So BBC1’s Sunday evening success story Countryfile is to have a spin-off, Countryfile Diaries, which will be broadcast daily to coincide with the parent programme’s Spring special in May.
As a country lover, I am pleased with this news but as an older woman I am not. Not when I learn that the presenting team for Diaries comprises John Craven , 75, Jules Hudson, 46, Paul Martin, 57 and … drum roll … Keeley Donovan, 32. The numbers after their names are brackets are significant. It makes my blood boil that the BBC persists in this outdated wise-and-experienced-older-man-with-pretty-female-sidekick model.
Where, I wonder, is our female John Craven? Oh, that’s right, they had one in Miriam O’Reilly, but they sacked her in a proven case of age discrimination. Sacked and not replaced. It’s not as though they can afford to be cavalier with their older woman presenting staff when there are so few of them.
I’ve been nursing a seething irritation with Countryfile for some time, mainly because of the lack of balance in the presenting team. The current line up is Matt Baker, 38, Adam Henson, 50, Tom Heap, 51, Ellie Harrison, 38, Anita Rani, 38 and Helen Skelton, 32.
I’m told John Craven is a lovely man and I have nothing against him personally but every time he trundles across my screen sucking his teeth and pausing to gaze wistfully into the middle distance, I feel an overwhelming urge to smash something.
I’m sure Matt Baker’s a lovely chap, too, but he’s everywhere. At the moment we get only two Matt Baker-free days a week . It is possible to have too much of a good thing, or even a mediocre one.
Apart from a worrying tendency to skip through ripe wheat in tiny shorts (bare legs would be shredded in seconds) I like and admire all Countryfile’s female presenting team, but not one of them over 40? 45-year-old Julia Bradbury stopped co-presenting the programme in 2014. .
There is one BBC programme that boasts an older all female presenting line-up and that is Rip-Off Britain, a 9am consumer programme. Here we have rare sightings of Angela Rippon, Gloria Hunniford, Julia Somerville and Jennie Bond, and that is very welcome, but why are these talented, experienced women piled into one programme and at that time of day? Older women do not see themselves represented in the media. That we do not see ourselves anywhere except in ads for pensions, denture adhesive, special offers from opticians, walk-in baths, nursing homes, health insurance and very, very occasionally in an unrealistic cosmetics ad is alienating in the extreme. We feel without worth.
Thank god for Mary Beard, who runs the gauntlet of a monstering on social media every time she sticks her glorious mane of steel grey hair above the small screen parapet. Make no mistake, her great good humour in the face of condemnation for the way she looks helps the rest of us cope with what amounts to segregation.
It is vital we see older women on television (or any screen) and at peak viewing times.If not, there is a subtle but pervasive message of lack of usefulness, functionality and worth. That we are not represented adequately in the media perpetuates the attitudes that lead to age discrimination in all its forms, but perhaps most importantly is reflected in the way in which older women are shunned all too often by employers. For every Mary Berry there are a hundred unemployed older women with a similar wealth of experience, wisdom, drive and energy.
What is presented to us in the media has a profound effect far beyond mere entertainment. The BBC, holding such a respected position as a benchmark for social values, has missed a trick.
- Follow Helen, author of The Invisible Woman – Taking On the Vintage Years on Twitter @TheVintageYear