Monday
All weekend and on into Monday, the row between the TV presenter and erstwhile wife of Les Dennis, Amanda Holden, and the managerial powerhouse Sharon Osbourne has been quite something. In brief: on Celebrity Big Brother Sharon slagged off their joint sometime-boss Simon Cowell. Holden then leapt to his defence in a Daily Mail interview, calling Sharon “bitter and pathetic”. Sharon then delivered a two-page diatribe against Holden, listing her many and lucrative achievements long before The X Factor entered her life, much though she enjoyed her judging stint. “Simon paid me very well. Probably more than what you’re receiving today, but all that, my darling, went on a few handbags.”
No, it’s not Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, nor even Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine, but it’s the best we’ve got and it’s ours. There’s nothing like a homegrown feud. You need the nuances, the perfect understanding of every slight, the absolute perfection of “my darling” and, elsewhere, the enduring classic, “No disrespect”. I hope the show runs and runs.
Tuesday
The Duchess of Sussex has launched her long-awaited lifestyle range American Riviera Orchard with … a jar of strawberry jam. No, no, no, Meghan – this is all wrong. First, there’s the multiplying dissonances piling up like cars in a motorway crash. American Riviera – what is that? Are orchards a thing we associate with rivieras? No, a bit like orchards and strawberries.
Second – jam is a Kate thing! God, is jam-making ever a Kate thing! If you’re going to open with preserves, it at least needs to be the bitterest marmalade (I think you can just about have an orange orchard – certainly more than you can a strawberry one), really thin cut. I can’t explain it, but you know I’m right. And you need to confront your commercial as well as emotional rivals and go up properly against Gwyneth. Scented candles called Treason (bergamot, sage and gunpowder) and Netflix (sandalwood, money and hope). Guillotine nail clippers. And a really, really stupid thing that literally costs $1bn. Come on, Markle. There’s work to be done.
Wednesday
Disappeared down a rabbit hole today – sparked by a tweet, which is why I will never truly abandon social media – about Capt Robert Barclay Allardice, “the celebrated pedestrian”. Pedestrianism was a late 18th- and early 19th-century craze for long-distance walking. And Captain Bob, as he was almost certainly never called, became famous in 1809 for walking 1,000 miles in 1,000 consecutive hours for a wager of 1,000 guineas. It took him 42 days, sleeping only lightly between each mile lest it become too hard to wake fully for the next leg, and lost more than 30lbs (13.6kg). So many people gathered to cheer him on (and place further bets) his course eventually had to be roped off so he could complete it without interruption.
It wasn’t until 1864 that the first woman managed the same feat. As Emma Sharp undertook it (“in men’s attire”, reported a newspaper at the time, adding reassuringly that she wore a hat with “feminine ornaments”), her food was drugged, people tried to trip her up, and by the end she was carrying a pistol to protect herself.
A surprising number of the rabbit holes I disappear down seem to end in a dispiriting illustration of the worst of men at work and of how little progress we have made in the intervening years.
Thursday
Continuing the theme of pedestrians and patriarchy, a friend has introduced me to the game “patriarchy chicken”. It’s very simple. Whenever you, a woman, find yourself walking towards a man in a context (narrow corridor, crowded pavement, for example) when one of you will need to give way, see if you can hold your course and make them do so instead of you.
I have had literally no success so far. They are very sure of themselves, men, aren’t they? And never more so, I’m finding, than when on an apparent collision course with an unglamorous woman of 5ft 2. They don’t stop, they don’t slow, and they don’t swerve. I hold my nerve a little longer each time but so far – nothing. I’m going to end up hospitalised long before I succeed. Perhaps I should start carrying a pistol.
Friday
Earlier this week squatters took over the Grade II-listed York and Albany hotel and gastropub near Regent’s Park, London, leased by Gordon Ramsay. I confess, I celebrated. Partly because it gave me the opportunity to turn my phone to my husband and son and say, “Look! Gordon Ramsay’s having a kitchen nightmare!”, even though they were not nearly as enthusiastic as I was about being handed this rare opportunity and I had to demand rather than receive spontaneously the applause I felt was my due.
But mostly because Gordon Ramsay is LOUD, and I wish only bad things on LOUD people. Today I have to travel to Bath on the train to do an event for Persephone Books, my favourite bookshop in the world bar all the others, and the older I get the harder it is to cope with the volume at which people think it is acceptable to live their stupid lives. Don’t even get me started on the erosion of “quiet coach” standards. We – call us introverts, intolerant or, as I prefer, the last vestiges of civilisation – should be able to buy sedatives or weapons with our tickets. I will vote in any election at all for any party that promises this.
