Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Flan Recipe

This is not, repeat NOT, a sexist rant (again) nor, I'm afraid, very amusing. It is just an honest, in-depth critique of something which is as British as toasted teacakes and mugging old ladies in the street......bloody Woman's Hour!
Woman's Hour is a Radio 4 institution (remember what Groucho Marx said about marriage as an institution?) which trumpets its raison d'etre as to "celebrate, inform and entertain women". What it in truth does, in my warped opinion, is to make Alan Partridge's "Fact of The Day" slot on Radio Norwich seem enthralling by comparison.
Are there seriously more than a handful of women out there who either listen to this bollocks or find it remotely relevant, let alone entertaining? No girlies of my acquaintance are hungry to learn "100 Things To Do With tapioca" (when there is, in fact, only ONE thing to do with tapioca - refuse to eat it!). I never hear them say "there was a fascinating item on Woman's Hour today about how vaginal yeast can be used to cultivate your own yogurt". Not once has my soon-to-be ex-wife regaled me over dinner with "the experiences of a woman's life as Ted Rogers' former school dinner lady". No, my STB would no doubt tune in to items on "things you have to tell your partner at 2 in the morning when you're bladdered" and "how to remove vomit stains from a pair of Evans Outsize dungarees" but the vagaries of "using trimmed pubic hair to knit a fashionable sweater" are just not her cup of ethanol.
My point is......isn't Woman's Hour just a tad anachronistic, not to mention sexist? Doesn't it belong to an age where all women were supposed to be, and invariably were, pinafored and at home, cooking, ironing and washing for their brood while hubby went out to be the bread-winner, a la Katy Boyle in those God-awful Bisto adverts of my youth? Women were supposed to be always on the lookout for new recipes to delight their families and as they were confined to the house all day they wanted to listen to trivia about other people's lives so as to be transported elsewhere via the radio. Men were too busy "bringing a living wage into the family" to listen to the wireless and so the programme was deliberately uni-gendered.

To that end, every episode is STILL punctuated with an appalling "short story" which is invariably some romantic fiction drivel or a tale about "a woman being a woman as opposed to a man in a man's world which is run by men and not by women". Oh perleeaase!
I'm sure there are women around who still live like Katy Boyle, but not bloody many and hardly enough to justify their own hour-long slot on a national radio channel every day.
No, for the rest of us, times have changed a bit. Everyone lucky enough to find a job is out working themselves into the ground. They come home in dribs and drabs, all knackered, they often eat at different times and then something quick so that they can then quaff some booze to blot out the tiredness while collapsing in front of the Devil's Lantern for a few hours before crawling up to bed to do it all again the next day. A bleak view, I know, but not that far off the mark for many.
As to Woman's Hour being sexist, well, IT IS!! There is no Man's Hour (thank fuck!). If there was, no doubt the boys and girls at Radio 4 would cram it with items on "how to tie trout flies", "pipe cleaning" and "choosing slippers with care".
The only value I can see in Woman's Hour is the unintentionally comedic. Take, for instance, the lead item on the programme's website today. It is an item about some bird musician and continues.......

"One of the world's most distinguished organists, Jennifer has been called an 'esteemed wizard of the organ'..."

Even I would have tuned in to hear that but, I fear, I would have been somewhat disappointed.
No, with apologies to the blue-rinse brigade in the Home Counties and the like, Woman's Hour can go to Grantham.