(Incidentally for once I felt a certain degree of sympathy for Lees - and for Hegarty too, who presumably doesn't do terribly well with figurative language. What Lees should have said was "yes, I was AMAB [or whatever phrasing Lees felt comfortable with - as Wright points out, Lees has never hidden the biological facts of their background], but what we're talking about here is the figurative 'old boys' network', i.e. adult men in positions of power who all know each other in virtue of a privileged upper-class upbringing, education, university, and club membership thereafter - and I certainly didn't have any of those advantages."
If Lees had pulled this off, it would have made for good television and a fairly strong debating position, though I can see that the actual phrase used would throw anyone in Lees' position - even though Hegarty's intention was not to engage in a personal attack.)