After my slagging of the BBC, and the all women audience on QT, I was at my two faced best last night, sitting down with at glass of Wine at Di’s house to watch on with interest, and I have to admit it was an engrossing, and lively debate.

The beginning was as auspicious as it gets, with the camera scanning the audience of women in outfits from The Sunday Express Sunday Supplement, and a soul, almost obligatory Muslim, bussed in so as the BBC could not be seen to be discriminative to anyone……well except men of course!

The panel consisted of the inoffensive, but slightly soppy broadcaster come gardener, Monty Don, Super bitch Labour MP Carolyn Flint, the unsavoury former Sun editor Kalvin Mackenzie, and respective female Tory and Lib Dem MP’s who were as non descript as a packet of Jacobs Cream Crackers.

The programme got of to a flyer with some savage old bat in a red jacket, who until rudely, some would say wiseley interrupted by David Dimbledy, was well on her way to demanding the public execution of Jon Venables (one of the Jamie Bulger murderers). Her illiterate rant had me contemplating a morning in Currys choosing Diane’s new television, and the show was only ten minutes in, this was going to be a long show.

Then whether by judgement, or by luck, the excellent Dimbledy picked out members of the audience with something coherent to say, and the programme smoothly moved away from lunacy to a strong, lively, topical, and political debate on raw subjects such as soldiers equipment in Afghanistan, Politicians expenses, and the Jon Venables case. It really was quite good TV, though Di may have been disappointed by missing out on the obvious benefits of my foot going through her screen. I do still feel that having an all woman audience was an unnecessary, and misguided precedent to set in what is supposed be a debate open to all, though it didn’t turn in to the hour of man hating that I had originally feared.

As a footnote, I felt the subject on soldiers pay and equipment never really got to the point. The anger surrounded the fact that a Police Officer starting out, gets a higher salary than a new recruit in to the Army. No matter how distasteful and unjust it seems, the answer is simple, the Police force have problems recruiting, the Army don’t. It’s as plain as that, it called supply and demand. I don’t understand why no one mentions that.

In America, why do internal airline pilots get paid less than a London bus driver? Because they are two a penny that’s why, and unfortunately, at least at the moment, so are young British soldiers naively sold on the glamorous Army recruitment adverts on the TV. I can see why these Mothers get upset though. Seeing their son fighting in Afghanistan getting paid less than an obnoxious former school bully who dishes out speeding tickets all day for a living must stick in throat.