If you ask me...the Newsnight editor was right, what woman doesn’t love having her reputation ruined?

Whoa, ladies! Before you get all indignant about the Peter Rippon's dismissal of the testimony of women, lets consider the issues...

Peter Rippon, editor of Newsnight (Jason Alden)

If you ask me, the revelation that the BBC dropped its Newsnight report into the Jimmy Savile programme because, in the words of Peter Rippon, Newsnight’s editor at the time, it was based on the testimony of “just the women” has caused some upset along the lines of: what further evidence do you need, you stupid, idiot, ignorant man? And: do you think it was easy for these women to come forward? And: what do we have to do, to live in a culture in which victims of sexual abuse are heard and not dismissed? But I would say: Whoa! Let’s take a step back (if you’ve the room; if not, you can stay exactly where you are) and have a cool look at this.

Women, aside from being notoriously flaky – didn’t I lose my keys just this morning? – do, after all, lie about sexual assault all the time. Indeed, is there anything a woman loves more then spending hours in a police station not being believed before having her vagina swabbed and her reputation dragged through the mud?

I know there is nothing I enjoy more, particularly if there is nothing good on TV and a dull evening stretches ahead. “Not much happening around here, so I’m off to not be believed and have my vagina swabbed and my reputation dragged through the mud,” I might announce, before tootling out to do just that. And I know I’m not alone. As it is, now that The Great British Bake Off has ended, the relevant authorities are expecting the number of fabricated incidents to rise substantially on Tuesday nights. “If you can’t distract a woman with fondant fancies,” said a BBC spokesperson, “she’s bound to make up all sorts of stuff up and cause trouble.”

The fact is – and there is no point in not acknowledging this – women are simply genetically programmed to put themselves through unnecessary trauma and expose themselves to unnecessary shame, blame and trivialisation. “I hope I am blamed, shamed and trivialised unnecessarily today,” I say to myself when I wake up most mornings. “Otherwise, I’ll just have to amuse myself by saying ‘No’ when I really mean ‘Yes’, and I did quite a bit of that yesterday. Boring, boring, boring.” In fact, as fewer than 6 per cent of rapes reported in England lead to convictions, it has to mean than 94 per cent of cases were simply women out to amuse themselves.

And one last thing: wearing a short skirt means you are asking for it. But you knew that, right? Or is it “just the men” who know that for a fact?