The dearth of female politicians appearing as guest hosts of Have I Got News For You is not for want of trying, the show’s team captains Paul Merton and Ian Hislophave claimed.

The BBC panel show has been presented by 11 politicians in its 28-year history, but just one – Ann Widdecombe – was a woman.

Merton, a comedian, and Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, said the low number was not the fault of the programme’s producers.

Interviewed by the ITV news presenter Tom Bradby for the Radio Times, Hislop suggested women were too modest to take on the challenge.

And Merton told the magazine: “The producers always ask more women than men. More women say no.” He said that “right from the early days, that’s been the case”.

Hislop added: “And everyone you think should have been asked has been. Really, they really have.”

The show, which returns to BBC One on Friday for its 55th series, has been hosted by several women, including the presenters Anne Robinson, Liza Tarbuck and Victoria Coren Mitchell, the singer Charlotte Church, and the actors Jane Leeves, Joan Collins and Kathy Burke.

The comedian Jo Brand and the Desert Island Discs presenter Kirsty Young are among the most regular female presenters. But to date Widdecombe is the only female politician on the list.

“There was a period when people said: ‘Why haven’t you had French and Saunders on? Why haven’t you had the following people?’” Hislop said. “And you say, well, it’s not compulsory. And on the whole, women are slightly more reticent and think, maybe modestly: ‘I can’t do that.’ Maybe more men in public life say: ‘Yes I can do that.’”

Widdecombe comes in for some criticism, however. Merton described her second stint in the presenter’s chair as among his worst experiences on the long-running show. Buoyed with confidence having successfully appeared once before, when the former Conservative politician was asked back she insisted on “telling the producer what jokes will and won’t work”.

Merton said at one point Widdecombe turned to him and said: “Come on, be amusing, that’s what you’re being paid for.” He said it still sent shivers through his heart. “It’s like, the arrogance of the woman, you know? Suddenly she thought she was Victoria Wood,” he said.

The show attracted criticism last year after Brand famously won applause for rebuking an all-male panel for not taking sexual harassment seriously.

When Hislop suggested that some of the allegations emerging from Westminster were not “high-level crime”, Brand intervened by saying: “If I can just say, as the only representative of the female gender here today – I know it’s not high-level, but it doesn’t have to be high-level for women to feel under siege in somewhere like the House of Commons. Actually, for women if you’re constantly being harassed, even in a small way, that builds up and that wears you down.”

Figures published by the BBC revealed the 3 November show attracted 234 complaints, making it the most complained-about programme on the BBC in that two-week period.