Is Mock the Week sexist? It’s a question that has haunted the BBC’s topical comedy panel show for much of its 15 years. And one of its most prominent female former panellists has just reignited the debate by claiming the show practises a kind of ‘pedestal feminism’, giving a few female comics a go to deflect criticism of its otherwise manifest sexism.
‘I had to stop doing it’, said Canadian comic Katherine Ryan, who has clocked up seven MtW appearances, on her podcast recently. ‘I knew that every time I was booked I was taking a job away from one of my female peers… I couldn’t do it anymore because of that fact alone – ‘No, Mock the Week doesn’t have a problem with women, look, Katherine Ryan’s on the show’.’
She stopped doing the show in 2015, a year after the BBC introduced a quota mandating at least one female comic per panel show.
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