This shocking story about a vicious male sex offender makes Ipso’s ruling against The Spectator look all the more absurd

In SuperNature, his 2022 Netflix special, Ricky Gervais imagined a furious trans activist telling a woman that it’s bigoted not to let biological males use women’s loos.

“They ARE ladies – look at their pronouns! What about this person isn’t a lady?”

“Well, his penis.”

“HER penis, you bigot!”

“What if he rapes me?”

“What if SHE rapes you, you terf!”

I was reminded of this horribly plausible exchange while reading a report yesterday in the Manchester Evening News. “A judge has jailed a ‘dangerous’ woman,” it began, “for violent physical and sexual abuse.”

Of all the words in that sentence, readers may have been puzzled by the fact that the one with the inverted commas around it was “dangerous”. Especially when they looked at the accompanying police mugshot, showing that the woman in question had heavy stubble.

Reading on, we learnt that the criminal, known as Angel Hill, had been given an 11-year sentence after pleading guilty to sexual assault, assault by penetration, strangulation and threatening a victim with a blade. We were then informed that Hill is currently “transitioning from male to female”.

At least one reader, however, was having none of it.

“Translation,” tweeted JK Rowling. “‘Dangerous, violent man who subjected a woman to terrible sexual and physical abuse is now pretending to be a woman in the hope of garnering sympathy and lenience from the judicial system.’”

I suppose it’s lucky that Ms Rowling isn’t a journalist. Earlier this week, Ipso, the press watchdog, censured The Spectator because one of its writers had referred to a prominent trans woman as “a man who claims to be a woman”. According to Ipso, this was “belittling”, “demeaning” and “both pejorative and prejudicial of the complainant due to her gender identity”.

I wonder what would happen if The Spectator were to describe Angel Hill as “a man who claims to be a woman”. Would Ipso censure the magazine for belittling this poor violent sex offender?

At any rate, JK Rowling is right to be angry. Just as she was right to be angry about Isla Bryson, the convicted rapist who was placed in a women’s prison after donning a blonde wig and pink leggings.

We shouldn’t be pandering to dangerous male criminals in this farcical way. If that hurts their feelings, I think we can just about live with it.

Peak fitness

Despite the grand claims made by Wes Streeting in October, we now know that the NHS can afford weight-loss drugs for only a small fraction of obese patients. Which means that we need to think of an alternative way to tackle the obesity crisis. This week, Sir Chris Whitty suggested that we impose a “fat tax” on junk food.

Frankly, though, I’ve got a much better idea.

In 2010, a fascinating study found that living at high altitude causes sustained weight loss. You might assume that this is because there tend to be few branches of Greggs up Mount Everest. The real explanation, however, is that the low level of oxygen causes a surge in the body’s production of leptin, a hormone that makes you feel full. As a result, you eat less.

Surely, therefore, the solution to our problem is simple. We need to open fat camps up mountains. Obese Scotsmen should be made to spend six months up Ben Nevis, obese Welshmen up Snowdon, and obese Englishmen up Scafell Pike.

It’s got to be worth trying. Many people in this country are now so morbidly obese, they’re unable to work. Which is one of the main reasons behind our ever-growing welfare bill. Fraser Nelson recently reported that as many as 3,000 people a day are approved for sickness benefits. If that rate of increase is maintained, every single person in Britain will be on sickness benefits by the end of the century.

Unfortunately, however, there’ll be no one left to pay for them.

Female chauvinist pigs

Like millions of long-suffering parents, I could list many sound reasons to take issue with Peppa Pig. On this one occasion, however, I must leap to its defence. Marta Serrano, a Spanish politician, has claimed that the ubiquitous British pre-school cartoon discourages girls from taking jobs in construction – because it teaches them that such work “is a man’s thing”.

Nonsense. As anyone with a child born in the past 20 years could tell her, Peppa Pig is full of female characters doing traditionally “male” jobs. Take Miss Rabbit. Among many, many other roles, she works as a mechanic, a crane operator, a train driver, a bus driver, an airline pilot and a firefighter.

Frankly, if Peppa Pig is sexist at all, it’s sexist against men. Poor old Daddy Pig is relentlessly mocked by Peppa for being fat. Yet no one mocks Mummy Pig for being fat, even though she’s exactly the same shape he is, only shorter. Blatant double standards.

More importantly, though, I fear that the Pigs’ weight problems undermine my idea for high-altitude fat camps. Peppa and her family live at the top of the most enormous hill, yet this clearly hasn’t helped them lose any weight. Back to the drawing board.