'Calm down everyone, it's part of our national language now' : Michael Winner wades into sexism row over PM's putdown 
 
 
 
 Director says Cameron's use of catchphrase shows he's in touch with public 
 
 
 
 Michael Winner has leapt to the defence of the Prime Minister after the use of his notorious advertising catchphrase in the Commons provoked a sexism row. 
 
 
 
 The Prime Minister is facing calls to apologise after he told a Labour shadow minister 'Calm down, dear' during Prime Minister's Questions yesterday. 
 
 But the film director, who coined the phrase in adverts for Esure car insurance a decade ago, said Mr Cameron's jibe showed he was in touch with the public. 
 
 
 
 Scroll down for video report 
 
 Sexist? Prime Minister David Cameron, with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg by his side, laughs during Prime Minister's Questions Travelling away from the political intrigues of 'Westminster village' today David Cameron works on a speech ahead of meetings in North Wales and Stoke 
 
 The party’s deputy leader Harriet Harman accused Mr Cameron of an ‘outdated and sexist attitude to women’ and a senior Labour source said: ‘He should certainly apologise.’ 
 
 Mr Winner said: 'I find it unbelievable that Harriet Harman, the deputy leader of a supposedly important party, sees fit to go on about my phrase 'calm down dear', which the Prime Minister used in Question Time today. 
 
 
 
 'Which planet is Miss Harman on? Does she not know that this phrase which I created 10 years ago has become a part of the nation's language? 
 
 'It's used by everybody. People come up to me in the street and in restaurants saying it. It's a totally harmless bit of fun. 
 
 
 
 'The Prime Minister has used it before which shows he's in touch with the British public, which is more than Harriet Harman seems to be.' 
 
 Calm down dear: Michael Winner, left, has dismissed the criticism of his catchphrase. The Prime Minister told Angela Eagle: 'Calm down, dear, calm down. Calm down and listen to the doctor' 
 
 Senior Labour politicians have reacted furiously to the throwaway remark which came in response to noisy heckles from frontbencher Angela Eagle. 
 
 But Tories urged Miss Harman to ‘grow up’, saying the comment was clearly intended as a joke. 
 
 
 
 The row blew up after Miss Eagle, Parliament’s most prominent lesbian MP, interjected as the Prime Minister defended the Coalition’s plans to reform the NHS, arguing they were backed even by former Labour MP Howard Stoate, a practising GP. 
 
 The Wallasey MP shouted that Dr Stoate stood down at last year’s election, rather than being defeated as the PM claimed. 
 
 Poll Was 'calm down' Cameron really being sexist? Yes No Was 'calm down' Cameron really being sexist? Yes 9590 votes 
 
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 In response, the Prime Minister told Miss Eagle: ‘Calm down, dear, calm down. Calm down and listen to the doctor.’ 
 
 As the Labour benches erupted in outrage, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls angrily demanded to know who the Prime Minister was referring to, while party leader Ed Miliband appeared to call for an apology. 
 
 But the Prime Minister told the pair: ‘I said calm down, calm down dear. I’ll say it to you if you like. I’m not going to apologise. You do need to calm down.’ 
 
 Aides said Mr Cameron was simply mimicking Mr Winner’s catchphrase in eSure’s popular advert. The Prime Minister used the same phrase as leader of the Opposition in exchanges with then prime minister Gordon Brown. 
 
 But the senior Labour source described the comment as ‘patronising, sexist, insulting and un-prime ministerial’. 
 
 Miss Eagle, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said afterwards: ‘I don’t think any modern man would have expressed himself in that way. 
 
 ‘I have been patronised by better people than the Prime Minister. It is for the Prime Minister to decide whether he expressed himself appropriately in the Commons. It is up to him as to whether he wants to annoy 51 per cent of the population.’ 
 
 Miss Harman, a long-standing campaigner for equality, said: ‘Women in Britain in the 21st century do not expect to be told to “calm down, dear” by their Prime Minister.’ 
 
 Ed Miliband responds during PMQs. Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman (to his left) said of the incident: 'David Cameron's contemptuous response to Angela Eagle MP at Prime Minister's Questions shows his patronising and outdated attitude to women' 
 
 The House was full during the session with speaker John Bercow having to step in to quieten the furious Labour benches, telling MPs: 'There's far too much noise in this chamber, which makes a very bad impression on the public as a whole' 
 
 Labour’s shadow local government secretary Caroline Flint accused Mr Cameron of using the word ‘dear’ to put women down. She complained she had been on the receiving end of the same tactic from Communities Secretary Eric Pickles in the chamber, when he told her to ‘just get behind the programme then, dear’. 
 
 Shadow Chancellor Mr Balls said: ‘If I had ever said “calm down dear” to [wife] Yvette [Cooper] at home, she’d have clocked me one.’ 
 
 But Conservative MP Priti Patel said: ‘Labour need to grow up. It is quite pathetic to try to turn this into a sexism row. I was in the chamber, and from where I was sitting Mr Cameron was clearly joking. 
 
 
 
 ‘The problem is that Labour ask a question and they don’t like the answer and so they try to fabricate some other story out of it. They should grow up and get on with the job of being in opposition and let us get on with the job of being in government.’ 
 
 The Prime Minister’s spokesman said: ‘Let’s not over-analyse something that was clearly a humorous remark. He was mimicking a popular TV advert. Clearly no offence was meant.’ 
 
 Anna Bird, of gender equality campaign group the Fawcett Society, said: ‘There are four times as many men as women in the House of Commons. 
 
 ‘Those women that have made it into Parliament must fight an uphill battle to ensure their views are taken seriously, and face a culture of sexist jeering and dismissive comments – not just by other MPs, but by the Prime Minister himself.’ 
 
 Eruption! Balls was pointing like a Cairo traffic policeman 
 
 By QUENTIN LETTS 
 
 Quelle calumny! David Cameron called Angela Eagle ‘dear’ at Prime Minister’s Question Time. 
 
 
 
 Comrade Eagle (Lab, Wallasey) is many things, among them an economics spokesman, a hardline socialist and a pinstripe-suit-wearing lesbian. A keen cricketer, she bats like Botham. 
 
 One thing she most certainly is not, though, at least not to Conservative chaps, is a ‘dear’. 
 
 Samantha Cameron need not fret. Her husband was speaking ironically. 
 
 
 
 Towards the end of a sometimes raucous PMQs he told Miss Eagle to ‘calm down, dear’. He was using a phrase popularised by Michael Winner in those insurance adverts on telly. 
 
 
 
 He said it because our Angela was yelling at him like a tattoed stevedore from her perch on the Labour front bench. 
 
 
 
 Storm after the calm: Labour frontbenchers including Ed Balls (pointing), Angela Eagle (circled) and Peter Hain react to Mr Cameron's remark 
 
 She was seeking, I have since ascertained, to correct a minor inaccuracy committed by Mr Cameron in remarks he was making in connection with the National Health Service. 
 
 ‘Calm down, dear,’ said Mr Cameron in a jocular tone. Eruption from Labour high command! Tessa Jowell, the dame of Dulwich, nearly choked on her eyeballs, so far did they leap from their sockets. 
 
 
 
 Tessa used to be minister for equality. She is chilli hot-hot-hot on such matters. 
 
 Ed Balls started pointing like a Cairo traffic policeman. Ed was ventilating hard. Had he been equipped with a whistle, its pea might have shot from its moorings. 
 
 At first some of us thought Mr Cameron’s remark had been directed at Mr Balls’s wife, Yvette Cooper, who was near Miss Eagle. It certainly looked as though Mr Balls was leaping to the defence of his own demure lovely but then it became clear that the victim of Mr Cameron’s atrocious thought crime was Miss Eagle. 
 
 While most Labour frontbenchers fanned their faces, Edward Miliband, a few places to the other side, appeared less gripped by alarums. That may have been because he is often so wonderfully cross-eyed and mystified by events. He floats through life like a man in an old-fashioned diving suit, insulated from alacrity. 
 
 The hoo-hah was but beginning. Mr Cameron noticed the excitement of Mr Balls and offered to call him ‘dear’, too. Further cacophany. 
 
 It should perhaps be explained that the epithet ‘dear’ is regarded, by Islingtonians and other recipients of correct thought, as a mark of the most appalling sexism, reparable only by several months in the salt mines. 
 
 I must confess that I call my darling beloved ‘dear’ all the time. She (occasionally) returns the compliment – it depends on how I have been performing in my domestic duties. 
 
 Hoo-hah: Mr Balls could barely contain himself after Mr Cameron's comment - leading to the Prime Minister offering to call him 'dear' too 
 
 But in the land of Milibandia, where platoons of Guardian-reading, cheroot-chomping wimmin patrol the public squares, forcing political correctitude down citizens’ gullets like sausage-meat into a plastic skin, ‘dear’ is a dread word. It is ‘inappropriate’. 
 
 What should Mr Cameron have called Miss Eagle? ‘Mate?’ ‘Guvnor?’ ‘Sarge?’ Someone naughtily suggested later that he should have called her ‘the Rt Honourable Dear’. 
 
 Fainthearts will say that Mr Cameron’s choice of words was demeaning. Worse, they will accuse him of being patronising. Er, well, yes. Of course. He was engaged in the usual verbal biffery of PMQs. Is Miss Eagle never to be teased? Are Labour women never to have their moustachings tweaked? 
 
 
 
 Surely that would, in itself, be sexist. We must treat everyone the same, comrades. 
 
 Exchanges at Prime Minister’s Questions had touched on Afghanistan deaths, bank lending and the AV referendum. Yet the thing that, for Labour, plunged the electrodes into the soup, the thing that really sent their knees leaping, was Cameron addressing a member of the sisterhood as ‘dear’. 
 
 At times such as this we parliamentary sketchwriters start to suspect the whole world is being ordered simply for our benefit. 
 
 Barely ten minutes later a Labour spin doctor – chum of mine, as it happens, who in the normal course of things is a chuckling imp – walked down the press corridor with funereal tread, his face a mask of gravity as Mr Cameron’s tiny remark was condemned at length. ||||| "I don't think any modern man would have expressed himself in that way," she responded. 
 
 But asked if she wanted an apology from Mr Cameron, she said: "The Prime Minister is reponsible for what he says in the Commons. 
 
 "I think if there is an apology to make, it should be for the dreadful growth figures we have seen today, which demonstrated that the economy has effectively flatlined for six months." 
 
 She added: "I have been patronised by better people than the Prime Minister... It is for the Prime Minister to decide whether he expressed himself appropriately in the Commons. It is up to him as to whether he wants to annoy 51% of the population." 
 
 Labour's Caroline Flint accused Mr Cameron of using the word "dear" to "put women down", and said she had been on the receiving end of the same tactic from Communities Secretary Eric Pickles in the chamber last December, when he told her to "just get behind the programme then, dear". 
 
 In a message on Twitter, the shadow communities secretary said: "PM isn't the only one fond of using 'dear' to put women down. Pickles used the same tactic on me. See Hansard 6.12.10." 
 
 Meanwhile, the PM's comment was a hot topic for debate on parenting website Mumsnet, where contributors were split between those seeing it as patronising and those who regarded it as acceptable banter. 
 
 One poster, MrsBaldwin, wrote "In my view David Cameron just knocked some gloss off his 'I'm a modern Tory' spin. Is that what he says to SamCam at home?" while another, squeakytoy, asked "Why is it appalling? I would say it to my female and male friends if they were getting hysterical or shouty. It is nothing to do with gender."
– Brits are in a snit after an admonition by Prime Minister David Cameron to a top female official to "calm down, dear" during a public parliamentary session. Cameron made the comment to Angela Eagle, the "shadow" chief secretary to the Treasury from the opposition Labor Party, as she was challenging him. Eagle says Cameron has insulted 51% of the population with his "sexist" comment, reports the Telegraph. "I don't think any modern man would have expressed himself in that way," she added. But a film director who created a popular car insurance ad using the "catch phrase" years ago has come to Cameron's defense, saying the comment has "become part of the nation's language," and it's a "totally harmless bit of fun," he added. "The prime minister has used it before, which shows he's in touch with the British public." Labor Party officials are calling on Cameron to apologize.