She said: “The middle-aged female must struggle to look youthful.The nearly 50-something Zoe Ball flicks designedly youthful hair, Lauren Laverne looks 25, not 42, and Mishal Husain is basically a goddess anyway. If there’s a grudge to be grudged, it’s that the chaps of all ages can inform, educate and entertain while looking like Benny Hill or old Steptoe, and get away with it.
“It’s not all about numbers. Equality will come when women are allowed to be grey, stout and in proper cardigans.”
Steptoe was the lewd, grubby rag-and-bone patriarch in Steptoe And Son, the TV show of the Sixties and Seventies starring Wilfrid Brambell.
In a piece for Radio Times, BBC veteran Libby suggested older women were “written off as old trouts while men become revered elders, sacred patriarchs, silver foxes”.
She offered examples of how Sue Barker, 64, left A Question Of Sport after 23 years, while Dame Jenni Murray, 70, and Jane Garvey, 56, departed from Woman’s Hour and were replaced with 35-year-old Emma Barnett. Sue Barker said she was “sad to leave my dream job”, as the broadcaster claimed she was cut in a bid to give the show a “new look”.
Her plight drew fury from fellow female presenters including Good Morning Britain presenter, Susanna Reid, 49.
She said Sue was a “pioneer and a role model” before “many of its new producers were even born”.
The host added: “Only a week after I wrote that the BBC wouldn’t sack an older woman these days, it goes and does just that to 64-year-old Sue.
“Cue shrieks of ‘ageism!’ and ‘sexism!’ in the living rooms of A Question Of Sport fans.”
The BBC has been linked to allegations of ageism for years.
In 2011, the former Countryfile presenter Miriam O’Reilly, 63, successfully sued the corporation for age discrimination, while Radio 2’s Moira Stuart, 71, briefly quit the BBC amid allegations of ageism in 2007.
Libby said Andrew Marr, Gary Lineker, Steve Wright and Tom Sutcliffe were all in or around their 60s, meanwhile Melvyn Bragg is 80 and Sir David Attenborough 94.
She asked: “Are BBC women being crushed by codger power? Do we have a sell-by date? You might expect a ‘yes’ from me, who dragged my sad feet from Radio 4’s Midweek at 67 after four decades working live on the network.
“But that was only because the alternative work offered was boring.
“These cullings and re-arrangings are usually about bosses’ desires to be innovators, not curators.”
Libby said it was once the case that age never mattered in radio until someone’s voice began to shake or their opinions “marked you out as an old buffer”.
“But the coming of websites, social media and photos larded all over the BBC Sounds app is making radio seek an image more visual, thus ageist.”
Libby added that on TV, Emily Maitlis, Fiona Bruce, Kirsty Young and Victoria Derbyshire have all tipped 50, and Claudia Winkleman is 48.
She said: “They may all be safe for 20 years more, certainly in the atmosphere of feminist indignation under which the BBC cowers. This opens the most interesting aspect: lookism, and seeming young. On TV it has always mattered and annoyed older women. It’s a visual medium, far more tolerant of verbal mediocrity than radio, and all sexes enjoy looking at prettiness.”
