Sexism (U.K. Style)

So, women are finally to be granted full membership of the Carlton Club. This audaciously late attempt to look "modern" has been welcomed by usually sensible and liberated Tory women, including Louise Bagshawe, who says she will join "if they'll have me". Seriously?

The day I went there to meet a Tory MP, I was greeted by three stewards in starched blue uniforms who kept me in a holding area until it could be verified that I was awaiting a fully qualified member of the human race, i.e. a man.

When this was confirmed, I was escorted out with one of the stewards following behind me ringing a bell. All right, so I made that last bit up, but you get the picture. We ascended a sweeping staircase to a room named after a male figure of distinction and I was deposited on to a chaise longue.

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I looked around and saw that I was surrounded by strange brown humps covered in newspapers. The humps were rising and falling slowly and emitting faint drilling sounds. It transpired that these were the members. Evidently, being on a higher plane of existence to women is an exhausting business.

Do young, aspirant Tory women really want to sit on a chaise longue listening to old men snore? Possibly they want to join in the snoring, in the name of equal access to institutionalised snoozing. Maybe it's a case of the old Groucho Marx adage and they long to be members of a club which wouldn't have them as a member.

I wouldn't give my money to any institution that had stubbornly insisted for 176 years that it didn't need my kind, thank you very much. I would also want to know what had changed so suddenly to make me qualify: David Cameron's gentle appeal to the Carlton to please admit women, or diminishing funds and a lack of male applicants willing to pay £1,125?

Nor does it necessarily serve society for these clubs to start opening their doors. It makes more sense for them to be preserved as hallowed all-male areas by law, thus containing the sexist anachronisms of yesteryear in one place.

From this A.M.'s Telly