Why the BBC have picked wrong platform to tackle the scourge of sexism

Thompson, a defender who played for the Blades from 1988-1989, and also managed his home-town club in 1998, has worked for several years now for Radio Lincolnshire, acting as a summariser on Lincoln City’s matches, another of his former clubs.

The 65-year-old is one of the game’s great characters – an old-school figure with old-school views.

He has a particularly keen and dry sense of humour; no Thompson stint behind a microphone is complete without innumerable gags to go with the insights.

Anyone who knows Thompson, or has listened to him at work, will know first and foremost that he is a football man, that he has a great respect for the game and the people who play it, as well as the listeners to a radio station that he has served with some distinction, it has to be said.

Sadly, that love of a joke, and his fast repartee, has landed a man affectionately known as ‘Tommo’ in trouble with his BBC bosses, who received complaints about comments that he made during a recent fixture at Accrington Stanley.

Now, before we go any further, Thompson did not say, “Accrington Stanley? Who are they?” – the sarcastic slogan famously used to advertise milk in the 1980s, which would probably offend the PC brigade now.

Instead, his “crime” was to describe a scuffle between two players as “handbags” and to also quip, in the words of the Lincolnshire Echo, “(he’s) being a bit of a drama queen” and “he’d have been better wearing a skirt”.

The latter quip, it is fair to say, is inviting censure, even if it was meant as a throwaway line. As a tough-as-nails defender in his playing days, and with no little talent, Thompson has always prized the qualities of manliness and courage on the football field and lets his feelings be known if those qualities are absent.

Thompson loves it when the tackles fly in, when defenders stick their heads in where it hurts, and he despises the play-acting that goes on now, particularly if designed to get an opponent booked or sent off.

But the fact is that he was cited for not one so-called sexist remark but three, which means that the BBC also deemed “handbags” and “drama queen” to be similarly offensive, and although he was previously warned about his use of language a couple of years ago, surely a quiet word in the ear would have sufficed this time.

However, explaining the decision, a BBC spokesperson said: “Steve made three separate comments while on air that he accepts didn’t meet the standards our listeners expect. He has volunteered to undertake training led by the football authorities.”

So common and accepted a term in the sporting world is “handbags”, however, that it even appears in the Collins Dictionary as “an incident in which people, especially sportsmen, fight or threaten to fight, but without real intent to inflict harm.”

Similarly, that dictionary says of “drama queen” – also without any inference that the term is offensive – that “if you call someone a drama queen, you mean they react to situations in an unnecessarily dramatic or exaggerated way”.

Could it be that this is what the BBC has done in this particular case? The answer is surely “yes”.

The “handbags” element has been widely ridiculed, with several national newspapers having a go, including The Sun, whose former editor, Kelvin MacKenzie, wrote on Twitter: “Radio Lincolnshire’s management must be the most stupid even by the BBC’s low standards. Football pundit Steve Thompson has been suspended after a listener complained at his reference to a League One scuffle between players as ‘handbags’. Bloody ridiculous. #BringBackTommo”

Piers Morgan ranted on breakfast television, branding it as “woke nonsense”, while even Karl McCartney, MP for Lincoln, waded into the furore, tweeting: “This is why BBC Radio Lincolnshire will be treated like the rest of the BBC and BBC Sport by the taxpaying and Lincoln City FC supporting public who are fast losing patience with their out of touchness.”

According to the BBC, and by way of clarification, Thompson has not been suspended as he is technically a freelance.

But he has, to these eyes, been harshly and, one would suggest, disproportionately treated by an organisation which is rapidly losing credibility full stop, and whose coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, for example, has been so inept that most of the public are still unaware that for months there has been huge consternation among many scientists/thinkers regarding the government’s handling of the matter, its throttling of the economy and use of lockdowns.

There is also a serious debate to be had as to what we consider to be genuinely sexist and whether, in fact, men and women can make any sort of joke about each other in public anymore, as they have done since time immemorial.

Women make plenty of jokes about men after all – why, they have been laughing at me for years – and is either sex really so thin-skinned that we cannot permit the type of levity expressed by Thompson?

For, joking aside, there is a very real fight to be had against the scourge of sexism, against gender inequality, and the domestic violence and abuse which too often follow on from them, and this isn’t it.

Indeed, and to get serious for a minute, it has been shocking to read how the number of cases of domestic violence and abuse against women have risen dramatically during the lockdowns.

With more people spending more time at home, this very real issue – its roots deep in gender inequality – has reared its ugly head to the extent where society needs to wake up and make it as taboo as drink driving.

Staggeringly, it is estimated that one in four women experience domestic abuse during their lifetime, while two women are killed by their current or a former partner in England and Wales each week. Truly horrendous.

Yet again, though, in this world of here-today, gone-tomorrow pseudo outrage, we spend far too much time sweating the small stuff, such as what a football pundit might jokingly say on an anonymous Saturday afternoon in Accrington, than we do on the very real issues facing and threatening women today.

Far better to concentrate on those than on hauling ex-Blade “Tommo” over the coals for using terms such as “handbags”.

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