My View: Ugly memories of when Miss World lived on a different planet

These were the basic requirements for entrants to the Miss World beauty contest in 1970, as stipulated by Eric Morley, then boss of bingo and ballroom empire Mecca, which ran the show. No wonder the women of 40 years ago were becoming increasingly outraged by what they accurately described as a "cattle market", where women were expected to parade in national dress before donning swimsuits and ordered to turn, so that both judges and audience could scutinise their rear ends.

"We're not beautiful, we're not ugly, we're angry," was the response of the Women's Liberation Movement protesters who disrupted the event that took place that year at the Royal Albert Hall, where MC Bob Hope was pelted with tomatoes and flour bombs, later emerging to denounce the disrupters as "on some kind of dope".

They weren't, of course. They were perfectly sane, perfectly angry young women who had had enough of seeing their sisters degraded and herded around like animals.

Their story was told last week on Radio 4's The Reunion, hosted by Sue McGregor, who brought together three of the protesters with former Miss World organiser Peter Jolley, presenter Michael Aspel and the 1970 winner, Miss Grenada Jennifer Hosten. Forty years on, feelings still run high. Peter Jolley, even now miffed that his work on the show had been overshadowed, described the terror of some of the young entrants, commenting: "It was a question of smack on the bum, get out and smile."

As this offensive remark was ignored at first by the women around the table, he repeated it later on, pathetically intent on getting a reaction. "I think that's assault, but I suppose that was standard procedure for women in swimsuits," commented protester Jo Robinson dryly.

Jolley is just as out of step now as his former boss, Eric Morley, was 40 years ago when he dismissed one young woman protester as a "frustrated runner-up in a beauty contest", adding: "Frustrated women always like to kick up about something". It was a different world back then, almost a foreign country. I remember watching Miss World as quite a young child and feeling disturbed – some of the comments made by older members of my family made me feel uncomfortable for reasons I didn't understand.

But I think I did understand that this sparkly spectacle was not right. The Miss World protest captured the imagination of women not previously interested in so-called Women's Lib, as they realised that they wanted to be valued for who they were, not what they looked like. In 1978, the BBC stopped televising the competition.

Now, in 2010, women still don't have equality and continue to be judged by men on their looks, but we're getting there. We are in thankful debt to those plucky 1970 Miss World protesters who, with their ink guns and flour bombs, made ordinary British women realise that they were worth more than the quality of their teeth, hair and legs.