Tony Blair’s former communications director Alastair Campbell always imposed a seven-day limit on political scandals. If the stories of an erring Cabinet minister were still dominating the news cycle two Sundays in a row, it was time for them to go.
As we approach the fourth day of the Sky Sports' sexism controversy, we learn that touchline reporter Andy Burton has also been suspended, after his conversation with Andy Gray about the attractiveness or otherwise of assistant referee Sian Massey was caught on camera.
By an unlucky quirk of the schedules, Sky Sports do not have a Premier League this week as the FA Cup takes over the schedules. This means that the next time the pair are likely to appear is the Premier League match between West Brom and Wigan on Tuesday, February 1.
The newspapers will therefore have another week of drip-drip stories about Gray, Keys and any other senior figure in football they can find with antediluvian views on women in the game.
Richard Keys and Andy Gray will not survive another week of such concentrated coverage, and Sky Sports’ PR machine should accept the Campbell maxim and sack them now.
There seems to be little sympathy for the pair, with even Sky News relentless in its coverage of the incident, which suggests that their behaviour is not an isolated incident. Nor is sexism in sport limited to the two presenters.
Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse’s sketch sums up the attitude mercilessly. Enfield and Whitehouse play two former footballers, being interviewed by a woman reporter, who refuse to answer her questions and repeatedly ask her ‘Where’s the bloke?’
It is a vicious parody, but then compare it with this showreel accessible on youtube.
25 seconds in, from a real press conference, then Blackburn manager Sam Allardyce spots an attractive female reporter and pretty much turns into a character from American Pie.
And it is not just in the macho environment of professional sport that these attitudes are prevalent. Those who remember the Dublin PriceWaterhouse Coopers scandal, where male staff members rated the looks of their female colleagues via email, may be shocked to learn that an Irish newspaper last week reported that all those men are still employed by the company.
In sports journalism, it is just as bad. I worked in a newsroom where one journalist basically refused to accept the authority of a female editor. Having been promoted from the ranks by dint of her own talent and hard graft, this journalist denigrated her work and her achievements quite openly. And it is to my shame and continued embarrassment that I did not at the time intervene and tell the journalist that his behaviour was unacceptable.
Sexism in sport, and in sports journalism, is still prevalent and wrapped up in that ‘banter’ tag that in previous eras allowed unrelenting racists or homophobes licence to justify their behavior.
Sky Sports should sack Keys and Gray, with a strongly condemnatory message that their behaviour was unacceptable, and Keys should be replaced from within the organisation as host of their football coverage.
Perhaps by someone already working at Sky Sports, who has experience working within football, both at the Football Association and at Arsenal, who has great knowledge of the game and an easy manner in front of the camera.
What a message and a fillip to women in the company would it be if Sky Sports appointed Claire Tomlinson as the host of their Premier League football coverage?
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POSTSCRIPT:
Sky Sports sacked Andy Gray on Tuesday afternoon at 4pm. The station said that ‘new evidence of unacceptable and offensive behaviour’ had come to light.
Sky News showed a clip of the incident, where Gray made a sexual innuendo to Sky Sports' presenter Charlotte Jackson as the pair prepared to go on air.