This is why women threw themselves under the King’s horse - Christa Ackroyd

Regular readers will know our association began more than three decades ago when our mutual onscreen partner Richard Whiteley, whom we both adored, shared a TV studio with us on a daily basis.

I was on Calendar and Carol on Countdown. He was a busy man, our Richard.

And of course two programmes a day led to him being christened “twice nightly Whiteley “ by the late great Terry Wogan. A badge of honour he relished.

Richard was the gentlest of souls but something about him meant he adored strong women. And we adored him.

Together with his real life partner my gorgeous friend Kathy who passed away last year, we were christened by him ‘the Quality Birds.’

Kathy was QB1. I was QB2 and Carol QB 3. And that is how we signed our messages, our Christmas cards and called each other in person. Still do.

Of all the things I was lucky enough to be part of at the wondrous institution that was Yorkshire Television becoming an honorary QB was my biggest accolade.

The female version of the three musketeers, all for one and one for all and when Richard died our friendship only deepened.

But Carol has fought for everything she has achieved. From comprehensive school to Cambridge, raised by a single mother she did the same with her children.

Her divorce dress, a little blue floaty frock got more reaction than Princess Diana’s little black number. And it wasn’t good. Basically you can sum it up in one sentence. Mutton dressed as lamb.

Was it water off a duck’s back? No, it hurt. But then both of us have become Teflon coated in the intervening years.

We speak as we find and we say what we think. Because guess what? We have earned the right to do just that.

As has every woman on the planet, or why else did the suffragettes fight for us to find our voices?

We both work in an industry that judges a woman and excuses a man for the way we look and behave. If we are tough, stand up for ourselves and others we must be conceited or worse still a bitch.

When a man does the same he is seen as strong, determined and applauded for his no nonsense approach. The same with age. A man is experienced, a woman past her sell by date.

Well guess what? We don’t care.

This week my strong, unashamedly outspoken friend has been dealing with the fallout from a comment made a few years ago now which was endorsed by the Reform candidate in the upcoming Makerfield by-election, Rob Kenyon.

I cannot in this column bring myself to repeat the comment to which he answered “He is only saying what we are all thinking.”

Suffice it to say it was gross. But he picked the wrong woman.

Following the resurfacing of a number of tweets not as explicit but certainly as misogynistic concerning women drivers, women referees and one comment which added “I’m sexist, I know I am” at least he is being honest and telling is what he thinks of us. But that is nothing to be proud of.

The comments were dismissed as a joke “locker room banter” by the man and his party, though as Carol neatly pointed out “I don’t know where that came from. I thought we called them changing rooms in this country”.

Which showed us exactly where it came from... the orange one at the top across the pond. Well it won’t wash here I am glad to say.

Of course Carol is clever. And she is used to online trolling. I don’t know one woman alive who is on social media who hasn’t suffered the same. But developing a thick skin doesn’t make it right.

‘Ignore it’ is the usual advice but sometimes you just have to call it out for what it is, bullying. And she has, in writing a personal letter to thousands of women in the constituency which we had never heard of but has suddenly become the centre of British politics.

And by and large she has been applauded by other women for her actions, in between the trolling of course.

Last weekend in an altogether different way Jeremy Clarkson stood up for a way of life that is now under threat and affects our wonderful landscape here at home and across the country.

Clarkson’s Farm has cast a spotlight on an industry that affects us all from the food on our table to the green spaces we often take for granted.

New inheritance tax laws mean those who would inherit would also have to sell off the pastures they rely on to make farming viable – so bang goes an industry which protects our way of life, puts food on the table we know where it came from, and means our country remains a green and pleasant land.

It simply doesn’t make sense, but rather than shout and scream Clarkson continues to spotlight the plight of our farmers on his TV programme and now with a farmers’ choir that sings their hearts out to protect a life they love and wins Britain’s Got Talent because viewers liked what they saw, enjoyed what they sang and understood what they were fighting for.

Then there was Rosamund Pike, an acclaimed actress in a hard hitting one woman play who waited until the curtain call she obviously deserved to remind a member of the audience that texting in the final denouement of the whole performance was unacceptable, unless of course he or she was a doctor that was needed in an emergency.

Said with passion, good grace, gentle but pointed comments that really read ‘if you can’t stay off your phone for a couple of hours in the theatre then don’t spoil it for everyone else.’ Good on her.

We all have a voice. How we choose to use it is a matter of choice, but that choice is open to each and everyone of us.

If you don’t agree with us, so be it, that should spark dialogue not online trolling, sexist remarks or rudeness. I will always stand up for my friend.

Carol and I speak the same language. I have no interest in cars so Top Gear was never a must see for me but in casting the spotlight on a way of life I love, Jeremy Clarkson is a superhero too now.

This column is designed to spark conversation. I know by your comments and messages it does. Whether you agree with me is immaterial.

Instead I hope we can respectfully agree to disagree, because let’s face it if we all thought the same, believed in the same things, acted the same way life would be infinitely duller and less open to change.

And that my friends is why women threw themselves under the King’s horse, for our freedom to speak as we find, which doesn’t mean we are wrong, just not always of the same opinion.

Being chained to the kitchen sink is a thing of the past. Or put another way if you don’t like the heat then get out of the damn kitchen in the first place.