Why I hate the Daily Mail

There are so many reasons to hate the Daily Mail. Its puerile Savile-like stalking of celebrities’ children (Suri Cruise is filling out nicely, eh? Check out the tasty tot in her latest outfit...), its obsequious hand-kissing walking backwards sucking up to Royalty (check out Camilla’s diamonds, isn’t it heart-warming to see rich people wearing Cartier?), its blatant xenophobia and racism, its sexism, its slut and fat shaming. The list goes on and on.

I can add another reason though. A personal reason.

It was such a kind thought. My chum, Sonia Poulton, an extremely busy investigative journalist, decided to take time out from exposing scams and dodging death threats to help me publicise my project: “Through Smoke”.

“I can’t bear to see such a great writer struggling to be heard” she said. So she made some calls, and plugged my budding book about perfume and my late mother’s obsession with it to her contacts at The Daily Mail.

Already a busy blog (www.thatperfumebook.blogspot.co.uk), what the project needed was a piece about me and what I was trying to achieve in a national newspaper, with the aim of attracting a publisher to turn it into a book.

“It would make a great piece”, she told the girls at the Mail. Ex-child television star (“Heidi”, BBCTV, 1974), working to ensure her mother’s great knowledge of scent did not go to the grave with her, putting together all the notes found in exercise books and on the backs of envelopes to create a lasting tribute to a woman who knew just about everything there was to know about pong, but who had died way too early of a massive brain tumour.

Sonia not only managed to get them interested, but knowing my financial situation as only a friend can, she managed to sell me to them as a journo more than capable of writing the piece myself – to ensure I would get paid for it too.

I eventually got a ‘phone call from a Sloaney sub-editor on Femail. She wanted more info. I supplied it. Could I get 2000 words to her by (date)? Me? You kidding? I’m the deadline queen. Absolutely.

I wrote 2000 words of love for a flawed woman with an awesome knowledge, and submitted it. I heard nothing. I heard more nothing. I called.

“We haven’t commissioned this yet, you shouldn’t have written anything.”

“But you said...” I began.

“Sorry you got that impression. I haven’t spoken to the Editor yet. We’ll be in touch.”

A few more weeks went by. I got a call from another editor. A freelancer this time. Could I get my piece over to her by midday? I was at work. I said I would get it to her by 6pm.

She called me again. She told me it was “the best bit of writing” she had seen in a long time. Trouble was, this was for the Femail section of the Daily Mail, and it had to be written in a “certain way”.

She sent it back with her “questions”. All in capitals. Shouting.

There needed to be more “emotion”. The readers would want to know.

How did I feel when my father left us? (I was fine about it. He was away filming so much, I was used to him not being there). Did I see my mother cry? (Only once, when she thought I was asleep and it was safe to do so). What were my thoughts when I saw my mother drunk at the kitchen table? (I don’t remember. Most likely irritation). Was I devastated when she died? (No, I sang the “Ode to Joy”. What do you think? I had been expecting it. All I felt was that there was a lot to do and a lot of people to call). What were my thoughts as I cleared my home OF 34 YEARS? (That I hoped nobody had told the landlord she was dead so I could have more time). How did I feel about not BEING MARRIED OR having children? (That the dice didn’t roll that way for me). Did I blame my mother for ruining my life? (My life isn’t ruined by not being married or having children).

Nowhere in amongst all this, was any more than a passing interest expressed in the subject matter: PERFUME. Had she asked what scent I was wearing at any of these points in my life, I could have answered: L’Air du Temps, Tabac Blond, Paris, Rive Gauche, Narcisse Noir, Chanel No 22... But she didn’t ask.

She rewrote the entire thing so it read more like a snivelling penny novel “poor me” whine, and sent it back to me to ‘check’.

I refused to sign my name to it.

She tried again to tease more “emotion” out of me.

“Have you any idea how grief and depression work?” I asked. “You’re numb most of the time. You can’t quantify your feelings. If it’s a glimpse of my tortured soul you and your readers want, they’ll have to ask someone else. We don’t do that in my family.”

I do understand that, she said. But I also know what the Editor wants.

“Ah, so it’s not actually the readers who want all this emo crap... it’s the Editor?” That made sense.

When they were finally ready to run the piece (only after another two freelance editors had been assigned to me to force me to be more “emotional”), I was assigned a photographer and a make-up artist to make me look the way the Editor wanted as well.

The Editor, one Maggie O’Riordan, apparently has very specific ideas as to what people should look like in her weekly corner empire of The Daily Mail.

No black items, no jeans, no boots, no flat shoes. All the things I wear on a day to day basis.

A plain one colour dress please, tan tights - no black allowed (we want your legs to look as bad as possible), and high heels.

I haven’t got any clothes like that.

We’ll send you some outfits to choose from. What size are you?

I was a 12. I am a 10 now. Probably as a result of all the stress...

Can you do tomorrow?

No I bloody can’t. I’ll be at work.

Ok, Sunday then.

On the day, I was presented with a hideous blue and beige print pencil skirt (no alternatives, that or nothing) two revolting oversized auntie-mum blouses with frilly flounce down the front and made of some hideous nylon material, and an array of ghastly, towering, spiked shoes. We compromised by allowing me to wear a top from my own collection, but I wasn’t allowed to wear it in any manner that might disguise my bloated menstrual stomach. No, it had to be pulled tight over it. Maggie, apparently, “doesn’t like” clothes to be flatteringly draped.

Maggie also prefers subjects, at least the female ones presumably, to have orange foundation trowelled inches thick over their faces (is that cruelty free base? I only wear BUAV approved cruelty free cosmetics. Of course not...), buckets of shimmering eye-shadow, and virulent pink lipstick (at least 8 coats).

I never wear pink lipstick, I said. It doesn’t suit my skin tone. Haven’t you got an orange-based red matt, or a plum in there? I asked, pointing to the make-up artist’s two suitcases full of pots and brushes.

No.

Maggie likes this colour.

Of course she does.

“You’re not the first to feel this way”, the make-up artist finally said kindly. “It’s just this is how Maggie wants things.”

“- And if you don’t do what Maggie says, she won’t run your piece, and you won’t get paid” chimed in the photographer.

Suddenly, the make-up artist spotted my signet ring.

“Does that ring come off?” She asked.

“What...this?” I looked down at it, sitting snugly, quietly and discreetly on the little finger of my left hand. At the lion’s head erased within a fetterlock, engraved by the lovely old chap who scratches the names of Wimbledon champions on the famous gold pineapple topped men’s trophy and the women’s Rose Bowl. My mother’s family crest.

“Yes.... when I die, and it goes to my niece.” I said.

Maggie apparently doesn’t like jewellery either. Even heraldic jewellery.

At least I won that one, but for a person who spends her life in flat boots, I still had to spend two hours on my feet in 4 inch red stilettos. My legs and back were on fire. No, sorry, no sitting shots. Don’t tell me... “Maggie” doesn’t like them? Bingo...

And so I ended up looking like a bloated 50 year old Chantelle Houghton in a brown wig, with her arse sticking out, smirking like an Essex barmaid. SMILE SMILE SMILE.

The pictures were appalling.

I got a professional cameraman friend to take some alternative shots of me, complete with some of the bottles from my mother’s perfume collection (oh yes, that was what the article was meant to be about, wasn’t it...? It’s ok, it would be completely understandable if you’d forgotten), but naturally, these were rejected. The quality was apparently not good enough. The quality of his photography to date has been good enough for films like Shakespeare in Love, but sadly, it would seem that if he ever wanted to work for the Daily Mail, he’d have to go back to snapper school...

Me in my own clothes, with make-up by cruelty free GOSH (and applied by me), with perfume bottles from the collection of the late Sally Blake. Pic by Simon Jones (definitely not good enough for the Daily Mail - sorry Simon...)

And after a few more months, and a few more exhortations to make it more “emotional”, the piece finally appeared, on the 12^th of January 2015. Both in the paper, and online.

It was a travesty. I looked awful. I came over worse.

Inevitably, fast flowed the comments from the readers. They who apparently “demanded” blood and guts.

“Whiney attention-seeker.”

“Trading on her dead mother's hard work.”

“Trading on a series she did 40 years ago.”

“Who cares?”

And lots more along those lines.

There has been absolutely no interest whatsoever from any publisher or agent following.

They wanted me to show more emotion? They finally got it when they printed the piece to which they put my name.

I cried my fucking eyes out.

Emma Blake

22 February 2015

Dinner Date

The food of love...?

"Dinner Date" ITVbe, 20 February 2015. Aka "Meateaters Mating".

Yes, the show that is all about young urban nothingheads looking to meet similar featured Thomas tonight, who declared "I 'ope she's not a vegetarian. I 'ate vegetarians..."

Well of course you "'ate vegetarians", Thomas. You eat everything else after all.

But then, that's your 'choice' isn't it? And as we all know, personal 'choice', no matter what that may be, is a sacred cow of the modern age that not even "Thomas" can (have someone else) slaughter and stick on his plate.

Why however, someone choosing NOT to eat something that you 'choose' to gobble up like the back end of a greedy refuse lorry, should be worthy of actual "hate" is a bit beyond me though, I must say...

Such a shame about Samhain...

The following piece was published in a newspaper called "Think Spain Today" when I was living up a mountain near Denia in South East Spain a few years ago. Thought it was worth..."digging up" again...;)

Trick or Treat?

For the first time this year, there was frost on my window pane this morning. Far from depressing me, I felt invigorated. As we move into the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, I am brimming with interest to see how Spain does Hallowe’en.

I have been feeling somewhat spaced-out and lightheaded for a few days now. I always feel this way at this time of year. I am what is laughingly known as a “sensitive”, but most people usually seem to notice something at this time of year. A slowing down in mind, a need to sleep more, a transitional time between autumn and winter. Most do indeed put it down to the change in seasons, but as any psychic will tell you, this is also the time when the veil between the two worlds of what is seen and what is unseen is traditionally believed to be at its thinnest. The time when communication between both is most easily facilitated, and the time when the departed are remembered with love.

A Samhain Ancestor Altar (Pic courtesy of Pinterest)

Or rather it was traditionally before it was turned into a circus of freaks and ghouls, black and orange plastic tridents in every shop, and children on the doorstep clamouring for sweets, who will kick you, or at least your doorframe if you don’t have any (yes, that's happened to me!).

I often marvel how western civilisation so easily forgets its own traditions in its anxiousness to pour awe and wonder on other nations instead. How many people have I met who read avidly about the Mexican Day of the Dead, or the Tibetan version of same, without it occurring that Europe’s own Day of the Dead has been October 31st for at least a thousand years, pre-dating Christianity. It has been proved that ancient peoples of the British Isles and beyond worshipped female deities and honoured the passing of the seasons with rites based around care of the land.

Hallowe’en, or Samhain (pronounced “sawain”) to give it its Celtic name, was traditionally the time when the land was put to bed for the winter, and the clan prepared to “go into the dark”. In more recent times, with the resurgence of the Old Religion as espoused mainly by Gerald Gardner of the famous New Forest coven way back in the early 1950’s, revivalists have turned the eve itself into a truly beautiful festival. Allegorical tales are told of how The Goddess at this time goes down to the Underworld to prepare for her regeneration in spring (at Imbolc on February 2nd), and places are set at table for those passed, to let them know they will be welcome should they wish to visit. Many believe this was the original reason for the lanterns on the gateposts, to light the way home for the dear departed ones. 

October 31st is actually New Year’s Eve. At least in the pre-Christian calendar. All Saints Day, when the pious would give thanks for surviving the night before, the old New Year’s Day. It is a time for reflection and remembrance. For my part, I shall be remembering my living friends too, who I miss, and with whom I would normally be at this time.

One Samhain years ago, when I and several of these others were celebrating the eve with a hearty cook-in and pomegranate pudding at a house in Oxfordshire, we were summoned to the door by a loud knocking. Opening it, we found several small children on the step. One was dressed in a sheet and carrying a plastic trident, one had a green face, plastic fangs and a black cape, and one little girl was in traditional stripey tights and a witch’s outfit complete with droopy hat and plastic Harry Potter broomstick.

We did actually have a tray of sweets waiting, and opened the door with big smiles all around, but the little ones’ eyes widened as they took us in, and they simply scarpered.

We all looked at each other in mild surprise. Yes, we were all wearing black, yes some of us were wearing ivy in our hair, and yes, one of us was leaning on an antler-topped staff.

At least, when we ventured forth the next day for a brisk walk in the frosty air we noticed that of all the houses in the street, ours was the only one that had not been pelted with flour and eggs.

Wise children.

Not because had they flour-bombed our house we would have put them in our bubbling cauldron out back, but because we would have removed them by their ears and reported them to their parents.

Sadly, although we prepare a dish of treats every year, the children have not been knocking since. They are afraid, and it is a shame.

This, after all, is only their own culture risen from the grave...

©Emmeline Wyndham – 2007

Whether shed in obscurity or fame, all tears taste the same

Robin Williams - 1951-2014

As the world still tries to get its head around the sudden and tragic death of the comic comet that was Robin Williams, the righteous have started to creep about on Facebook, chiding those posting heartfelt expressions of shock and sadness at the news of his death on their pages, and exhorting them to spend as much time thinking about the “ordinary” victims of depression: i.e., those who suffer without fame to cushion them.

Whilst we now know that this man who made us laugh and cry across so many years as both comedian and actor was fighting the Black Dog the whole time, there have also been murmurings about his battle with drugs, and his “comfortable” life bought with the money he earned making millions of people all over the world forget their own miseries and smile for a while.

I seem to remember a similar sort of slime began to ooze all over my Facebook feed about Whitney Houston before her body was even cold. “She brought it on herself.” “Why focus on her when real people are dying of drug overdoses?” - Etc etc etc. The blazingly brilliant actor Philip Seymour Hoffman who died of a drug overdose earlier this year aged just 46 received exactly the same treatment. It made me think. We love to be diverted. We love our music and our films and our theatre nights. Most people have extensive film, and music collections. Often illegal downloads out of which the artists never make a penny. Generally speaking, the ‘ordinary’ folk just love to be entertained, but it seems that few have very much time for entertainers. Especially entertainers with problems. Such people receive "unfair" attention for their issues when ‘ordinary’ people suffer in silence. The minute a celebrity dies in tragic circumstances, it only takes a few hours before we find we are being admonished on social media for being upset about it, and told to pull ourselves together and think of the ‘ordinary’ people.

Performers don’t always “choose” their lives. Short and chubby as a kid, Robin Williams was bullied senseless in school, so used his talent at comedy to protect himself. After all, surely nobody would kick the funniest boy in the class or steal his chocolate milk, right? Good for him, he ended up making a living out of it, and in the process, gave joy to millions, but sadly it seems the demons never left him.

The fact that this final desperate act of a brilliant and world famous man might actually help to highlight the seriousness of Depression, and that sufferers can’t just “snap out of it”, seems lost on the self-righteous individuals championing the suffering of the common man and hijacking the death of a talented and tormented man to do it. All suicides are tragic, but it seems only those of the famous are accompanied by endless comment, speculation, and inevitable censure. After all, what does a famous entertainer need to be depressed about, right? Those telling us all off for being heartbroken at the loss of Robin Williams at the stupidly early age of 63 might do well to remember his wife and kids when they post. To have to read such things is something the grieving families of “ordinary” folk seldom have to suffer.

Personally speaking, as a nobody with three nervous breakdowns to my name, if I hear that someone suffers from Depression, I don’t care if it’s the road sweeper, or the President of the United States - they have my sympathy in equal amounts.

The fact is that Robin’s fame clearly didn’t “cushion” him, or he might still be here. 

 

Emmeline Wyndham

12 August 2014

The Alternative Page 3

Back in 2013, I wrote to the new Editor of The Sun, David Dinsmore, to make a suggestion. As the No More Page 3 campaign was garnering such support, perhaps there was a way he could rehash his Page 3 feature in such a way he could not only save face, he might well win himself a journalism prize to boot? All he had to do was throw the page open to the readers: drop the mute dollies exposing their breasts, and let the readers submit their own choices - people who had inspired them, people who had done great things, overcome the odds, and come up smiling. The page, I posited, could become a place where all the millions of ordinary people out there doing extraordinary things could be celebrated. He could be the man who made the change. Didn’t he want that? I asked him.

He ignored me.

I tried another address and sent it again.

He ignored me again.

So I decided to do something along similar lines myself. On Facebook. As a bit of comic relief for the serious debate going on over on No More Page 3, I decided to rip seven shades of urine out of what I considered to be the ‘Carry On’ crassness of Page 3, by featuring a different woman of accomplishment every day (except weekends – just like The Sun). A woman who had made her mark on the world using her brains, instead of just her breasts. Having heard the news somewhere that some 50-60% of girls in state education in the UK now consider studying for exams to be a waste of time when people like Katie Price have got rich by showing off a pair of surgically inflated mammary glands, I decided to try to demonstrate that there was so much more a woman could do with her life. The plan was to do this every day for a year, or until Page 3 of The Sun was consigned to this country’s embarrassing, seaside postcard past. Whichever came first.

On 2 July 2013, I set up a page called The Alternative Page 3. The pattern I set was that Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays would be for current / contemporary inspirations, Wednesdays would be for Historical (deceased) inspirations, with Fridays devoted to women comedians with clips of their performances - accompanied by the tagline “because of course, women can’t be funny...”

I kicked off with a picture of a brave and nameless young woman smiling for the camera and showing her double mastectomy scars. I followed with a picture of the late Diana Spencer reaching out to an AIDS sufferer, and finished my first day’s work with Maya Angelou and Aung San Suu Kyi.

But the narrative I put with these entries deliberately aped the style of Page 3. I trivialised these amazing women, almost as if I was possessed by the spirit of Sid James. I referred to them as “babes” and “corkers” and coo-coo-ed at their achievements. Of Suu Kyi, I said that the “pretty Nobel Peace Prize winner” liked to play the piano and fight for democracy in Burma; of Maya, I said she liked to write books, and quoted her on the subject of Christmas Tree lights; of Martina Navratilova, she was “tennis tottie” who liked her strawberries and cream and winning a silly amount of Grand Slam titles, and for the “History Babe” that week, Righteous Among the Nations WW2 idol, Irena Sendler, she was a babe who liked helping people, especially those under threat of mass extermination.

The idea was to demonstrate just how absurd and inappropriate it was to discuss human beings in such patronising terms - simply because they were born female. Most of the page’s supporters totally ‘got’ my approach, and laughed along with it, but it was woefully misunderstood by others, who wrote to me in shock and outrage.

“I really don’t think you should be talking about (name) in this way, it’s most disrespectful.”

“If you’re trying to challenge Page 3, why are you trivialising women?”

I answered every comment and every message, explaining again and again the purpose of the page: that it was satire, that it employed the knife under the fifth rib to rip the guts out of ingrained, lazy sexism, but secretly, I was glad I was being challenged, because it meant that the word was hitting home.

Then, as the messages of support also came in, many of them from fathers thanking me for the page because they showed it to their daughters every day, I began to realise I would be very lucky if I could wind it up in a year.

“You can’t stop! You mustn’t stop!” Entreated one.

In fact, I was delighted to see just how many men were liking and contributing to the page. It made me think just how sexism sells men short too. How it drives a wedge between genders, how it kyboshes relationships, and how it instructs men as to what they should find attractive - jeering at them if they prefer the sort of woman who can put up her own damned shelves, to the more obvious fare served up in The Sun every day.

Eventually, my year was up. I posted up a collage of as many of the women I had featured over the year as would fit, and topped it all off with a picture of a mirror. A bit cheesy, because whilst of course nobody would actually be able to actually see their own reflection in a picture of a mirror, the idea was that every single person who supported the page was just as amazing as the people featured on it.

As more messages came in begging me never to stop the page, I threw it open to the supporters, asking them to nominate their own inspirations, and encouraging them to tell me in their own words, just why they considered their choice so fabulous.

I was thrilled as the pictures, words, and ideas came in. The likes leaped up again overnight, and we’re now standing at over 4,000. Not bad for a page that was started merely as a tongue in cheek, nose-thumb at an outdated and embarrassing ‘institution’.

So yes indeed, the page will keep going, and as the world turns, and we all grow up a little bit more each day, The media might grow up a bit too. It’s not too late for David Dinsmore to take up my suggestion. Who knows? He may actually find hearing from his readers rather more interesting than showing pictures of mammary glands every day.

After all, as 52% of the population grow them at some point in their lives, it’s hardly “news”, is it...?

Emmeline Wyndham

Editor and Admin

The Alternative Page 3
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRealPage3/

1 August 2014