I made a terrible mistake last week. My right earhole is still sore; it may even be perforated. It all began when I rang the Mothership to tell her about our Christmas tree debacle. What should have been a festive occasion had descended into one of chaos. There were the usual shenanigans with broken lights which hadn’t survived their sojourn under the eaves for 12 months. But while LSB went to buy NEW set, the dog decided to puke all over the sofa. Extensively. I was stressed after a day at work and LSB had a rare day off so I left him to deal with the vomit and stringing up the new lights. This was a mistake, as he bundled the newly washed sofa cover into the spin drier, where it promptly got snared round the drum. We now had a lovely twinkly tree, but a sofa cover with a big hole in it. MELT.
So, my opening gambit when I rang home was this, ‘Poor auld LSB,’ says I. ‘He’s having a worse day than Gregg Wallace’s PR team.’ (It was of course, LSB dealing with all the unpleasantries while I feigned busyness with baubles and strings of decorative gold beads.)
Down the crackle of the line, I heard The Mothership inhale sharply. This never bodes well. What had I started? ‘This business with Gregg Wallace is NO LAUGHING MATTER,’ she exclaimed. ‘How has he not been booted off on the air? And they call him THE TALENT? Talent my eye!’
My God but the Mothership was livid. What had really incensed her, were the comments by men (funny enough) on on-line sites, who had Wallace’s back, claiming that he was doing the contestants a favour with his ‘bawdy banter’, by preparing them for life in ‘real kitchens.’ And, then, one of his defenders, had mooted, that if the contestants were so offended, why hadn’t they just walked off set and withdrawn from the competition?
This got the Mothership’s goat something terrible. ‘Withdraw from the competition? Why should THEY be the ones to miss out? That crass, bullying UPSTART driving people away while he stays on, raking in for a fortune! Is this what I’m paying my license fee for?
I haven’t heard the Mothership so exercised since they moved the Great British Bake Off to Channel 4. On she went.
‘Now who I really blame, is the BBC- don’t tell me they didn’t know about this. Of course they did. They should be out sourcing new talent, not keeping on the likes of him who’s engaging in the behaviour of a dirty old man!’
I have to admit, at this stage the phone was jammed between my ear and left shoulder while I fried up some chicken up for dinner. (I’d have given it a two out of ten in the taste-test.) I was only half-listening. But then she said something which struck home. ‘Imagine if that had been one of your girls on there, and him saying God-knows-what to them. You’d have had something to say about that!’
And she’s right- I would indeed. TV sets are daunting, not to mention the stress of the competition itself. The last thing anyone needs is some narcissistic green-grocer in their ear, spewing filth that would make the bananas blush. Because it wasn’t just ‘bawdy banter’; it sounded much more like harassment, aimed at those who were least likely to report it.
All I’d done was ring home to get advice about the vomity sofa cover, and now I had a hole in both the sofa cover AND my ear drum. I had to open a bottle of red to calm myself. But fair play to the Mothership for getting so incensed, because if we ignore this sort of toxic shite, it will just keep happening, won’t it? And when people leap to Wallace’s defence, I want them to imagine that it’s their daughter stuck in a lift with him, or manipulated into situations which are at best uncomfortable, and at worst intimidating. Thankfully there’s still a few #MiddleClassWomenOfaCertainAge to challenge him.
Anyway, the tree is up, and it’s looking lovely, (Even the dog approves, as you can see in the photo.) And LSB just the fired the sofa cover back on, with the holy bit on the other side. The job’s a good’un. Pukka, in fact, to quote another celebrity chef.
