I suspect that all the furore about 'Legs-it' this morning is just what the Daily Mail ordered but whenever sexism this ugly sees the light of day, I can't let it pass without comment, much as I was raised on the value of a dignified silence.

Actually that's probably part of the problem.

Women are raised to be dignified, even when men are demeaning them, smirking snidely behind their hands and belittling them and what they are trying to do.

Some man in the Daily Mail office clearly decided last night that the sight of two brilliant, educated women with the power to decide the future of our nation in their hands was too much to stomach.

How did those women get out of the kitchen? he asked himself.

Flaming suffragettes – they started all this.

But hang on a minute, here's something to cheer us all up: Look at the legs on that.

Later, when criticism rained down on the paper for reducing the life-altering issue of Brexit to a debate about which female leader had the best limbs, the Mail responded that those who didn't see the joke, should 'get a life'.

The problem of course is that if our newspapers continue to disguise the relevance of Brexit to all of us, preferring to titillate rather than educate, reducing the biggest political decision of our lifetimes to a sexist gawp, then the life they mention may not be there any more to get.

So no, that front page wasn't funny. Not even a tiny bit.

And my failure to see that doesn't mean that I lack a sense of humour but rather that I possess a brain.

Which is precisely why this kind of desperate sexism happens.

It is the only recourse for the men who lack one.