Woman’s Hour presenter Jenni Murray was on Radio 4’s Feedback today (approx 7 mins in) defending herself against feminist anger over a recent stand-up routine she did as part of Comic Relief. It seems Murray used the word “bitches” and had committed the unforgivable crime (in feminist circles) of calling herself a “girl”. She pointed out that she was trying to be funny (the use of “bitches”, for example, was part of a mock urban slang bit of the sort heard with tiresome regularity from “real” Radio 4 comedians such as Mark Steel, her mentor for the Comic Relief exercise).
Before explaining the “ironic” nature of her comedy routine, Murray treated us to a brief history of the phrase “political correctness”. Referring to herself in the third person, she reminded right-on listeners everywhere about the real enemy:
“Who would’ve thought that Jenni Murray, queen of all things politically correct, would’ve landed herself in trouble accused of using unacceptable language? Well let’s deal first of all with those words “politically correct”, the ubiquitous “PC”. I never use them. It was an expression promoted by advisers to George Bush Sr during his presidency and was a plot by the extreme right wing in America to put down people like me.”
A pillar of the BBC possessing a deranged antipathy towards an imagined “extreme right wing in America”. Who’d have guessed, eh?