Mouth almighty
Anyone tuning in to the new series of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here could be forgiven for thinking they had stumbled across a jungle version of Life On Mars.
Rodney Marsh, who lit up the pitch as a striker for Fulham, QPR and Manchester City in the 1970s, has been regaling the camp with comments that would have made even arch chauvin-ist Gene Hunt wince. The 63-year-old fuelled a sexism row by saying he would not fly on a plane unless it was piloted by men and that women made too much "fuss" about giving birth.
Recounting his time in a treehouse with PR guru Lynne Franks, he told the others: "She believes in equality of women and that women should be paid as much as men and that women are equal to men."
But he added: "My point was what has a woman ever invented? All I'm saying is you can't compare women and men if women don't do anything of that level. If I take scientists, how many women scientists are there that you know of?"
Later, he asked fellow camper Christopher Biggins: "Would you fly on a plane flown by two women?
"They'd be putting their lipstick on in the wing mirror and all that."
Marsh, who has previously been sacked from his pundit's job by Sky Sports for making a joke about the Asian tsunami, insists he was only having fun. But many viewers don't seem convinced.
The row in the Aussie outback follows hot on the heels of a controversy surrounding 53-year-old comic Jim Davidson, who reduced fellow Hell's Kitchen contestant Brian Dowling to tears with a gay rant. When Dowling asked him not to use the words "shirt lifter", Davidson retorted: "I don't care. Gay men have the same look... it's a sort of preen."
Before Davidson, it was racing pundit John McCririck who was falling foul of the politically correct lobby on Celebrity Big Brother. The 67-year-old said that "the best thing is for men to go out with ugly girls because they're grateful for what they get".
So why is it that men of a certain age are running into so much trouble when they appear on reality television shows?
To watch Rodney Marsh on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here is to observe a fish out of water, struggling to cope with a world he no longer understands.
The trouble is that when Marsh was at the peak of his fame in the mid-1970s, the comments that have landed him in hot water were considered the norm.
Hence his jungle adventure has seen him struggle to come to terms with a changing society in much the same way as Austin Powers did when he was defrosted after three decades in deep freeze.
Yet why is that when similar views to Marsh's are being voiced by characters such as Life on Mars's Gene Hunt they are laughed off as harmless banter?
"The difference is that when it's said in Life on Mars it's funny because it's a reminder of a bygone age when these sorts of ideas and
attitudes were acceptable," says Max Farrar, sociologist at Leeds Met University. "The reason it works so well is that we think it's extraordinary that people in a position of authority were behaving in such a way.
"But quite rightly we regard it as unacceptable 30 years later when people are much more aware of the right of women, gay people and ethnic minorities to be treated equally."
So is there a place for men like Marsh, Davidson and McCririck on reality television?
"I don't think we should censor them but television companies have a duty to reflect the mainstream, which is thankfully much more egalitarian these days and respectful of the rights of others."
Perhaps Jim Davidson got one thing right. "I'm a non-PC fossil, really," he admitted after being axed from Hell's Kitchen. "To be truthful this is young person's television. My day went out with the Generation Game."
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