who is thick as mince is “very stupid indeed”.

As lazy as a toad resides in a list of similes on another website alongside loathsome as a toad. Why do toads get such a bad Press?

Narcissus, of course, was a figure of Greek mythology who fell in love with his own reflection and lost the will to live.

Prime Minister’s Question Time often has the same effect on me.

As insults go, they are pithy but hardly clever. For clever, I prefer Lyndon Johnson on Gerald Ford: “He’s a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off.”

Winston Churchill is often quoted but one of his best was about Prime Minister Clement Attlee: “He is a modest man with much to be modest about” FTER the announcement that the next owner of The Tardis would be a woman, a chap called Scott Butler Twittered: “Can’t think of anything worse. End of Doctor Who for me after 43 years.”

To which I was inclined to comment: “On your bike, then.”

I was amazed at the reaction from some quarters condemning the casting as ”political correctness gone mad” or “filling a quota”.

You can’t have a woman doctor, the male fixated traditionalists bleated.

Really? Half the doctors at our local surgery are women and do an absolutely brilliant job.

Women fly aeroplanes, are politicians, academics, judges and serve in the military. They also manage to find time to work and be mothers and, not surprisingly, are better at multitasking than men.

“What next?” some said. “A female James Bond?”

Which is a fatuous argument as Ian Fleming created a male character. Doctor Who, on the other hand, is an alien who regenerates into another body. It stands to reason the character could just as easily be female as male.

Besides, female secret agents already exist in their own right and women are growing in power on film and in television drama.

Scandinavian and European TV have many strong female characters from Sarah Lund in The Killing and while David Cameron had his moment when he said of former Prime Minister Tony Blair: “He was the future once.”

Noel Coward said of Randolph Churchill: “Dear Randolph, utterly unspoiled by failure” while MP Tony Banks described fellow MP Terry Dicks as “living proof that a pig’s bladder on the end of a stick can be elected to Parliament”.

But one that I particularly like comes from US political commentator Jim Hightower about George H W Bush: “If ignorance ever goes to $40 a barrel, I want drilling rights on George Bush’s head.” Saga Noren in The Bridge, to Laure Bethaud in Spiral and Sandra Paoli in Mafiosa.

Britain, too, has its share: Olivia Coleman in Broadchurch, Gillian Anderson in The Fall, Sarah Lancashire in Happy Valley, Scott and Bailey (Surrane Jones and Sally Lindsay) and the indomitable Joanna Scanlan in No Offence.

Bring them on. They invariably carry a better back story than the usual hardbitten male detective with a drink problem.

And let’s not forget Huddersfield actress Jodie Whittaker will be a great Doctor Who, just as another local girl Lena Headey shines in Game of Thrones. She is pictured in the drama as Cersei Lannister (right) with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister Thrones, that has just started its seventh and penultimate season.

As well as killing off male heroes like Sean Bean without compunction,it has given us a horde of strong female characters.

Jon Snow is reduced to eye candy when faced with the calculation of Huddersfield’s own Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister, plus an array of women who can out-swash the most buckled of blokes, survive despair and degradation to take revenge and justice served with cold determination.

Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, Brienne of Tarth, the wildling warrior Ygritte, dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen and Yara Greyjoy are wonderful characters who don’t seem to think being a woman should be a handicap to taking life by the throat and throttling it.

So why the shock and horror at Jodie Whittaker becoming the Doctor? She will undoubtedly rank alongside those other heavyweights who took the role, David Tennant, Matt Smith and Christopher Eccleston.

The Huddersfield girl went from Shelley High to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and on to almost immediate acclaim starring alongside Peter O’Toole and Vanessa Redgrave in the film Venus.

She has played Shakespeare and Chekhov, theatre, film and television, most recently in Broadchurch.

This is a serious actress who can bring a new perspective to a tired formula.

Peter Capaldi was not my favourite Doctor and the series could do with a new broom. Jodie can hand it to her assistant and tell him to get brushing.