To be loving the Liz Jone and India Knight Feud?

[Vagabond]

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2220669/Spouting-filth-s-VERY-strange-way-stick-free-speech.html

In which, middle class India Knight called la Liz everything under the sun on her nasty twitter diatribe of nonsense.

Schadenfreude, I know.

I don't think her books are rated highly, Shelley. You're not missing much. I'm frankly staggered that Penguin haven't dropped her yet, though the diet book she co-wrote was a best seller.

There's a cultural lesbian in my family - told me she wasn't REALLY a lesbian, she just had to find someone with whom she could discuss books

Me, I'm a lesbian who only reads the Daily Star. When I can turn over the pages with my thick hairy knuckles.

Actually, i did read a book by IK once - can't remember which one - and seem to remember she had some rather nasty things to say about lesbians. And then I met her and thought, you're just not very NICE.

Hark at me, complaining about others' lack-of-niceness while having a bitchfest on the internet. Think I'll wander over to Property and DIY for an update on the latest F&B dilemma.

Years ago, before Twitter, IK pissed me off with a column. Think it was about the MMR although I can't really remember. I emailed her and she responded very quickly (and politely). Most hacks don't bother to reply if you disagree with them. I've always thought she was ok after that. She did write a very well timed column about Kate Winslett and natural child birth the day after my first section, which had me howling with laughter. I think it went in the birth album (PFB - ha had a birth album).

She's generally good on the subject of SN as well.

Don't really like all the comments on her size etc on this thread tbh. Why do mumsnetters do this?

If she really pisses you off with something she writes, email and tell her sensibly and you may well get a sensible reply back.

India knight is just awful! Her column is generally laughable. Why have so many posts been removed?

Yeah. Email her RIGHT NOW y'all and tell her sensibly that you don't like her.

She won't have my IP thingumy as I said I LIKE her books. And barely mentioned icing sugar.

This is one of the most unpleasant threads I have read on MN.

Abra, it is pretty unpleasant but then again, the things ik wrote were disgusting.

Good lord, I've seen far nastier threads. Try posting that you don't fancy doing the washing, and you'll get piled into.

seriously, abraid?

jimjams, the reason why it's 100% absolutely dead-on acceptable, nay possibly even essential, to mention her weight is because she is continuing to coin it in from her DIET BOOK while nevertheless steadily regaining all the weight she lost. just look at that picture of her at Christmas last year, the one in Red.

likewise, it was FINE to mention that Dr Atkins was mahoosive when he keeled over and died as well, and it's FINE to mention that the woman from Lighter Life is also ginorme.

were it not for the diet book, of course I'd agree with you. but the thing is even hubristically titled 'the idiot-proof diet'...

And you should have seen the Scheherzade Goldsmith thread which was totally brilliant-

And the Jon Ronson thread.

And the omigod Rachel Cusk one, which upset RC so much she cried and cried. (Although I am still miffed that I was quoted in the LRB about that one, and the implication was that I was slagging off RC for being Unmotherly when in fact I was slagging her off for the far, far worse crime of being a terrible writer.)

Jimjams, several years ago IK made some really vile and ill informed comments about women with fertility issues. Those comments really upset a friend of mine who was struggling with infertility. So she sensibly contacted IK and asked her to reconsider her views, and IK replied and basically told her to wise up and fuck off.

Quite where a woman who has three children gets off telling infertile women how yo feel and behave is beyond me, but the woman is a bitch and a terrible writer, and I fucking loathe her.

And ALL the Peter Andres. And the one where Getorf said that Kelly Osbourne could plough a field with her jawbone.

I missed Rachel Cusk. Deleted?

And the Samantha Bricks. And ALL the Jiz Loans threads.

RC thread is probably around somewhere. She got all amazed and upset about how much we apparently hated her. (Repeat: it's not you, it's your prose style, babe, if you're reading this.)

I missed that AND the one where Caroline Pedlar came on to defend her fruitbasket.

oh i thought that was MEAN about kelly osbourne. she can't help her desperate dan jawline... i like her.

btw re 'most hacks don't bother to reply if you disagree with them'. that's never been my experience, as a matter of interest, or that of colleagues. (our ed would kill us, for starters).
personally, i think it's my job to communicate with readers, even the really nasty ones. you can't please everyone, obv, but you can re-frame the conversation in a more polite way, and go from there. what do the other 'hacks' on the thread think?

I haven't actually come across disagreement. I have had a couple of nice emails/letters for things I wrote .

well OBVIOUSLY i get that too. 'grin]

i've had some right old cases, where you could kinda tell (as could ed) that the people were a bit vulnerable really and needed to vent. you really wouldn't think that people (a minister's wife, no less) could get to wound up about my accidentally revealing that Ross is the father of Rachel's baby.

so - polite, prompt, conciliatory the only way to go, at which point they, without exception, fold and apologise for being a bit nobbish at the start. it's just a part of the job, i quite like the challenge of bringing people in, iykwim? (and am not afraid to make plain old hands up apology if i'd made an error).

The goldsmith thread was very funny.

I don't really have an issue on comments about her opinions/nepotism/whatever - but diet book, or not comments about appearance or weight always make me cringe a little. Nothing particularly to do with IK, directed at anyone at all. Please note I spend half my waking life in wetsuits these days so it's not something that stings personally. I suppose it just seems a very last way to have a go at someone.

And tbh if I was going to buy a diet book I think I'd rather buy one from someone of typical size, rather than someone who has always run a mile after eating an avocado.

Aitch - it's not really been my experience that journo's from the nationals reply, which was why it struck me as unusual. Although admittedly I stopped caring enough about anything to write in years ago, so it may have changed.