Fiona McCade: TV's age limit only applies to women

Published on Tuesday 2 August 2011 16:22

DAVID Attenborough is brilliant. I love him.

As far as I'm concerned, he is the God of broadcasting and I treasure every second of the 57 years he has spent entertaining and educating us through the medium of television.

OK? Just wanted to be clear on that point, because the very existence of David Attenborough - a fantastically knowledgeable presenter of many years' experience, who is still working at the age of 85 - also highlights a negative, a lack in British broadcasting.

Cough loudly at the BBC and you'll disturb quite a few grands hommes who have been around a long time, know their stuff and still get a chance to strut it. But where are the women? Where is the female equivalent of David Attenborough?

The row about sexism and ageism on television - especially at the BBC - has been rumbling on for quite a while now, but this week ex-corporation stalwart Sue Lawley essentially shrugged her shoulders and said: "Those of us who have appeared on TV have enjoyed our moments in the sun and if, after five years, they don't want us, well that happens."

Oh, Sue. Come on. Five years? I seem to remember that your particular bite of the career apple took at least 35. Is that all you think a woman can expect these days? A mere half a decade before she's finished?

Whether Ms Lawley is right or not, my point is that nobody would ever dream of saying that about a male television presenter. Five years? Ridiculous. He'd only be getting into his stride. Trevor McDonald still presents occasionally, despite being 71 and at the end of a near 40-year career. David Dimbleby, 72, was suckled by tea ladies in the Broadcasting House canteen (well, his dad owned the BBC, didn't he?) and will have the Question Time chair prised out of his cold, dead hands before he'll let it go. Meanwhile, Sue Lawley is 65 and all but forgotten.

Sue seems to be saying that women shouldn't have the same expectations of a long career as men do, and that's plainly A Very Bad Thing. Even worse is her apparent passive acceptance of the way things are, because the way things are is Very Bad too.

Take Fiona Bruce, for instance. Fiona is a newscaster, and an excellent one. But she's 47. Will she still be reading the news in ten years' time? I doubt it. She's already being slowly and gently eased over into lighter broadcasting, as though presenting Antiques Roadshow is the best long-term bet for a soon-to-be-antique woman. Meanwhile, her stablemate Huw Edwards will be bringing us the news until the Rapture (if the careers of other male newsreaders are anything to go by), and nobody will ever debate whether or not he has a nice bum.

Do British TV companies think that women's authority is somehow diminished by the menopause, and after it they just become weird old grannies and nobody will take them seriously? As the men get older they get more gravitas, but the women just go grey (if they dare).A woman can have a lifetime's experience in her field, but because she's old enough to have had such experience, TV isn't interested.

Just as there is no female David Attenborough, with half a century of wisdom to share and the platform to do it, there is no British Barbara Walters, American TV's 81-year-old grande dame, who has interviewed everyone from Abraham Lincoln - well, it seems like it - to Barack Obama and most people in between.

When she was 50, Angela Rippon was told (privately) by the BBC's director-general that she would have to "make way" for younger females.

That happened 16 years ago, but it certainly explains the dearth of elder stateswomen appearing regularly on British television.

The BBC has always denied accusations of sexism and ageism against women, but I still haven't heard a decent explanation for why Arlene Phillips, and her 50 years of dance expertise, was axed from Strictly Come Dancing (after, ironically, five years) in favour of 30-year-old singer Alesha Dixon. Meanwhile, Bruce Forsyth - aged 149 - goes on, and on and on.