In British English, the term the thinking man's crumpet refers to a woman who is intelligent and good looking, particularly one who has a high profile in the broadcast media. It derives from the slang use of the term "crumpet" to refer to a woman who is regarded as an object of sexual desire.[1]
The first person to be called "the thinking man's crumpet" was Joan Bakewell, by humorist Frank Muir following her appearances in high-brow television discussion programmes such as BBC2's Late Night Line-Up.[2] Bakewell is still synonymous with the phrase, but it has subsequently been applied to other high-profile women such as Anne Gregg,[3] Joanna Lumley,[3] and Felicity Kendal,[3] and, more recently, Helen Mirren[4] and Gillian Anderson.[5] In a poll in the Radio Times in 2003, Nigella Lawson received the most votes to be the readers' "thinking man's crumpet",[6] with Carol Vorderman in second place.[7]
The phrase is occasionally reversed, to refer to "the thinking woman's crumpet", notably as the tagline of UK-based women's magazine Filament.
After the release of the 1997 film, Titanic, Kate Winslet was dubbed by one newspaper as "the sinking man's crumpet",[8][9] but this moniker was repeated by only one other British newspaper.