Nigella the feminist?

At a fundraiser for the feminist organisation UK Feminista tonight, I found myself standing next to Nigella Lawson.

Not only was I standing next to her, she was in fact the main celebrity magnet encouraging people to part with £50 to get into the room in the first place, and then splash out more cash at the auction that followed. She didn’t make a speech or do anything, just being there was enough.

I’m never one to underestimate or belittle Nigella – her credentials as an intellectual heavyweight and first rate journalist, including a period as Deputy Literary Editor of the Sunday Times aged just 26, speak for themselves. It’s always been clear to me that Nigella is first and foremost a woman who is highly adept with words and in possession of brilliant business acumen, and secondly a great cook and TV presenter.

But Nigella the feminist? An unlikely pairing, surely? I’d never have put the two together until this evening. Not that I thought Nigella was in any way anti-feminist, just that I had never read or heard that she was interested in, or moved by, women’s rights and women’s liberation. (In comparison, say, to Juliet Stevenson supporter of Birds Eye View or Emma Thompson campaigner against sex trafficking.)

It turns out that she was largely there because she is a chum of Julie Burchill, who is in turn, somewhat more predictably (depending on your definition of feminism) a chum of UK Feminista. Also present was sister of Boris and much maligned editor of The Lady, Rachel Johnson, Shami Chakrabarti, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC and various hangers on of the aforementioned Burchill.

And that is of course the way these things work. Lots of chums, chumming it together. Nigella did part with a fair few hundred quid though, and whatever your views on the domestic goddess, and whatever her views on feminism, money is something the women’s movement desperately needs.

Spot the Difference

Old Film 2010 host

New film 2010 host

‘Hurrah!’ I cheered earlier this year when it was announced that Claudia Winkleman would replace Jonathan Ross as the first ever female presenter of the BBC’s Film 2010.

I’ve had just about enough of the BBC’s long line of macho, misogynist bullies – Chris Moyles, Jonathan Ross, Russell Brand… And don’t get me started on QI, Mock the Week and the vast hoards of borish blokes that cram the airwaves. Yawn, yawn, yawn.

Imagine my horror then on first glimpsing the publicity still for the new show. ‘Claudia! What is that on your shoulder?’ I gasped. ‘Have you got two heads?’

Oh no, silly me. Claudia is a woman. Therefore clearly she cannot be trusted to host such a prestigious, intellectually-weighty programme on prime time television by herself. A film programme? Hosted by a woman? No, no, no. That just wouldn’t do.

It  brings to mind an anecdote told to me by the Observer’s film critic Philip French. Back in the day when he was presenting The Critics and Critics Forum on the BBC Home Service and Radio 3 respectively, the BBC had a rule that he wasn’t allowed more than one female guest, because; ‘listeners wouldn’t be able to distinguish between the female voices’.

That was in the Sixties. Fast forward 50 years and the BBC to are too lilly livered to put Claudia Winkleman on the telly at 10.45pm on a Wednesday night without a Mark Kermode lookalike who has apparently been writing a film column for the Guardian for the past three years.

No matter that Claudia Winkleman has an honours degree in the history of art from Cambridge and got her first TV presenting job nearly 20 years ago. No matter that she has interviewed everyone from Tony Blair to Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford, is a talented writer and presents a weekly arts programme on Radio 2. No matter that she can do light and funny – Strictly, Eurovision – as well as serious and intellectual – answering phones for the Disasters Emergency Committee during the Darfur crisis.

Clearly Claudia Winkleman is not capable without a man!

Poor woman! Isn’t it enough that she’s got the word ‘man’ in her name?!