BBC Radio 4 to launch female-led panel show

Host Jo Bunting has appeared on TV shows including Loose Women and This Morning

The BBC is to launch a topical radio panel show where the host and most of the guests are women.

BBC Radio 4 has commissioned a pilot of Where's The F In News, created and presented by Have I Got News For You series producer Jo Bunting.

The station said it would be "an energetic and intelligent female-anchored show" with a "predominantly female panel".

The gender balance on panel shows has been a contentious issue.

'A shedload of intelligent and funny women'

In 2014, the BBC's director of TV pledged to have at least one woman on every such show in response to criticisms that they were too male-heavy.

Bunting said: "Apparently if a woman speaks in a meeting for 50% of the time a man speaks, he genuinely thinks she's spoken the exact same amount as he has.

"When I read that, I thought, how can I really annoy that man? So I've created a show featuring a shedload of intelligent and funny women."

The Where's The F In News panel will "use the events, trends and talking points that they think should be top of the news agenda as a starting point for a number of fresh and funny challenges", the BBC said.

The show is one of a raft of new comedy commissions announced by Radio 4 for 2018 and 2019.