Thanks to Stephen Fry I had never wanted to be on television. Around the time Fry made the transition from print to screen, and hence real fame, he wrote a piece lamenting the irreversible step he had taken.
Now, as a result of his face being familiar, he explained, he could never again complain in a restaurant without being accused of throwing his weight around. To put his bins out risked snoopers going through the contents. He even feared cutting his toenails, he said, in case someone got hold of them and knocked up ‘an army of clones’.
Joking aside, Fry knew he had lost the precious gift of privacy and would never regain it. ‘If only I’d stuck to radio,’ he said. His words had a terrible ring of truth and I’ve always remembered them. So I was unmoved when a telly-addict friend rang to gush with excitement that she had put my husband and me forward to appear on Gogglebox and that the production company, Studio Lambert, was interested.
‘Thanks for the thought but no thanks. What’s Gogglebox, anyway?’
‘Mary! It’s only the most popular programme on Channel 4. Everyone watches it. And before you dismiss it out of hand — it would be really big money.’
‘How much?’
‘About ten thousand pounds an episode….’
‘It wouldn’t make up for being hated by 50 per cent of telly watchers and being stalked,’ I replied.
I almost didn’t bother mentioning it to my artist husband Giles, a leading exponent of the self-hinder movement who has repeatedly turned down offers of one-man West End shows of his paintings as well as contracts to write books, etc. So I was genuinely astonished when Giles said he wanted to do it.
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