OMG Miriam Margolyes Andi Peters

[Temptree]

I've got an annual leave day today and am spending the morning shamelessly on the sofa watching daytime TV with cups of tea and biscuits after an exhausting school summer hols. Kids back at school today. I've given myself permission to vegetate till 3:15pm.
So here I am watching This Morning and have just spent 5 minutes with my jaw wide open and hand over my mouth at what Miriam Margolyes just said to Andi Peters.
Did anyone else see it??
I mean it takes a lot to shock me. I am not easily shocked.
And this woman is currently doing a sell out tour??
Whoah.

Right, DC are back so I'm off now.

In the meantime, I'm so hoping for huge media backlash against this woman after today.

She'll be disappointed she's not trending on Twitter.

Racism is everywhere. People of that generation are more prone to it as they grew up in less progressive times, and they’re not necessarily up to speed with current discourse on race. (That does also apply to half MN tbf).

I’m not saying your lovely grandma is personally racist I’m just saying there’s a quite a bit of it about in that generation, so if I were you I’d stop trying to pretend there isn’t.

He has worked in tv and tv production for years, he is a total pro, he put it down to her being an old woman and move on.

Yeah, a right set up, a complete trap eh?🙄

It would give you an idea to her character. Also, In her autobiography she describes her expertise at BJs! She’s very frank about everything!

He must have a portrait in the attic because I remember him presenting in The Broom Cupboard and he hadn't aged a day!

She is probably on this thread, watching with glee

Not 1 day ! I think he is my age mid 50s and he could absolutely pass for early 40s. I used to babysit my sister after school and I set her down In front of cbbc.

I don't think it has anything to do with her being old.

She used to tell stories about jerking off random men who she found perving on her (iirc), and that is not something that people of her generation routinely did. Especially not the lesbian ones. Not to mention her past comments about race - they weren't normal in her generation either, unless someone was racist. I think that's just her, not her age, although she may be playing into some 'dotty old lady' sort of stereotype.

If she was younger I reckon she'd be throwing out the n-word with an 'a' or some such, instead of using an old-fashioned term - but she'd still be being racist.

Or visiting a lady, whose Daughter apparently shoved her in an old people's home!

You would need to be over 100 to have been taught at school that the glorious white men civilised the savages. You can be any age and have absorbed attitudes of race/class or sex superiority as our current society makes clear.

Language changes, terms go in and out of fashion. That is quite separate from actual racism which is always in fashion to a greater or lesser extent. Using the out dated terms doesn’t make someone racist, believing someone is lessor because of their race and then treating them accordingly is racist.

Yep

Not keen on MM. Didn’t know people still watched This Morning. It went down the pan after Richard and Judy left. It’s never recovered despite all the desperate combos of different pairings. No one with any sense would touch it (as a guest or presenter) with a barge pole

She's a tiresome attention seeker. It's only a matter of time before it backfires on her, hopefully now.

At 85 it’s difficult to know if it’s a generation thing or whether she’s hit dementia
Or option 3 and 4
3,being she has always been obnoxious and 4 , being she know exactly what she is doing and plays up for the cameras.

I thought she was almost National Treasure status so im glad im not alone in disliking her.

She’s foul. On one hand, I’m surprised that she’s been racist but on the other hand she seems to enjoy outdoing her previous efforts in being a fucking dickhead. In an ideal world these shows would stop inviting her on.

Having seen what someone I love went through, I would never want to be in one, and hope euthanasia is legalised.
What I saw her suffer. And yes, I did try all I could including attending an online court case with representatives, because I would have done anything rather than leave her there. She got put in there without my consent, from hospital-I would never her put her in there. It still breaks my heart, what she went through, while my dog got a dignified ending. I don't really know the actor you're discussing, was she in Harry Potter, but if she's seen someone desperately trying to claw her way out, and is much older than me and perhaps worried she won't have a choice, she might be trying to save her friend.

Yes, she has discussed her weird sexual past many times on TV. I really don’t want to think any more about it so I won’t be reading the book.

Do you feel that reading the book would make me think Miriam isn’t racist? Because I don’t think that would happen.

Well the ratings tell a different story i imagine, R&J left 20 years ago it has been on longer than they presented, people watch day time TV to be informed and entertained, i don't think viewers think it is that deep.

I’m not sure that she was being ‘racist’ in a ‘woke’ environment for shock value but attempting (albeit badly) to transcend the talk show narrative to actually discuss race. I don’t believe that she condones discrimination based on race or any other characteristic. Once learning that Andi was not mixed race as both his parents were black she then referred to earlier genetic heritage. In a crude way. If Andi did a program such as ‘who do you think you are’ the same issues may be raised. Would that be racist?

How can we discuss discrimination if we are not able to discuss the different ways that discrimination operated in terms of race, sexuality, religion etc. The categories are arbitrary but the experience is real.

Using the out fashioned terms doesn’t make someone racist

I’d say that depends on what they are doesn’t it.

Are you actually Kay Burley? You're doing the same thing she did on live TV, asking everyone to remember that he's also a "decorated war hero" or some irrelevant bullshit (not verbatim, I can't remember her exact comment but similar), when literally being part of a live interview with women urging victims of his sexual assaults to come forward. Awful.

Now I've read all the OP's post in this thread - YANBU and MM was massively out of line. I don't care that she's an eccentric posh woman of another generation, it's absolutely wild. Andi Peters was a huge part of my childhood TV watching experience and I'm in my 40s, he's a very established broadcaster who we've been "welcoming" into our homes for decades. FFS. She comes across as a curious and intelligent person so why the hell wouldn't she absorb anti-racism and recognise her own unconscious bias? She's too much of a liability for a live day time show, I'd not book her on. Even if it brings a bit of public focus onto the show, in this case it's at the cost of the comfort, peace and respect of someone (in this case Andi Peters) in his place of work.

It doesn't matter that she does it in a wide eyed innocent way, she probably gets a kick out of using language from another culture and another era because she knows it's provocative but to do it in a way that's aimed at a real human person sat in front of her is even worse.

I once asked someone at a conference "where are you from?" and she started telling me which country her parents were born in and I had to jump in and go "oh God, no not that, I mean, which organisation are you here from?" I didn't care or want to know! None of my business! But I've been clearer when networking since. "which organisation are you from?"

Asking about the race of anyone's parents in the way that she did is unacceptable. Putting on an accent of someone with a specific regional accent is also gross.

I'm sure it's not all an act and she lives her life as a batty older woman but that doesn't give her carte blanche to make anyone feel othered or less than.

Was that it? Pretty mild for her. 🙄