MY pal Ben and I refer to the period between Christmas and New Year as the gooch, for reasons I won’t revolt the pure among you with (don’t want you to regurgitate the box of Lindor truffles you’re hopefully inhaling for breakfast). Whatever you call it, it’s a time for rest, relaxation and the type of fist-gnawing boredom that leads you to do things you wouldn’t normally. For some, it’s completing a jigsaw or finding out what a Nutella and turkey sandwich tastes like. For me, it’s watching panel shows.

I grew up watching them, but eventually got fed up of the stale format, scripted chat and overwhelmingly male line-ups. This is the only time of year I get suckered back in, and on Boxing Day I found myself switching on Channel 4’s Big Fat Quiz of the Year to discover that save for host Jimmy Carr’s luxuriant post-transplant hairline, and in spite of the channel’s #MerryDifferent ad campaign, very little about the panel show seemed to have changed at all.

Comedians Richard Ayoade, James Acaster, Joe Lycett and David Mitchell were joined by television personality Stacey Solomon and TV and radio presenter Maya Jama – two women who, though I like them a lot, don’t exactly work in the same field of the entertainment industry as the male panellists. Where were the female comics? Were they all struck down by Covid at the same time?

It’s a question several comedians have been asking. Scottish stand-up and Wheel of Misfortune podcaster Fern Brady tweeted: “Big fat sausage quiz of the year. Q1 In what year will it be acceptable to book funny women instead of insanely beautiful women?” and The Mash Report’s Rachel Parris expressed disappointment in the line-up, tweeting: “Absolutely nothing against Stacey and Maya, I think they’re great, and great at what they do, it’s just a really specific issue here; pro male comics and not any pro female comics and it happens very often. Sub in Millican, Pascoe and Philip Schofield.”

As Parris points out, it’s not that either of the women were fish out of water as such, but that the panel was divided by both gender and profession. None of the men came from a non-comedy background and neither of the women was a professional comedian. It’s hard to read the subtext as anything other than that only men have mastered the mystical craft of being funny, so let’s pick four experts then fling a couple of well-kent female faces in because they’re all one and the same. It’d be like having a line-up comprising Daisy May Cooper, Lolly Adefope, Jo Brand and Sindhu Vee with Rylan and Gino D’Acampo thrown in as an afterthought. Actually, can someone commission that please?

It’s depressing how under-represented women are in comedy shows, given the wealth of talent we have in this country. Every year, data scientist Stuart Lowe analyses UK panel shows by gender, and at the start of 2020 found that 79% of all appearances on such shows were made by men. The situation has steadily improved over time – I remember as a child watching the likes of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Shooting Stars and seeing female contestants as often as I’d witness actual meteors – but I suspect at this rate the format will die out before we average a 50/50 split across the board.

Visibility of women in comedy isn’t only important for the sake of female comedians’ careers and the audience enjoyment that comes from hearing diverse perspectives and material. It affects the lived experience of every woman you know and the way we’re perceived by society-at-large. I am sick of hearing from men about women who are “actually surprisingly” funny, or funny “for a woman”. These aren’t compliments; they are patronising reminders you consider us to be operating in entirely different leagues of humour. Have you ever heard a guy described as funny “for a man”, or been told by someone that they’re just not into male comedy? At a Christmas party a few years ago, a former colleague casually said to me – before he’d barely had a sniff of wine – he was neither a fan of female singers nor female comedians. Ironically, it was the funniest thing he’d ever said.

I’ve been to enough comedy shows to know this attitude is not unusual. I’ve heard the kind of heckles women get. It’s intimidating just to be part of a lairy, beer-soaked crowd – although my god, I’d give my right hand to be at a gig tomorrow night sandwiched between two humming armpits – let alone on stage, facing down an audience who in five minutes will be yelling derogatory remarks about your appearance even when they themselves are just potatoes in polo-shirts.

The sexism doesn’t only come from punters; predatory behaviour is rife within the comedy circuit too. In July this year, following allegations about comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli’s sexual misconduct, several female comedians including Shappi Khorsandi and Chelsea Hart spoke out about the harassment they’d faced from comperes, promoters and other male comics. A Chortle study found that more than a quarter of female comedians had been molested by their colleagues, and 46% had received an inappropriate message from someone within the industry.

If you or I experienced this in our place of work, we’d have channels through which to report the behaviour. But as comedian Kiri Pritchard-McLean notes, there’s no HR department in comedy. “In the past I’ve made a stand and refused to share bills with known predators or left projects when I’ve been made aware that abusers are involved. The result? They are still booked, you have a legacy of being difficult and your morals hit your bank balance,” she said in a column earlier this year.

Every time a panel show or comedy bill fails to represent female comics, it points to a wider truth about an industry that has no respect for women. As much as I’d love to end on a joke, there’s nothing funny about that.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald

Read more: Let's switch to a four-day week. We won't regret it