LIKES THE REMIX BETTER

I’ve met Germaine Greer on a couple of occasions: at an art party, with Blur’s Alex James, who, unsurprisingly, told me that he found the Grande Dame of modern feminism rather a turn-on (“Cooorrr!”); and at a strange event hosted by a private equity group, where Germaine and I were two of four people asked to speak on the concept of leisure. Germaine gave a magnificently feisty lecture about how leisure was a luxury that most women were unable to access, as they spent their non-working hours doing domestic chores/looking after kids/making themselves beautiful/shopping. The idea of shopping as a leisure pursuit! Germaine laid waste to that old notion like a blow torch to anaglypta. At some point during that evening, Germaine called me “kid”. I was very proud. I told my mum.

Last week, I met Germaine again: at her home, in Essex. I’m in the middle of making a Radio 4 series about British culture in 1968, and she agreed to be interviewed. She greeted the producer and I on a crutch, her broken foot in a plastic boot. “I hate this ruddy thing,” she said, meaning the boot. “They want me to wear it in bed, but I refuse. It’s covered in mud by then. I’ve got to feed the animals.” She has two dogs, a peacock and peahen.

We did the interview in a little flat that she occasionally rents out. She stores her archive there: filing cabinet after filing cabinet, though she told us that a lot is missing from the 1960s. From her stories – New York with the lead singer of the MC5; Italy with rioting students - she was too busy to keep detailed notes. Anyway, I talked to her about what lies beneath the 1968 myth. If you look at the TV, plays, books and films that came out in that year, you find less revolution and rutting, more farce and fumbling. “All across Britain,” she laughed, “lights were out by 10pm. And what were they doing? Sleeping!”

The Female Eunuch wasn’t published until 1970; Germaine says in 1968, she was writing it. She’d do it in small pieces: on the train between London and Cambridge, in the flat with her then-husband hanging around. “I’d write,” she told us, “whilst he watched Match Of The Day. He would say, Have you finished your typing yet?”

In 1968, the pill and abortion were legally available in Britain, but women were stuck in a weird time slip. Suddenly, they could have sex seemingly without consequence; this meant that, for many men, there was no reason for them to refuse. The idea that women might have their own sexual preferences was just not around. Until Germaine. The central plea – no: call to arms – of The Female Eunuch is for women to embrace their sexuality. It’s about revolutionary fucking and it’s fucking revolutionary. Even now.

“Well, I wish we didn’t have to talk about it,” she said. “I thought another book would have come along by now.”

1968: Sex, Telly And Britain, presented by Miranda Sawyer, goes out on BBC Radio 4 at 10.30am on Saturdays 31 May, 7 June and 14 June.