It’s Call The Midwife ... but with hatchbacks instead of bicycles

So much for equal rights. When it’s time for mum to push, a man’s only good for one thing — and that’s to boil a kettle. The dad’s job as a ‘birthing partner’ is to ‘make cups of tea for the midwife’. And that’s a midwife speaking. Gemma was one of the all-female team in Yorkshire: Midwives On Call (BBc2), and she had some forthright views on the gender gap.

‘Women are incredible. men aren’t bad either,’ she added unconvincingly. ‘But women are amazing.’

cameras followed Gemma and her colleagues as they helped three expectant mums in Bradford to prepare for home births.

Well, that was the idea, but it didn’t quite work out like that. careworker Jodie, who already had five children with her partner Andy, was taken into hospital after a gruelling day of full contractions didn’t seem to bring the birth any closer.

And 26-year-old Keeleigh, who delivered her fourth baby at home, but had to be whisked off in an ambulance with a haemorrhage that would not stop.

Thankfully, both mums recovered well. New mother Rebecca, a junior doctor, was the only one to give birth at home successfully. She appeared to do it with ease, in a matter of moments, to the delight of the midwife.

mind you, baby Toby was 10lb 1oz, so perhaps Rebecca would tell you it wasn’t as painless as the cameras made it look.

The implication of the series is that the good old ways are the best. Gemma and her team are the 21st-century equivalent of the nurses from call The midwife, or possible the nuns — but with hatchbacks instead of bicycles.

It’s a lovely idea, though a bit worrying if the NhS is now being run on sentimental principles. The alternative is even more worrying: home births are preferred because they’re cheaper.

Sentiment is the main motive of the show. We want to see the babies. ‘Who cannot love a newborn baby? They’re just lovely, aren’t they?’ cooed midwife Leanna.

None of the infants was in a hurry to arrive. midwife michaela recommended ‘stretch and sweep’ exercises, though we didn’t see these put into practice, whatever they are.

As a bloke, I’m left with the vague notion that ‘stretch and sweep’ is something to do with football, but perhaps I’m thinking of Bruce Grobbelaar, Liverpool’s sweeperkeeper . . . on reflection, Gemma’s right. Boiling a kettle is about the limit of my competence in a maternity room.

Watching a kettle boil would be more fun than sitting through Comedians Giving Lectures (Dave), a stand-up comedy show with a concept swiped from BBc2’s mock The Week.

host Sara Pascoe challenges three comics to perform routines based on a topic that flashes up on a screen. Each one has a topical edge, such as ‘Introduction to Economics’.

Pascoe is a regular guest on Frankie Boyle’s BBc chat show New World order, so she returned the favour by inviting him to be one of her lecturers. The industry jargon for this mildly corrupt practice is ‘log-rolling’.

Boyle looked as though he could scarcely be bothered to spiel out five minutes of poisonflecked one-liners.

he didn’t even pretend to be entertained by his fellow guests, Toussaint Douglass and Elf Lyons. Asked what he thought of Toussaint’s routine, on ‘how to find the right partner’, he sneered: ‘I think he’s a great partner for someone who’s not paying a lot of attention.’

That’s nasty and unfunny, which sums up how Boyle makes a living.