Claire Black: 'In a score update for Gender Equality, it's Male Fantasy, 3 – Women's Reality, nil'

Published on Saturday 21 November 2009 19:08

HAPPY hookers, lesbians being "converted" by ageing men and the head of the Girls' Schools Association explaining that women can be clever and still, like, look nice. What a week; I'm practically nauseous with the speed of social progress.

And in a score update for the Premier League of Gender Equality, I think we can say: Male Fantasy, 3 – Women's Reality, nil.

It started with an unstoppable volley from previously unnamed centre-forward, Belle de Jour. ITV's favourite sex worker is, it turns out, a research scientist called Dr Brooke Magnanti.

Prostitution for Belle/Brooke was far from a dangerous, damaging activity linked to drug use, limited socio-economic opportunities and, often, a crippling lack of self-esteem – it was just the easiest way to fund her doctorate. Having once been a PhD student I can confirm that those grant application forms are a nightmare to fill out.

Not only that, though, Magnanti loved it – all that rushing around to posh hotels and sexy underwear, what a wheeze. A happy hooker, see.

Actually, I'm sure I saw one of those the other night. She was young, maybe about 20. She was standing alone in the driving rain at the top of Salamander Place in Leith, wearing a skirt that reached just below her thin coat, no tights, and I think she may have been missing a few teeth. Less your "Beauty of the Day" and more your "'I need to fund my drug habit" type prostitute, but as the ITV executive might've said: "It'll never work for Billie Piper. Who wants to see that?" Quite.

And who wants to know about an old man "turning" a lesbian by way of a right good seeing to? Action replay reveals it's Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Philip Roth. Already yellow-carded with a Bad Sex nomination for his novel The Humbling, closer inspection suggests it's less the protagonist's green dildo and more the central premise that is eye-wateringly bad. A clear sending-off offence.

Sex with Roth's ageing lothario is so good it not only changes the sexuality of 40-year-old lesbian Pegeen, it also improves her dress sense and haircut. Score!

And although I'm not sure she'd approve of the sex toys, the haircut and fashion would definitely appeal to head teacher and wily winger Jill Berry, who, having informed us that women can be clever and cute (a triumph of multi-tasking I suppose), went on to score a belter by revealing that girls shouldn't feel guilty about dropping their hopes of high-flying career for the pleasure of a satisfying family life. Guilty? No. Royally hacked-off? You might say so.

Coming to the aid of several Cambridge undergraduates who had posed in their pants for their uni magazine, Berry also managed to slip in that cheerleading, which she has introduced to her school in Bedford, is "really quite skilful — it involves gymnastics and dance". Excellent. In football parlance I think we can say Berry has just secured her place in the first team. And whatever she's being paid (if she's like the rest of us, you can take a rough guess that it'll be around 20 per cent less than the man who heads the Boys' Schools Association, if there is one) she deserves a bonus.

But as the title slips out of our grasp for yet another year, surely there's only one word on every right-thinking person's lips: "Referee!"