Devoted: Barbara Taylor Bradford with her husband Robert
Barbara Taylor Bradford was in London this week, dispensing the wisdom of another age, like a some-time traveller from a misty, long-forgotten Shangri-La of Sensible.
Firstly, the 84-year-old novelist opined that wives should pick up their husband’s socks if he leaves them lying on the floor. As the words left her lips, a thousand feminists per acre fainted in built-up areas, but Barbara was unabashed.
‘Why would you not?’ she wondered incredulously on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. And that got me thinking. Why, indeed, would you not?
Equality and feminism mean the notion of little wifie scurrying around the bedroom filling her sock basket like a frantic fishwife raking up cockles before the tide turns, is redundant. She’s too busy running a FTSE 100 company to bother with his footsies, for a start. But if marriage is meant to be a partnership, a bond, the bedrock upon which you launch your life, why not pick up his cast offs?
After all, one man’s dropped sock is another woman’s unwashed coffee cup left in the sink. And I think what Barbara means is to ignore the bad, focus on the good and work as a team. Especially at this time of year.
For here we are once more standing on the threshold of December, the terrifying first day of advent. This is the moment when husbands and wives traditionally press their foreheads together, grip hands and promise each other; we can get through this.
You don’t need me to tell you that December is the most stressful month for couples. Assorted surveys ram this message home every year, along with the festive news that over the next three weeks, the average couple will have four rows a day and one in five will consider splitting up. Even close relationships can buckle under the strain of Christmas finances, close proximity of relatives and even closer proximity of bottles of Baileys.
The festive season is a time for teamwork, otherwise all is lost. In Jan-Land, I’ve already given Mr Jan his list of Jan-chores to be completed between now and Jan 1. Or his nerves really will be Jan-gled, in new and ingenious ways he could never have imagined in his worst nightm . . . where was I?
Oh yes. Teamwork. I like to think much the same thing goes on in Prime Minister Theresa May’s home. Earlier this year, Mrs May shocked many by admitting she and husband Philip were old-fashioned enough to share the domestic chores along gender lines.
‘Boy jobs and girl jobs,’ was how she put it, cue much outrage. But why not? She cooks supper, he takes out the bins, domestic harmony rules. I loathe it when Mr Jan goes away. I hate the empty chair at breakfast time, I hate the way no one bellows ‘where’s the mustard?’ when I am on the phone to the editor, but most of all, if I am being honest, I hate having to do the bloody bins.
Of course, the only contribution some husbands make to Christmas is seeing how many goose fat roast potatoes they can snarfle in one sitting without exploding. Even then, good wives must hush. ‘Edit yourself,’ says Babs TB. ‘Know that words can hurt.’
Mrs Taylor Bradford has been happily married to her doting husband Robert for 54 years, so she must know a thing or two.
The Leeds-born author worked her way from the Yorkshire Post to Fleet Street to best-selling author with a penthouse in Manhattan and 92 million book sales to her credit. ‘If one wants one’s marriage to survive, one has to be very clever,’ she told journalist Celia Walden in an interview in the Telegraph.
This is true. Celia has been married to broadcaster Piers Morgan for seven years and has a sign in her kitchen that reads ‘I’ll Pretend I Like Cooking And You Pretend It Tastes Nice’.
Barbara would approve. A potential source of domestic conflict dealt with in an adult and sophisticated way. What does Celia make for dinner? She makes reservations, and everyone is happy. That is not possible for all couples, but it captures the essence of long-term marital success. Find a way around the problem and turn weaknesses into strengths, through good times and bad.
The ultimate example is the Queen and Prince Philip, who have just celebrated their Platinum wedding anniversary. In those 70 years they survived many crises, constitutional and personal, including the divorces of three of their children, the death of Diana, the loss of royal yacht Britannia, the Windsor Castle fire and Fergie.
Mrs Taylor Bradford’s own personal sorrow was that she had two miscarriages and was unable to have children. She and her husband ‘clung together’ through the sadness, and she refused to let it define her life.
‘I pushed ahead,’ she said. And that is the thing. Even if the road ahead is dark and strewn with dirty socks, forward is the only way.
I’m not suggesting marriages should revert to the confined parameters of some Fifties sitcom, where wives are like Samantha in Bewitched; wafting around in marabou-trimmed baby dolls after fixing pork chops and apple sauce for hubby’s supper, programmed to laugh at everything the dolt says.
It is more that nothing worth having — whether a good marriage or a wonderful Christmas — ever comes easily. And that sometimes the old ways are the best.
Suki Waterhouse turned up to a party this week wearing not much more than pink pants wrapped up in a bit of Barbie’s mosquito net
Note even Suki is perfectly happy
More and more young women are having issues with body dysmorphia. This is particularly sad when they should be enjoying their youth, being confident to make mistakes and start again. Instead of crying over mirrors in their bedrooms.
Is it any wonder? A Hollywood stylist has revealed the big issue obsessing red carpet stars is ‘arm vagina’ — that hitherto unnoticed fold of flesh between shoulder and body when one is wearing a sleeveless dress. It’s a thing! Oh, the horror.
Meanwhile, beautiful model Suki Waterhouse turned up to a party this week wearing not much more than pink pants wrapped up in a bit of Barbie’s mosquito net. Hardly the outfit choice of a shrinking violet, but Suki has issues: ‘I think one of my eyes is smaller than the other. You see it in pictures,’ she said.
And, sylphlike actress Carey Mulligan revealed she had always hated her thighs and spent a lifetime covering them up — until she realised they had a purpose. Walking? No. Her lightbulb moment came when a friend handed her a baby to hold.
‘If my legs were really bony and skinny, that would be really uncomfortable and it was quite nice for this baby to have a comfortable place to sit,’ she said.
And Suki and Carey are two of the intelligent ones. No wonder little girls worry so much.
No business like U.S. show business, thank goodness
It is notable that relatively few Brits have been caught in the current showbiz sexual misbehaviour scandal, in comparison with the number of high-profile Americans who are dropping like, well, flies.
The latest culprit is Matt Lauer, fired by NBC after two decades hosting the Today television show. This followed a detailed complaint by one woman, while others are coming forward.
Perhaps one reason for the US/UK discrepancy is the utter veneration for celebrity in the U.S., where stars are accorded far higher levels of adulation and deference than they are here. Men like Lauer are given vast salaries and huge power.
Matt Lauer was fired by NBC after two decades hosting the Today television show. This followed a detailed complaint by one woman, while others are coming forward
Can you imagine Huw Edwards or David Dimbleby being allowed to have a button in their ‘secluded’ office which automatically locked its door?
Lauer allegedly used this to ‘welcome female employees and initiate inappropriate contact while knowing nobody could walk in on him’. Hideous, if true.
Lauer sounds like the worst sort of predator. However, the workplace sexual politics are not helped by the tendency of U.S. news programmes to succumb to the dated onscreen dynamic of older men lording it over young women. We’ve moved on here, thank goodness.
Argos is selling a PVC pre-lit upside down tree for a ‘fun twist on a classic’
This is a little bit too tree-diculous!
Putting up your tree this weekend? Hey dummy.
Make sure you put it the right way up, will ya?
Last year the Tate displayed an upside down fir tree with golden roots — it was beautiful, but what have they started?
Karl Lagerfeld has designed an upside down tree for Claridge’s festive display this year, while Argos is selling a PVC pre-lit upside down tree for a ‘fun twist on a classic’.
It costs £190, which is so fun I am almost hysterical.
And while we are on the subject . . . Cyber Monday.
Black Friday. Giving Tuesday?
How about Give It A Rest Thurs-day?
Or is that too much, too soon and too un-Christmassy?