View source for A woman Dr Who ... but she's still young

{{article
| publication = Daily Express
| file = 2017-07-20 Daily Express p14.jpg
| px = 450
| height = 
| width = 
| date = 2017-07-20
| author = Virginia Blackburn
| pages = 14
| language = English 
| type = 
| description = 
| categories = cast changes
| moreTitles = 
| morePublications = 
| moreDates = 
| text = 
THE BBC has announced its first female Doctor Who. Bully for them. It might be a little more impressive were the Doctor in question to be, say, Miriam Margolyes, but no, it's another toothsome 30-something with a new blonde do. Jodie Whittaker is 35 and so just squeezes into the age group that the Beeb allows for women on prime time television. The first Doctor Who, William Hartnell, was in his mid-50s when he entered the Tardis. No chance of that happening with a Time Lady. In the vast majority of cases the moment a BBC woman starts to show signs of ageing she is taken into the woods and shot in the back of the head.

If the BBC really wanted to show its commitment to treating women equally why not promote a female John Simpson? Simpson, 72, said not so long ago that he had no intention of retiring. It's jolly lucky for him then that he was born with the Y chromosome. He wouldn't stand a chance otherwise.

The female equivalent of Simpson is Kate Adie, 71, but it's over a decade since she was on telly regularly. These days she's confined to radio, the only place in Auntie's empire where women of a certain age are allowed to flourish, the thinking being presumably that their wrinkles can't frighten anyone.

The BBC's treatment of women is one of the great conundrums of our times, as has just been made even more clear following the publication of pay figures with only one woman, Claudia Winkleman, in the top 10. Painfully politically correct in almost every other respect, desperate to promote every ethnicity they can get their hands on, dominated by the liberal elite, their attitude towards women has more in common with the sexist dinosaurs of 1970s comedy than the era they live in today. To be a high-profile woman at the BBC you have to be young and fruity and while programmes such as EastEnders may be overrun with the older lady that cannot be said of the rest of the place. And it stinks.

There's an awful lot of nonsense about the feminisation of society out there. In fact every woman, bar none, knows this to be untrue. It's still a man's world no matter who might be piloting the Tardis. When is that finally going to change?

}}