Toksvig: women’s jokes cut from panels

FUNNY women have their jokes edited out of panel shows, Sandi Toksvig, who chairs the BBC Two show QI, has claimed.

“I hope QI is a comfortable place for women. There are panel shows that struggle to get women on and that’s because they feel marginalised and stupid and in the edit are often seen just laughing at the boys and not saying anything at all, even though I know for a fact in the recording they were clever,” Toksvig told Radio Times.

“I’m not shy at speaking up but even I, on those shows, am silenced. And I sit there and think, ‘I could have been at home eating Chinese. What am I doing sitting here?’ And that’s a shame.”

Toksvig, who hosted The News Quiz on Radio 4 for nine years before stepping down in 2015 and has appeared

on many panel shows, including Mock the Week, The Last Leg and Have I Got News For You, disclosed at the weekend that her fee on QI amounted to a fraction of that paid to Stephen Fry, her predecessor.

Speaking at the Women’s Equality Party conference, Toksvig said: “I have recently discovered I get 40 per cent of what Stephen used to get. And I get the same pay as [panellist] Alan Davies, who is not the host.

“I temper this with the fact that I love the show and I’m the first woman to host such a show.”

Salaries are set by Fremantlemedia, the independent production company that makes QI. It has not offered any comment on the pay discrepancy.

The BBC announced in 2014 that it was banning allmale line-ups, saying it was “not acceptable” to feature panels without any women.