Bob Ballard's job was sacrificed in a woke blood sport - here's why he should get it back

When my partner and I are going out it is not uncommon for her to try on a seemingly endless number of frocks and repeatedly ask the non-question “does this look okay on me?”

There are so many frocks I occasionally wonder if her wardrobe is actually a gateway to a sort of TK Maxx version of Narnia. But whatever the truth of that, like every man alive (with the possible exception of Gok Wan) I would never dare venture an actual opinion at this point... beyond a “yes, you look gorgeous darling.”

And the reasons for this are twofold. First, this is the grandaddy of loaded questions, a grenade with the pin already partially out, and I am far too old and wise to go down that path.

But also... and mainly this... she really does look gorgeous.

I'm a 'CIS-bloke' and, hand on heart, I'm really not looking at the intricate double-stitched hemline on the dress, impressive though I have no doubt it is.

A similarly pointless non-question, by the way, would be me asking her for input into my own attire for a night out.

“Should I wear this white T-shirt or this white T-shirt darling? I simply can't decide!”

The twin “most-loaded-woman-question-ever”, by the way, is of course the hardy perennial “does my bum look big in this?” When I first started dating the seemly reply appeared to be “if it was any smaller it would slip into the quantum realm, my love.” Whereas today (and correct me in the comments if I'm wrong) the safest answer seems to be “darling you could land a fully laden 747 on it.”

Oh the mores of female fashion.

Anyway, after a dress selection process longer and more complex than picking a Tory leader she then proceeds to the putting make-up stage which, depending on the night, can take anything from five minutes to something approaching the half-life of Plutonium 239.

All of which rambling intro brings me to poor Eurosport commentator Bob Ballard, canned for jocularly suggesting women, in the main, take a tad longer than men to get ready.

The fact that it's true was no defence against the woke-fascism now so embedded in our culture that poor Bob had barely got the sentence out before he was sacked.

Bob, if you didn't know, is a sports commentator of many, many years' standing.

He's also gay.

This would be irrelevant in 99.9999% of contexts, but here it seems prescient. Members of the LGBT community are not typically accused of harbouring the repressed sexual politics of the unreconstructed sexist. But I digress.

He was working for Eurosport but has worked extensively at the BBC.

On Sunday he was commenting on the Olympic swimming and was filling in potential dead air as the Australian 4x100m women's relay team dawdled a tad after winning gold at the Paris Aquatic Centre when the comment slipped out.

Here's what he said: “Well, the women just finishing up. You know what women are like… hanging around, doing their make-up.”

It was a joke. It was a commentator filling in boring airtime. It was also a bit lazy but not a trillion miles from the actualite.

But it was cat-nip to the social media perennially offended woke brigade.

Co-presenter Lizzie Simmonds, who has twice represented Britain at the Olympics, appeared to feign the required mock-outrage before laughing and saying “Some of the men are doing that as well”.

She got the joke, clumsy and not especially funny though it may have been.

But not so the sinister, creepy and insidious army who see moral outrage as a human right.

No, worse, as a blood sport.

This faceless army of woke-oddballs who do nothing, who create nothing, these empty, useless vessels who bring nothing to the table but division and hate dressed-up as caring liberalism. These armchair fascists who attempt to paper-over woeful shortcomings in their own lives and personality by attacking others.

There was an online pile-on.

Well of course there was.

The nastiness, the spite, and the desperation to sow discord on sociopathic level of the perennially woke is well-documented.

The only real question is why do we pay them any attention? Why do we care what they think?

They are an infinitesimal parish when compared to the numbers of stand-up, rank and file Brits yet the power they wield is immense.

Whether screaming Britain-hating conspiracy theory insanities online, civil servants stopping elected ministers from doing their job in government, or woke evangelists inveigling their way into our institutions and workplaces this is truly the enemy within Margaret Thatcher once spoke of.

If you want to know their power ask Rishi Sunak.

Rishi and his acolytes foolishly forgot what Britain expects from a Conservative Party and pandered instead to a woke “liberal agenda” (it's not) few people asked for.

He will have many many years on opposition benches to ponder the wisdom of that.

“Go woke go broke” they say in Hollywood.

“Go woke become a joke” might be a more apposite rhyming couplet for our political masters.

Oh, and everyone boycott Eurosport until the idiots give Bob his job back.