Meanwhile the real Punch and Judy show - the one between men and women - has been hotting up over the weekend, with the delivery at the Book Festival of the Scotsman Millennium Lecture by the novelist, Fay Weldon. It's probably fair to say that the recent comments which won her such opprobrium, to the effect that worse things than rape could happen to a woman - like death - and that there were degrees of rape, were widely misrepresented. However, on the evidence of her lecture, there are obvious holes in her argument that "the bearded Patriarch finally slid out the Great West Door on the day of Diana's funeral, while Elton John was singing Candle In The Wind. Now the all-embracing Matriarch takes his place."

Weldon argues that the only reason women are still paid less than men is because of their childcare commitments; but this is simply not true. The feminist pay demand has always been "equal pay for equal work". How can anyone possibly argue, for instance, that nurses have traditionally been paid badly for any reason other than the fact that it was a feminised profession?

She argues that, rather than pursuing equal pay, the Government would be better employed "turning men into resident and supportive fathers, instead of dismissing them from the case and saying which way to the sperm bank . . ." In fact, as we all know, the British Government has been zealously pursuing fathers for maintenance, with very patchy success, and men were, in huge numbers, abandoning their off-spring, long before the word "feminism" was invented.

Weldon posits that the fact that men outnumber women in all the ages until the age of 45 means that women now have the buying power in the sexual game. She conveniently forgets that older women have difficulty shopping for younger men because they are rated by their fertility, while men can shop at any counter because higher wages give them buying power. Just try reversing the sexes in the Clinton/Lewinsky case.

Sadly, Weldon comes across, in the end, as someone who is retreating, in later life, to the certainties of the society she grew up in.