What's Plan B, Dara?

I gave up watching 'Mock the Week' and a couple of other comedy shows (was one called 8 out of 10 Cats or something?) because they were entirely populated by male stand-up comics who seemed to spend every programme showing off to each other. The panels consisted of the same wee group of men - and if a new person appeared on a show, you can bet your life it would be a man. Now the man in charge at the BBC says this domination of comedy shows by men-only panels will no longer be allowed, and Dara O'Brian is outraged. He has gone into print in today's newspapers to say so at some length. According to Dara, stand-up comedy is dominated by men. It just is.

Two things.

First, Dara works for the BBC - that is, for us, the licence-payers. He gets his wages from us so who the hell is he to be telling off his bosses for their decisions? In real life - not the sheltered world of the 'creatives' like stand-up comics - if you don't like what the boss tells you, you have two choices: shut up or leave.

Second, 51% of the UK population is female (probably more than that are TV viewers), so shouldn't the composition of the panels in comedy shows reflect the population? It should certainly reflect what viewers want. It simply isn't true that there are no good female comics out there. We know that from the popularity of people like Jo Brand, Sarah Millican, Sandi Toskvig and Susan Calman. Incidentally, Susan Calman owes a large part of her success to being promoted on The News Quiz on Radio 4 by Sandi Toskvig. Good for Sandi - the men have been pushing each other's careers for decades now. Why shouldn't the women do the same thing? The only TV comedy programme I've noticed that has two women on a panel is QI, but then that's presided over by the saintly Stephen Fry. But it can be done.

All the way though the 80s and 90s, women were told that giving them an automatic right to places on short-leets for jobs was a bad thing. All that time, some of us were asking the men in charge: Okay, if you don't want women to have the right to be represented on short-leets and you certainly don't want women-only short-leets, what's your plan to give women a fair share of the jobs? So there you go, Dara, that's your challenge for today: how do women comics break into TV comedy if the men are busy looking after themselves and each other?