She did look a bit like a bag lady.

[hollowlegs]

A well-dressed bag lady

If you go against a dress code people WILL comment.
It's an occasion when everybody dresses up to the nines, men and woman.
There's a dress code.

So, if you rock up wearing a scruffy, unfeminine leather jacket and bulky scarf ensemble, then people are going to comment.
When I saw her, my immediate thought was ''wtf is she dressed like that''.
She was obviously trying to prove a point. What that was, God only knows.

Stephen Fry was only saying what most people were all thinking.

There were far worse insults given out at that show. Sasha BC announced "and the nominees for best white female"

Actually as someone with bipolar disorder I will go further and say that some of the comments on this post are pretty close to the line.

But anyway...getting off that soap box for a second

It's not exactly the most offensive joke ever is it? I understand it's not a particularly clever joke however isn't it quite understood that hosts at these events make jokes at the expense of some of the attendees...it's always been done...

The person the joke was aimed at isn't upset and I don't believe it was misogynist so why are so many people 'offended' on behalf of someone who wasn't offended?

What reaction would there have been if a woman "joked" that one of the men had dressed up as a homeless man?

I'm an ardent feminist but IMO men banter all the time and chuckle about it...I don't think there'd have been this uproar...

I'm just sad that this totally irrelevant thing has overshadowed the documentary on bipolar he did on BBC1 last night

I watched that stumbly. Some of the stories were absolutely heartbreaking. Especially Cordelia's.

What was it called? I wonder if I can catch it on iPlayer.

The Not So Secret Life of the Manic Depressive: 10 Years On.

Worth a watch.

What reaction would there have been if a woman "joked" hmm that one of the men had dressed up as a homeless man?

Such as Johnny Depp?

It doesn't matter what she did or didn't look like. Actually, at the time I remember it hovering around the edge of my consciousness that she looked like she hadn't dressed up quite as much as other people, but oh well.

The fact was that he was the host, he had a microphone, he had the audience of millions of people and he chose to make personal remarks. Very rude.

Well we all know now who Jenny Beavan is, and that she is perfectly capable of dressing up if she wanted to. Someone mentioned that she may have come straight from work to the Bafta's.

I've often wondered if Fry has Borderline Personality Disorder as well as being Bipolar.

It's always acceptable to joke that a man, even an A list man, looks like he's just fallen off the back of a haycart, because with very few exceptions a man's appearance is not considered a core part of their identity and professional capability, so it's not a serious insult, it's just banter. It's normal for a man to be both ungroomed and old but still be considered highly attractive. And it's equally fine for a man to be genuinely ugly and still high profile.