But was that really why she was sacked? I found myself thinking this morning about good old Robin Day. The bow-tied curmudgeon got into a lot of hot water once for suggesting that Anna Ford, pulchritudinous 70s newsreader, had only got her job because men wanted to sleep with her. The spirit of the age was against Day, and he was duly shouted down, but I suspect that he was right.
That's not to say that Ms Ford was incompetent; far from it. But perhaps she got the job because, of all the outstanding candidates for it, she was the sexiest. And this is TV after all. Perish the thought, it might even be the case that one of the other applicants - someone else a bit less heavenly looking - could have done it better.
What's this got to do with Miriam O'Reilly? I have never watched Countryfile (although my wife, an insomniac, tells me that she was a dreary and hectoring presenter on Farming Today), but judging from the pictures in the paper this morning, she must once have been a bit of a looker. And the thought did cross my mind that perhaps a few years ago Ms O'Reilly got the job rather than anyone else because she was nice-looking; and that complaining about losing it when she was no longer quite so nice-looking might be a bit rich.
This morning Ms O'Reilly will be coasting downhill with the wind of bien-pensant opinion in her sails and a few extra quid in the bank; but I think she lived by the sword and died by it. Lucky Ms O'Reilly.
