We watch the Dave channel in our household. QI, Red Dwarf, old Have I Got News For You... Top Gear... Ray Mears ... excellent stuff.
So Dave programmes get the thumbs up as far as I'm concerned. In fact, I reckon I watch more Dave than any other channel. But there is one thing I can't stand about Dave. There's one thing that really makes my stomach churn and makes me switch channel whenever there's a commercial break.
The Cobra beer ads; the ones with the hand-drawn blokes in the bar. The dialogue is inoffensive enough in a pointless nondescript sort of way; but there is something unpleasant lurking behind the bland blokes-in-a-pub-ness of those ads.
It's the women bar staff. It's not just the way their breasts bounce up and down as they walk across the screen behind the men. Though that's kind of weird. It's the fact that they are entirely silent. They don't say a word. There are no women saying anything in any of the Cobra ads. The men do all the talking. The women just glide around silently in the background with bouncy breasts. They are anonymous anywomen. Anonymous anywomen from a certain simplistic kind of male fantasy.
Do the Dave executives think only men watch Dave? I doubt it. I think they just don't give a toss. They know that women are so used to accepting that that is the way things are. Women will carry on watching Dave despite the fact it proclaims itself to be the blokey channel, because the programmes themselves appeal to anybody; even the really blokey programmes - like Top Gear for instance. Jeremy Clarkson may come across as a totally unreconstructed male throwback, but he treats women and men pretty equally as far as I can see. He and the others take the mick out of men as much as women. That's equality.
I believe in equality. And I think that life is becoming less equal for women now than it was twenty years ago.
Take colours for girls and boys. When I was a kid, merchandise for boys and girls was sold in the same range of colours - blue, red, green, brown, grey etc. etc. I would imagine you were more likely to get girls' stuff in pink than boys', but I never had anything pink. And I know that when we went shopping, we weren't presented with the segregated merchandising that you get today: Go into John Lewis and the girls' clothes and furnishings are dominated by pink, lilac, sequins, baby animals and fluff; the boys' by red, blue, camouflage, cars and technology. It's the same in many stores. Girls' trainers', girls' curtains, girls' duvet sets - you name it, they come in pink and lilac; or if you're somewhere a little more daring, they might come in pale green...
So what does this say about modern society? Is this conditioning? Is it nature? Either way, I think the conditioning has become more dictatorial in recent years.
Two years ago, The Times gave away a poster each day for a week, each one entitled 'Dangerous Poster for Boys'. One poster, for instance, was about flags and codes - semaphore, morse code and the NATO phonetic alphabet. My daughter (aged 8) loved them. She memorised morse code and the phonetic alphabet. The posters were great - informative in a fun and exciting way. My parents still have a couple of them up in the bedroom the children sleep in when we visit.
This was followed by a book in time for Christmas 2006, called The Dangerous Book for Boys, packed with exciting examples of Boys' Own type adventurous stuff.
But why did it have to say for Boys? Presumably 'for boys' is more snappy than 'for children'; and it isn't child-specific. A boy can be any age. But that really isn't good enough. It comes down to the same thing as the Dave beer adverts. Women and girls will watch or read things that are marketed exclusively for men and boys. But the same thing doesn't happen the other way round. So marketing executives are lazy. Rather than think up a gender-free alternative, they use the easy 'male' option.
Or perhaps it's more prejudiced than that. The Dangerous Book for Boys was followed by the Girls' Book of Glamour (A Guide to being a Goddess) ... in pink. What does that say about the media view of girls versus boys?
