Read this, you might as well
Headlines not my strong point. Standfirsts not either.
Next week I’m going to Edinburgh (storm damage notwithstanding) to launch the paperback of my novel - Don’t Make Me Laugh. Edinburgh’s important to the book because the story has its big finish at the Edinburgh Fringe, where the comedy industry goes to work hard and play hard every August.
“Play hard” is a euphemism for drinking, taking drugs and committing adultery.
The paperback launch is my last real excuse to go on about the book until it’s made into a huge Hollywood movie starring Nicola Coughlan and [insert name of suitably charismatic male star here']. But until then, I’ll change the subject. Thank you for your patience.
What else has been happening? I had a proper birthday party with a speech and bunting. I don’t normally have parties but my husband egged me on and it was a big one which felt worth celebrating. (50.)
On my actual birthday, I drank champagne in the bath which is about as good as it gets. The party was rammed with good folk and pizza and Cherry Bombs, the second best cocktail after a perfect dry martini. I’d link to the recipe but it’s not online. It was passed to me by the folk singer Katherine Williams when Twitter wasn’t shit and I keep it on a word file for special occasions.
The general sense of time wasting away that comes with great age has also persuaded me to record another series of my TV nostalgia podcast because I love doing it and I’d forgotten how much until recently. A guest comes along with a treasured TV memory and we talk about it for around 15 minutes. Short and sweet.
I listened to a couple of old eps - the one with Tom Burgess talking about the Coronation Street serial killer, Richard Hillman and the one with Tony Way talking about Den blind-siding Angie with divorce papers in an Eastenders Christmas episode - and it made me want to plug in a mic and start making some more.
My first guest for the new series will be the brilliant Liz Bower, actor, friend and the narrator of my audiobook. And in one episode I find out a fascinating fact about her which came as a total surprise to me. I love it when friends surprise you like that.
My husband is going to the Emmys. He was part of the writing team for Cunk on Life (Netflix) and it’s up for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special. Which is nice. This is becoming “well, it’s been quite the year”. I thought you’d like to know though and I am very proud of him.
If you follow me because of my interest in how men get away with appalling treatment of women most of the time, this fiery Guardian article by Rebecca Solnit is absolutely essential reading.
The way she lists the men who have been in the headlines in the last year, matter-of-factly, the mundanity of their progress through the legal system, the appeals, the cowed returns to jail (not Bill Cosby) having tried every avenue to wriggle out of consequences - I’ve never seen it put like this before.
Never mind the individual cases, she says.
“The piecemeal stories – “here is this one bad man we need to do something about” – don’t address the reality that the problem is systemic and the solution isn’t police and prison. It’s social change, and societies will have changed enough when violence against women ceases to be a pandemic that stretches across continents and centuries.”
Across continents and centuries. Not, “Oh, I hear that woman accuses lots of men of rape and then tries to get money out of them.” Not, “We did see the video of him dragging his girlfriend by her hair and kicking her on the ground. But did he really traffic all of those young women just because they say he did?”
As she says in the article, we already know Trump is a sexual predator. We don’t need the release of the Epstein papers to prove it. He has sexually assaulted women, by his own admission and the lawsuit with E Jean Carroll (which I think he has yet to settle) now allows us to call him a sex abuser. Go ahead. He can’t even sue you for it.
There is unarguable systemic acceptance that men will be violent to women and we won’t do anything much about it if the abuser is powerful, unless we can prove every single accusation in a court of law, withstanding all the appeals and legal challenges his deep pockets will allow. Do please read her piece. She says it so much better than I ever could.
I feel my throat choking with a rage too big to fit in there and I can’t find the words. But she has here.
What else? Oh, I am obsessed with Karen Pirie, Emer Kenny’s superb adaptations of Val McDermid’s crime books on ITV. I was so done with crime as it filled the EPG from breakfast to midnight, but this is a detective for a new age. The writing is swift and brilliant and Lauren Lyle is pitch perfect as the woman with the bum-bag who just wants to get on with it. Am eking out this series which comes in splendid two-hour chunks. Worth the endless ads on ITVX or even a subscription.
Enough of the Christmas news letter. Your father has switched to muesli at breakfast and the cat’s having her teeth cleaned. Write soon.
Mother x
I often say to people " you know, before Twitter was shit ? " but sadly people are starting to forget. I've talked to Grace Dent about boxing, John Niven about suicide. We had jokes and stuff. I remember when it was all fields and no fascists.
Congratulations to you and yours, it's hard being a creative at any age but at at our age it's nice to have a little recognition at least.
Solnit is something of a genius, so this fierce brilliance is of no surprise. I sometimes don't believe this country has changed since Henry the Eighth, and the sexual politics he practiced. It's horrible right now, an itch of the soul you'll never be able to scratch.
I used to talk to you on Twitter too, we discussed television if memory serves. I've just finished Mayor of Kingstown, which is 90% wonderful but unremittingly grim.