Paul Merton

Have I got news for women? Not really.

No wonder female MPs steer clear of a TV show that celebrates smirking buffoonery.

The biggest problem for the makers of a satirical news quiz in 2018 must be knowing where to start. Hislop and Merton's Friday-night fixture has felt slightly flabby in recent series but Brexit, Trump and Cambridge Analytica feel like fish in a barrel, just waiting to be shot. Jeremy Paxman hosts this opener.

HIGNFY: women hit back against 'too modest' claims

Politicians and comics dispute Ian Hislop's comments about reasons for lack of female hosts on panel show.

Have I Got News For You and the problem of women

The comedian Bridget Christie has been a team member on HIGNFY twice - the second time in 2014, shortly after winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award. "The second time was not a fun experience. I said, 'I don't think I'll do this again.'"

So female politicians don't want to host HIGNFY?

The implication that women are too cowardly to host the quiz show is ridiculous - they're busy in a ceaseless battle against trivialisation.

Women too modest to host HIGNFY, Hislop claims

BBC show's team captains say low number of guest slots given to female politicians is because they refuse to appear.

It's not funny being the only woman on a TV panel show

If Have I Got News For You has problems finding female guests, maybe it's because the potential pitfalls are all too obvious.

Longevity, banging on and on, is the key component of national treasuredom. In his slick Sale of the Century years it was hard to imagine Nicholas Parsons might ever achieve the status, but now, aged 94, and having presented 975 episodes of Radio 4's Just a Minute/c], without deviation but with plenty of repetition, the mantle maybe fits. The BBC celebrated his half century with a tribute, Just a Minute: 50 Years in 28 Minutes, which had living panellists compete with departed wits; a ouija board parlour game. Paul Merton interrupted Peter Cook's 60 seconds on the Loch Ness monster, Jenny Eclair was superseded by Patrick Moore on foolishness. By the time Stephen Fry cut in on Kenneth Williams and Barbara Castle on the subject of Gregorian chants, it was tricky to work out who was in the studio and who wasn't. "I don't think we can have psychic challenges," a youthful Parsons reminded his departed guests; we can now.

50 Years of Just A Minute: Nicholas Parsons in Conversation with Paul Merton (New Year's Day, 6.15pm, Radio 4) has the irrepressibly perky host quizzed by his unfailingly puzzled guest, and can be relied upon to get to the big questions. Did Parsons sport his trademark cravat back when he worked as an engineering apprentice on the Glasgow docks? And how does it feel to have seen his own fame increase while Arthur Haynes, the TV comic he was once the straight man for, has faded away into obscurity?