The most comprehensive analysis ever carried out of comedy panel shows has found that only once in the history of British TV and radio has a programme had an all-female lineup.

Of more than 4,700 individual episodes examined by data scientist Stuart Lowe, 1,488 programmes since 1967 have been made up solely of men. But only on one occasion in 49 years has there been a programme in which the presenter and all the panel were women – an episode of BBC Radio 4’s Heresy in January 2012 presented by Victoria Coren Mitchell.

Lowe, who trained as an astronomer, works at the Open Data Institute in Leeds. He compiled his research in his spare time over more than four years, after his irritated observations about the scarcity of women on comedy panel shows developed, he cheerfully admits, into an obsession.

He compiled his mind-bogglingly detailed research – which lists all the participants of every episode of every programme he could find over five decades – by trawling through the BBC iPlayer archives and those of other broadcasters, adding figures shared by other individuals who had done their own research into specific shows, and by trawling through back issues of the Radio Times dating from 1967, when Just a Minute first broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

While women still account for just 31% of appearances on comedy panel shows, the analysis shows there has been a steady and sustained improvement since 1989, when that figure was a shocking 3%. Statistically, however, the best year for equality remains 1967, thanks to the fact that for its first series, Just a Minute never fielded fewer than two women out of a total of five participants, including the presenter Nicholas Parsons.

The trend towards equality long predates the BBC’s announcement in 2014 that panel programmes without women were “not acceptable”. The broadcaster has been as good as its word, Lowe found. Since then, no nationally broadcast BBC comedy panel show has been screened without a female participant, though in some cases, such as Mock the Week, that number has been stubbornly stuck at one and no more for regular episodes.

“It’s a little bit of an obsession,” Lowe said, “and I’ve made a rod for my own back in that I have to keep it updated, which slightly drives me insane when I realise some weeks I’ve missed some panel shows and I have to go back and add them.”

So what keeps him going – a crusading feminism or a data obsession? “I don’t think they have to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. You can care about equality and about data at the same time. I think it’s a problem that half the population isn’t fully represented.”

Lowe has built his database to accommodate the potential scenario in which a performer does not identify as male or female, but as another gender.

Until last week, he had used an “other” category only once – for the tub of lard that appeared in place of Roy Hattersley on Have I Got News For You in 1993. The late withdrawal of Nicky Morgan from the programme last Friday, when she was replaced by an expensive handbag, brought that total to two.

Lowe also analysed the ages of participants by trawling through Wikipedia, and said he would like to measure educational background and ethnicity, “but that would be harder to do because I would have to categorise people based on appearance, and I would be reluctant to do that”.

The programme with the highest female participation, at over 60%, is Listomania on BBC Radio 2, though Lowe’s personal scoring index gives highest marks for a consistently equal spread of women and men to BBC2’s Insert Name Here, hosted by Sue Perkins.

Coren Mitchell told the Guardian she had initially hoped her all-female episode of Heresy – in which her guests were Maureen Lipman, Perkins and Cerys Matthews – would pass unremarked “as though it were completely normal. Of course that was screwed up by the continuity announcer on the night who went: ‘And here’s something unusual – an all-female lineup!’ So that scuppered that.

“The thing that surprised me is that it turned out to be the silliest episode of the series,” Coren said – neither less funny, as sexists might expect, or with some deeper feminist meaning. “It was just daft, very funny and very trivial.”

She added: “My theory is that, because productions usually put one woman on a panel show (or none) and stop there, women get used to having to (at some wearisome level) ‘represent’ female humour when we appear on these shows ... but with four women the pressure was off. It was nobody’s individual responsibility to prove anything. So we all got the chance to just mess about, relax and make free jokes like men do.”

Of 11 episodes that have had 75% or more female involvement since 1967, Lowe found, Coren Mitchell appeared in four.

Deborah Frances-White, a standup comedian whose own panel show, Global Pillage, is among a number of podcasts analysed by Lowe, agrees about the pressure female comedians experience when they find themselves the only woman on a panel.

“A lot of the time what people don’t realise they are watching is five men in their local pub – they are regulars, they look like everyone else and they are made to feel welcome – and one woman on a job interview. Because she knows that not only will [the audience] decide whether she is good enough to be allowed back on this show and other panel shows, but they will be judging whether all women are funny.”

Though it doesn’t solve the problem, increasing the number of women as hosts or regulars makes a significant difference, notes Lowe – he credits QI (BBC), 8 Out of 10 Cats (Channel 4) and E4’s Virtually Famous for all having recently appointed female team captains or presenters.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The BBC’s QI recently appointed Sandi Toksvig as its presenter, replacing Stephen Fry. Photograph: Brian Ritchie/BBC/Talkback/Brian Ritchie

ITV’s Celebrity Juice and Play to the Whistle both have female hosts or team captains, and Saskia Schuster, the commissioning editor of comedy entertainment at ITV, said the broadcaster was always “conscious of the mix of voices we are bringing to the show, whether that’s gender, race, class, age”. However, she acknowledged that TV had “some way to go” to reflect the increasing numbers of women entering the traditionally male-dominated comedy scene.

“As an industry, we definitely need to achieve a better balance of gender on our shows and this is what we are pushing for from our producers and guest bookers, so that the discussion moves on from gender representation and eventually ceases to be a discussion at all,” she said.

A Channel 4 insider said it was committed to more women working both on- and offscreen on its major panel shows, saying the production teams on some of its highest-profile programmes “skewed heavily female”.

A BBC spokeswoman said the broadcaster was “keen to make sure our programmes reflect our audiences”, which was why it had led the way on committing in 2014 to having women onscreen on every show. “We are proud of the roster of funny women we have across television and radio. Whilst these figures show there is still more for all broadcasters to do, it is encouraging to see a trend towards better representation of women in recent years,” she said.

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While some see more women making a career in standup, Lowe acknowledges there are still fewer women on the comedy circuit. His best estimate last year, based on an analysis of Chortle’s database of working comedians, was that about 18% of standups are women. “People are right to say that the comedy circuit is a problem – and that isn’t the broadcasters’ fault,” said Lowe.

But even taking that percentage into account, he said, one would statistically expect those programmes that appear stuck on a maximum of one female guest to have a number of episodes where there were two or three women, “and that just isn’t happening”. For any bookers still struggling to find funny women, Lowe has compiled a list of 168 of them – he welcomes further submissions.

Some have argued that the heyday of traditional panel shows is fading, while female comics are thriving in other formats on TV and radio, from Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag to Catastrophe, co-starring and co-written by Sharon Horgan. A spokeswoman for Radio 4 said it was proud to include “lots of talented female comedians” on panels, but added: “Panel shows are only part of our offering, and next year we have brand new shows from the likes of Sara Pascoe, Sarah Kendall and double act Lazy Susan.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Danielle Ward: ‘I’m just not interested in hearing four straight, white comedians talking about themselves.’ Photograph: Claes Gellerbrink

Danielle Ward created BBC Radio 4 Extra’s Dilemma and Do the Right Thing, which she presents on Comedy.co.uk; the latter recently filmed a pilot for Channel 4, with Claudia Winkleman hosting. “If I achieve nothing else in my career, my panel show pilot had five women on it,” she tweeted after filming. “Fuck yeah.”

With both shows, Ward said, she and her producer have very deliberately booked diverse panels, and she never has more than two straight white men: “It’s not about being a corrective. I’m just not interested in hearing four straight, white comedians talking about themselves. The conversation is never going to be as interesting.”

For the same reason, Ward said she would not book four straight women. “It’s not about correcting it in terms of numbers, it’s about offering a sense of conversation that’s beyond just one narrow pool of people.”