Lady Isobel Barnett did it in the late 1970s for an undisclosed fee.

Marje Proops considered doing it but never materialised.

Lady Olga Maitland might have done it had she not demanded £250 and firstclass rail travel from London as the price, and by 1985 Judith Chalmers had stopped doing it altogether.

Why anybody still does it today when it’s so nerve-wracking is a mystery to me: though D&S reporter Joe Willis and I both have, and quite recently, which just goes to show that there’s still an appetite for the wise and witty anecdote to follow the black forest gateau at the 50-plus ladies’ luncheon clubs of Yorkshire and the surrounding area.

One, the Upper Wensleydale Ladies’ Luncheon Club, recently celebrated its halfcentenary.

Its president Shelagh Magrath’s reminiscences of past and prospective speakers recalled more prosperous days – and the high-handed reply from the Associated Speakers Lecture Agency on hearing of their budget: “If £100 is your maximum, you will not be able to consider a celebrity at all,”

they told the speakers’ secretary, Elma Banks, in 1984. Thirty years ago, £100 was a considerable sum: ten years earlier they were paying up to £200.

Agencies may no longer be called on to provide national celebrities – who needs them with such local luminaries? – but the ladies who lunch are as vigorous in their pursuit of entertainment and companionable chatter as ever.

Which is odd, considering the difference 50 years has made in the lives of women, or at least the women of middle England and Upper Wensleydale.

When Min Tallantire, 88, still an active member, started the club in 1964 with her friend, Pauline Marston, it was unusual for women to have careers. Travel was a novelty, and there was much less opportunity for socialising: theatres, art galleries, posh restaurants with food from every continent, were a rarity.

There was no Facebook or email or Skype to distract and entertain.

Hardly surprising, then, that women, so often defined by their husband’s career, sought stimulating companionship through the luncheon club.

“My husband, Ian, was the vet in Bainbridge. Other women were married to farmers and worked hard on the family farm. But farmer’s wife, or vet’s wife wasn’t a profession. I would love to have trained as a doctor or a nurse but there just weren’t the opportunities,” says Min.

But times have changed. Forty or fifty years ago you would get blank stares if you asked most women what they did for a DARLINGTON & STOCKTON TIMES WEEKEND dst.co.uk FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 2014 31 living. Charity and community work, yes - Min herself was local organiser of the Red Cross, a member of the Aysgarth Choral Society and helped found a handbells group in her village. But careers? Hardly ever.

Now, you get some surprising answers. There’s a former registrar of births, marriages and deaths, a prison officer, a health worker whose career had led her to dealing with drug and alcohol addiction.

A recently-retired GP, a manager with an investment bank, an operations manager with Richmondshire district council. The list goes on.

And then there’s Val Gladman, secretary and vice president.

She was a uniformed officer in the Metropolitan Police, directly involved in dealing with the violence of the Brixton riots.

Given the professional, travel and social opportunities for women now, why do they still feel the need simply to meet once a month to eat, chat and listen to somebody talk? “People ask why we don’t do something, for a charity for example. We all do other things, in our communities and for each other. But this isn’t a philanthropic organisation, it’s a social one.

It’s a place where we can just relax and be ourselves,” says Val.

Shelagh Magrath, herself a retired teacher, agrees, though insists it has another role.

“There are women who have retired fairly recently, and a few who still work. But there are a lot of older ones who are perhaps on their own now, and don’t get out as much as they did. For all of us the club provides a valuable social function,” she says.

The ladies who lunch have come a long way since the Swinging Sixties.

• The Upper Wensleydale Luncheon Club meets on the third Wednesday of the month at the Aysgarth Falls Hotel.

Call Shelagh Magrath on 01969- 663958 or email w.magrath@btinternet.com