In Wales, adoring neighbours call her “lovely Fiona”. She’s the dotty (her word) 61-year-old who works for local government, runs a dementia-friendly lunch club and has a penchant for floral dresses. The kind of woman you’d share intimate secrets with minutes after meeting. You’d trust her to look after your house, your keys, your PIN number, your cat. Later, you’d dismiss her lightly with words like nice, harmless, or worse, “lovely”.
And those lazy assumptions are just what the cardigan-clad Butcher of Swansea, as I call her, is banking on. As she said when she introduced herself on The Traitors, “People always underestimate women of a certain age.” And how.
