Radio: We are too gender blasé to want to listen to the sex-specific Men’s Hour/Woman’s Hour

Forty years ago, the idea of having an hour of BBC Radio devoted to men talking about themselves would have been so cutting-edge. Back in that dark age, you could still see City gents striding to work in pin-striped suits and bowler hats, whose buttoned-up appearance reflected (or so we have always been led to believe) their social behaviour. No self-respecting member of the male élite would have been happy to sit behind a mike chatting about their emotional problems. Now, though, after witnessing the extraordinary sight of wet cheeks on George Osborne, Andy Murray, and even Ken Livingstone, all the mystery of male difference has evaporated. We know, we’ve seen: they’re just like women, really.

At the same time in the past four decades women have appeared mostly to abandon their tearful trepidity and are daring to go for what they want: power, at work and at home. A new book (by Professor Alison Wolf) has even suggested that, at least in the top 15 to 20 per cent of the population, men and women have achieved a degree of equality (if at the cost of everyone else).