I never thought I would read a headline like ‘Kirstie Allsopp’s husband enables upskirting’. Regrettably, this type of nonsense has become a regular part of our life since Ben and his business partner Will decided to rescue an old pub on Latimer Road. There used to be a dozen pubs on this street, but they have nearly all gone. Ben and Will are romantics and are hugely attached to this part of west London, where they have worked together for 25 years. They thought that reviving the pub would be a fun project, but some locals are working night and day to ensure it never comes back to life, lodging dramatic objections to everything and anything. Like most pubs, this one has a basement which needs air, so an application was made to reinstate its old pavement grille, which led to the absurd claim that patrons would spend their days straining their necks to gawp up people’s skirts. I have to admit some of the comments made to various papers were very funny. My favourite: ‘What’s next – a request to reinstall the pillory outside the Tube station?’ Ben is determined to plough ahead.
My 18-year-old son Bay has just taken his A-levels. He is a cheery, easygoing child and he seemed to take a sensible approach to his exams. The same cannot be said of many modern parents. Every year at this time at least three or four friends tell me they are desperately stressed by A-levels or GCSEs, as if they were taking them themselves. My parents were devoted to us but on pain of death couldn’t have told you what exams we were taking or when. I know of parents nowadays who stick spreadsheets to fridges detailing every last minute of their children’s exam season. Where will this end?
I can’t quite believe it but Location, Location, Location is 25 this year. My co-host Phil Spencer and I are being lined up to do various interviews around the anniversary. The problem is that there is a 50/50 chance in any interview that something will come out of my mouth which will make a juicer headline than ‘TV show celebrates clinging on for 25 years’ and then the people whose job it is to encourage me to stick to the topic will have a seizure. Although much to my surprise, it’s Phil, not me, who’s first to put his foot in it. He said in an interview that he and I don’t socialise outside of work. It’s true: he lives between Hampshire and Cornwall and is devoted to his golf, fishing and his lovely wife Fi. We are very rarely in the same place at the same time unless we are working. But his comment causes a rash of ‘feud’ headlines. This too shall pass.
I recently received a logistical email about work and wanted to call the sender to discuss it, but there was no telephone number on the email. When I eventually tracked down the number and called it, there was no answer. I realised that this person, like many members of Generation Z, won’t answer a call from any number not saved in his phone. I only got him to pick up when I sent a text saying it was me. I have thought for a while that working-from-home Zoomers and menopausal women may be a dangerous combination. Women of a certain age tend to speak their mind, and this doesn’t go down well with a generation of young people who have not properly experienced the rough and tumble of a busy office.
Last week ended with a miracle: I’ve had an apology from Piers Morgan. Piers and I used to be friends, and I would often seek his advice on press-related matters. But at the beginning of the pandemic the Daily Mirror printed a hit-job piece about Ben spending lockdown in Devon, which included the false claim that he was taking up a bed in a small local hospital. The subsequent abuse we received was pretty scary. I corrected the story on Twitter, which infuriated Piers, and he set the dogs – or rather, his millions of followers – on me. Piers recently spoke at my younger son Oscar’s school and Oscar hoped to take him down by tricking him into repeating some of things he had said about me in front of his schoolmates, since everyone knows being rude about someone’s mum is the last taboo. Unfortunately for Oscar, Piers can read a room and was not so easily fooled. He did, however, admit he regretted some of the things he had said during the pandemic. Fast-forward a few weeks and Sarah Vine added Piers and me to an enormous WhatsApp group of troublemakers. Much to my amazement, Piers raised the issue of our feud in the group before going on to call a truce and apologise.
I haven’t told Phil yet about our reconciliation. Phil loves Piers and has read all his books, so he found our feud difficult (though obviously he took my side). Should I ever fall out with Jeremy Clarkson I might lose Phil, and Ben and my boys.
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