Being a woman I shall put my 2 pennies in. It doesn't matter how clever a woman is a lot of people (men) will STILL judge her by looks.

In fact it can be quite amusing to demonstrate intelligence when someone has misjudged you

Imagine how they act when they find out you're attractive, clever AND funny lol

Dunno, never met one .

It's not entirely one way traffic. Is Brian Cox better known for being clever or for being 'the only scientist on TV women actually find attractive'?

The bare fact is being smart is mostly genetic, although upbringing matters. And being good looking is mostly genetic, although make up and wardrobe help too. So who does or doesn't fit the bill is simple random chance. And TV definitely does pick people on looks as much if not more than talent and I think that applies to both sexes - it definitely USED to be the case it was more true for women than men but I think things are more the same for both now and it's unfortunately gone the way that men on TV are now judged for their looks/attractiveness just as much as women are, rather than women being more accepted based on their talent than their appearance.

There are smart but (attempting to be polite) not unusually good looking people of both sexes on TV but I think for both sexes they're becoming fewer and fewer. I think the chances these days of a Magnus Pike or Patrick Moore becoming a TV celebrity are bordering on non-existent.

So Chris Evans is gods gift to women? Jeremy Clarkson? Or any of the Top Gear crew for that matter.

There's all kinds of people of varying 'attractiveness' on TV.

In all fairness your two examples both started their TV careers more than a decade (even approaching two) ago.

Oi! Less reasoned debate and moar pics of the totty what can do maffs n fings.

This is true, and if I'm honest I'm not in a perfect position to judge exactly how attractive a given TV personalty may be to the population in general, but I think it's becoming less true over time. Yes, you can find people with.. idiosyncratic looks on TV, but I suspect if you compiled a list you'd find most of them were older, established figures. I think if you did that same list with the caveat "must be younger than 40" you'd find you'd be struggling a lot more.

Let me put it this way, if you were watching TV 30 years ago and somebody was explaining science or maths to you, they probably looked like this..



Now, they're going to look like this



Not really equivalent...

So I need to find ugly young people on TV? Challenge accepted

Via a friend's Friendface page:

Dodgy dress is dodgy.

It looked much better moving

'Stains. But enough about me...'

Hmm, Miriam and Johnny, I'd put more trust in what they told me, but I grew up listening to them. Miriam was a bit hgih-brow, but Johnny was great fun to watch, really amazing. I've never seen the two kids before.

Man, I'm starting to sound like an old man!