I have to admit I am a little surprised at the backbone of the BBC. But Withrow is right and the orientationally-challenged of the world will have to learn that if they want to be celebrities in the public eye, they have to accept being mocked just like everybody else:
Gill sparked the row with his comments in a review of her new show ‘Britain by Bike’ in the Sunday Times last weekend.
He wrote: ‘Some time ago, I made a cheap and frankly unnecessary joke about Clare Balding looking like a big lesbian. And afterwards somebody tugged my sleeve to point out that she is a big lesbian, and I felt foolish and guilty.
‘So I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise. Sorry. Now back to the dyke on a bike, puffing up the nooks and crannies at the bottom end of the nation….
Balding was so incensed at the critic’s dig about her sexuality that she raised it with his editor, John Witherow of the Sunday Times.
But she was astonished when Mr Witherow told her she should accept occasionally being made the butt of jokes. His reply stated: ‘In my view, some members of the gay community need to stop regarding themselves as having a special victim status and behave like any other sensible group that is accepted by society.
‘Jeremy Clarkson, perhaps the epitome of the heterosexual male, is constantly jeered at for his dress sense (lack of), adolescent mindset and hairstyle. He puts up with it as a presenter’s lot and in this context I hardly think that AA Gill’s remarks were particularly cruel, especially as he ended by so warmly endorsing you as a presenter.’
Besides, who is dumb enough to put a fat lesbian on any form of two-wheeled apparatus and NOT expect someone to make a crack about “dykes on bikes”.