Once upon a time I would delight in telling people my age. Yes, I am a chief reporter already; yes I am holding you to account; and guess what, I’m still only 20!
The poor schmos confronted by someone determined to act like Lois Lane even if she didn’t have the chops for it probably wondered what the hell I’d be like after some experience. And only the most optimistic of them would have thought ‘more obedient’.
It is women who will only confirm their age through gritted teeth who quietly run the world, and are now running down the inexplicable popularity clock of Masterchef presenter Gregg Wallace. Even before they started, he was unattractive, unskilled, and totally unaware of how lucky he’s been for the past 20 years of a cushy job with no heavy lifting, courtesy of the BBC.
It is from this position that he now regards a baker’s dozen of complaints from female celebrities about sexual harassment – allegedly spanning jokes, simulation of sex acts, and groping – and has decided to blame “middle class women of a certain age” for making them. He has a point, as if it were not for them he would not have to worry about it at all.
Something changed in me after I reached 40. I saw the world as I always had, but decided not to do what I had always done before. Maybe it was age, maybe it was having a daughter and wanting her to have a better time of it. I just decided that s*** had gone on long enough, and taking prisoners was not only a total waste of time and effort, but if I shot them all, piled up the corpses and then climbed over them, I could get significantly closer to ending the s*** I’d had enough of.
It’s not just me. Look around you – every woman you know over 40 has power, and most of it comes from within. They may be mothers, they may be at the top of the career ladder, but they’ve eaten enough dirt to know they don’t wish to eat any more. After the storm of hormones recedes, all that’s left is the rock you cannot break: the Jackie Weaver granite of mature womanhood.
In the case of Wallace’s accusers, they were once young women trying to get work in TV. They probably all experienced things they wouldn’t wish on someone else but never said a word, either frightened to rock the boat or aware that a pretty young thing is never believed or valued.
But as women of middle years they have status, and security. Some complained to BBC bosses straight away about the things they had witnessed, others are speaking now about things they witnessed some time ago. The fact is, they now have power they didn’t use to, will be believed in ways they never used to be, and have decided to be a pain in the neck rather than suffer one.
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Channel 4)
It is of note that, when he uploaded a carefully-edited and subtitled video he seems not to have thought about at all attacking his accusers, Wallace did not deny any of the details. He seems to think a working class male – something he hasn’t been for 20 years – can prance around naked but for a sock on his willy, whether his co-workers like it or not.
That isn’t anything to do with class. At best it’s bad manners, and at worst it’s excusing things that should merit punishment. There is no salt-of-the-earth, hardscrabble, blue collar person in Britain who is fine with someone dissing their mum in the way Wallace has done.
Every walk of life is plagued by some dodo who just doesn’t get it. Thankfully, each is also populated by women over 40, who run the place even if that’s not their job, and whose ranks have brought down successive gits in multiple scandals in the past decade or more. And they’re not done yet.
Wallace has much to be grateful for. Bald barrowboys rarely become millionaires with trophy wives and fitness videos. Outside the mafia, they’re unlikely to be shielded from the consequences of their actions or complaints to their bosses. He’s had a good run, considering.
If he had an ounce of self-awareness, he’d gracefully step aside, count his money and nurse his grievances. I suspect we’ll get self-pity instead, squeals about cancellation and how very unfair it is that a man with his power, wealth and fame has had his free pass revoked by a menopausal landslide.
As for me – well, I didn’t name and shame anyone, though I got my dose like every woman did. Instead I decided to do something about how an entire country had not only forgotten thousands of men damaged by nuclear weapon tests in the Cold War, but, when reminded, dismissed them as unworthy.
These veterans were, mostly, working class. In two decades of interviewing them I’ve never met one who was less than charming. They’ve been damaged beyond repair, by radiation and by denials, and they never blame the middle class for it, or claim that someone didn’t get the joke.
For 12 years I asked the government nicely to help the nuclear veterans, and got nowhere. In the past six years, zero f***s have been given, and those veterans now have a medal, a £5bn compensation claim, and a growing heap of evidence they were used in a human experiment that has been hidden for seven decades. I did not do any of it alone, but it is amazing what we can all achieve if we stop asking and start insisting.
If I were Gregg Wallace, I’d be asking myself what these women will do next. If I were Keir Starmer, I’d be asking myself what Susie Boniface will report next. I’m neither, so I’ll just say this, on behalf of all women whose train took a hell of a long time to chug up this hill: you can either hop on board, or you can get the hell our of our way. One way or another, we’re coming through.