Guru has often thought of Wimbledon as the last sensible bastion of unequal pay. Guru was very disappointed when the French Open tennis championships crossed the line earlier this year and decided to pay les femmes the same amount as les hommes.
Surely it is perfectly right that the female champion should earn a few quid less than her male counterpart for playing fewer sets?
Scottish tennis supremo Andy Murray, a man whose ability to swear on a prodigious scale won him a place in Guru’s heart, agrees.
“I don’t think it’s fair that the women get paid the same as the guys, because the guys have the potential to play a five-and-a-half hour match,” he explained, adding that people are more interested in watching the men play than the women.
“Obviously, when the big names like Sharapova and Henin and those sort of players come out, people will turn up to watch them, but I just think there’s more interest [in the men] at the start of the tournament than there is for the women,” he said.
But culture secretary Tessa Jowell – a woman – doesn’t subscribe. She wrote to the Wimbledon organisers to express her “deep concern” over the gender pay gap, claiming it was tarnishing the image of the game.
Guru would question whether Jowell is the best person to comment on equality issues. Lest we forget her defence when questioned over allegations of a link between a loan secured on a house she jointly owns with husband David Mills and money that Italian prosecutors allege was a bribe: “David deals with all the money issues.”
