Laurence Fox and Billie Piper

[TogetherNormanDouglas]

https://news.sky.com/story/laurence-fox-responds-after-ex-wife-billie-piper-claims-enormous-difficulty-in-co-parenting-with-him-13095462

Laurence revealing more stuff in that statement than perhaps he meant to.

TeamBillie all the way.

Billie Piper's comments in a nutshell:

1. Coparenting with Fox is 'tremendously difficult'.
2. If people want to know about Fox, they should ask Fox himself or close members of his family.
3. Divorce speaks for itself as to her feelings about the matter.
4. She does not want to read about Fox, hear about Fox, or for people to keep bringing his constant shitstorms to her door.

That's it. All there is to it. No ad hominem attacks, no snide digs about his sex life, no indictments of his parenting. And this after maintaining a stoic silence for years as he hurled unpleasant accusations at her via social media and trashed her acting work, specifically 'I Hate Suzie' for which she'd won a lot of critical acclaim.

Unfortunately what Piper is experiencing is Rule 1 of Misogyny: 'Women are Responsible for what men do'. That relationship has been over for a decade. She must be sick of being asked about it, and the odds are good that if a woman made a continual public tit of herself, her male ex-partners would not have their names persistently linked with hers every time she drops a SM stun grenade.

As for being taken to court: the courts had put a prohibited steps order in place because Fox emblazoned their son's private medical diagnosis all over social media and has refused to give him essential medication. He has persistently breached that order. How do I, or anyone else know this? It's all over Fox's own 'X' account.

It's clear which parent has persistently protected and which has harmed these children. But the minute she makes the mildest of responses, misogyny gears up into overdrive to censor not his abhorrent behaviour, but hers.

Depressing, but sadly predictable.

He had an interview with Tate on his channel after the Wootton incident that got him sacked. He said on that that he tells his boys to emulate AT.

Well said @SerafinasGoose and@delphi13

I remember him on Gogglebox with his cousin Emilia. He was amusing at first, but very bullish in his opinions.

I wonder what Emilia makes of him now.

Emilia has said he's her cousin and she loves him, but she has nothing to do with his politics. Fair statement.

Superb summary @SerafinasGoose. As ever, I remain thoroughly depressed that there are women on MN who seem determined to defend the most disgusting of misogynists, usually with a large dollop of misogyny of their own.

Personally I'm for defending the children. They are the ones who need protecting from parents who slag each other off.

The only parent slagging the other off is LF.

All BP said is that the co-parenting relationship is difficult, which we already know because Fox has been spewing bile since the divorce, and what she does to protect her children from the negative attention he attracts.

She did not slag him off.

Ach well @peachgreen they keep the thread bumping along and more people get to read about LF's past actions (blackface, medication,cocaine) that maybe they didn't previously know about.

IMO Billie said the minimum (her restraint is laudable) when I'm sure she's asked EVERYtime he makes the news. He then launched his 'poor me' tweets and created a 'story'. So he got what he wanted

specifically 'I Hate Suzie'
Hardly surprising - her character's ex in the second series was portrayed as a complete grade A arsehole (sending a barrage of texts, arguing over custody etc)
Yes, it's fiction but many watching will have thought "Write what you know" even though Prebble wrote it, Piper co-created. Piper did write Rare Beasts about a woman who falls in love with a patriarchal man with rage issues.
As a journalist said at the time, it's hard not to see parallels.

Exactly the bit which jumped out at me too. She doesn’t seem the type to automatically label an ex as an awful person - she had good things to say about Chris Evans and her most recent ex.

Perhaps his behaviour over the last few years put an intolerable strain on her most recent relationship.

I wonder what Emilia makes of him now.
I wonder what Lydia makes of him.
According to Fox, his younger sister Lydia's husband Richard (Ayoade) fell out with him after he was on Question Time.
"Richard was furious. He told me I have never encountered racism. I responded 'Yeah, of course I have'. I've encountered racism from black people towards me, when I was working in Kenya for seven months. It's the way you're spoken to. Racism can be deferential."
Billie has in the past said press should ask Lydia/Richard's take on things.

The "eluding happiness" comment is toxic as.
Billie was married to Chris for six years, to Lawrence himself for nine years and with Johnny for seven years. Lockdown did for a lot of people.
It was an unnecessary jibe.

Who is the "we" he describes as having had to give Billie more money through the courts?! Presumably his family. Since this inbred human tapeworm with his inherited money and entitled attitude is a tiresome cock who still relies on handouts.

Creative writers sometimes draw on personal experience. This is nothing new; it's happened since time immemorial. You're seriously suggesting that this is impermissible out of deference to the woman's spiteful, carping ex who thinks nothing of publicly lambasting her at any given opportunity?

Drawing on biography isn't the same as biography. Some of what was seen in those series may well be loosely biographically based. But as you rightly point out, it was fiction, and to what extent that fiction was based on reality is known only to the two of them. Ironically, had Fox not shot his mouth off on such a regular basis, your average viewer likely wouldn't even have clocked that he'd been married to her. I had no idea, until his public Twitter slow-motion car crash started trending to the extent that it was impossible to bypass it. It was both fascinating and horrible in equal measure.

I Hate Suzie Too was, incidentally, a powerful piece of work giving a much-needed insight into society's misogynistic, biased and repulsive treatment of women. It was a great take on how the media builds up unrealistic portraits of real, female 'celebrities' only to kick their pedestals from underneath them and hold them up as hideous figures of hatred. Cf. Meghan Markle, as a noteable example.

Kudos to Billie Piper, who created two very thought-provoking series which fully deserved the considerable accolades she's been given. The woman is both gifted and insightful, that's clear to see. Small wonder Fox couldn't stand it.

Username checks out.

BP has done nothing but protect her children. She has tried to maintain their anonymity and privacy despite being thwarted by their father’s determination to use them as props in his ongoing social media campaigns. Her clarifying comments in this interview can hardly be called “slagging him off”. Have you actually read it?

Yes I have, no good comes from criticising the other parent. Think of the kids instead of yourself, what have either parent gained from their behaviour? Nothing but they've gained that nothing at the expense of their children.

No not the minimum, the minimum would be no comment.

You're seriously suggesting that this is impermissible out of deference to the woman's spiteful, carping ex

Lord no, I was merely pointing out an underlying reason why he might have hated it so much that he needed to tear it down (even though she was Bafta nominated and Emmy nominated for the role). I loved both series and recommended it to everyone. I imagine, however, that seeing it and recognising yourself/parts of yourself (if he had the self-awareness) would have made it a difficult watch. hence his OTT bile-driven kneejerk reaction to it.

Indeed.

She was asked, yet again, about Fox because her Vogue interview happened to coincide with yet another of his interminable public meltdowns (but is there a time when it wouldn't)?

Her response, and I've read it, was nothing more than a dignified rebuttal of that question. Women are not answerable for men's behaviour. She's likely sick and tired of her name constantly being tied with his - she 'trends' every time he kicks off - and wanted to head off that line of questioning in as diplomatic and graceful a way as possible.

She did that. HE chose to go on the attack because of it.

Where did she criticise him? Please copy and paste the examples.

I think bringing in his family into it all about their possible feelings for him constitutes slagging him off, albeit in a very passive aggressive and rehearsed way.

Which is what she’s been doing for the last decade in the face of his increasingly deranged behaviour. But she still gets asked. And all she did in this interview was shut down the line of questioning more firmly. I’m divorced, that is my comment, it’s very hard to co-parent when there’s another Twitter storm happening, please ask someone else who is still in his life, my primary concern is the privacy of my children. It’s nowhere near the level of vitriol he has spat about her and to suggest that they’re both as bad as each other in some way is both idiotic and offensive in the extreme.

How? She didn’t say that they’d say anything bad. She simply suggested the interviewer ask people who are still in his life.

Fair play and all fair points.

The response I saw on 'X' seized on one particular point: the abortion. He really went bananas on that occasion. But there are a surprising number of comments - not your own, but all over Twi/X - to the tune that Piper 'poked the bear', so to speak, with her responses to Vogue and that his volatile response is therefore her fault.

That's far too close to victim-blaming for my liking. Having divorced him a decade ago now, I imagine the continuing prospect of tiptoeing around so as not to set him off has worn extremely thin. In the circumstances she's shown remarkable restraint.