Coming Clean by Liz Fraser

[RhinoRhino]

A couple of threads that I had posted on relating to the Memoir ‘Coming Clean’ by Liz Fraser have been deleted from the MN site, apparently due to non-compliance of the MN guidelines from the posters. MN are obviously well within their rights to delete threads if they demonstrably fail to comply with their guidelines, nevertheless I feel strongly that MN posters are given a platform to critique this book, and also any other public ventures by this author. It would be neither fair nor right that posters are completely silenced in this particular matter.

As such, and in line with Mumsnet not seeing “anything wrong with honest feedback” I would like to make the comment that Coming Clean as a Memoir falls short due to the shaky and not entirely truthful narrative. There are certain facts contained within this memoir that are easily disprovable (for example, relating to the marital status of both author and her partner when they started their ill-fated affair), which leaves a massive question mark over the rest of the book. Is it entirely reasonable to make money from something that is promoted as truthful when it is, in fact, not entirely true?

I think there are people whose lives have been negatively impacted by the book and its subject matter, and I hope that MN will agree that these people should have a voice, as should anybody who wants to comment on a published piece of work.

As long as posters align their comments with the MN guidelines, this is a topic that people may wish to keep discussing, and also keep in the public domain. And if MN wants to provide a set of rules particular to this thread – certainly if they are arbitrary and differ from the general guidelines - I am sure it would be very helpful.

Mumsnet, please help us to help each other by keeping in the public domain something that us silenced mums feel should be out there.

I know a couple of people who go on writer retreats but neither of them has ever talked about FEELING LOVED when they do. Baffled

Yes, Liz feels LOVED and SUPPORTED for her fictitious woes by all sorts of strangers, most of whom live in the ether 😆

How does she afford all this? I would like to go on a painting holiday but by the time I have worked everyday to earn money, paid all household bills , food and things for my children there is no money left over for me. My treats are a cup of tea and an early night

They probably write though!

She’s off to Venice later this week. Surely spending just a couple of days a home in Oxford would serve as a retreat!

Of all she shares, I’d genuinely love to know how she finances her amazing lifestyle on at most, part-time work. We are a two income family and we can’t afford one trip abroad this year. We have two, not four children, one mortgaged not two homes. Even without mortgages on them the costs are high. Building insurance, council tax, utilities, maintenance…. Any top tips she can offer would be welcomed by I’m sure, more than just me.

I do believe you are QUESTIONING HER!!! How dare you. All she ever does is for SILENCED WOMEN.

Not questioning at all. Admiring her money management 😉

Latest insta post on her favourite Oxford street: "In 1992, when I was 18, a friend I'd been out for a drink with kissed me when we were standing on the corner of a side street here saying goodbye, told me I'm a dreamer and that I must never change." 🤣🤣 😇😇🤣

And she hasn't if that vest is anything to go by...

A nice way of telling her, “nah babes, I’m after a realist. Have a nice life… in cloud cuckoo land!”

If this bloke had cared about her, they’d have suggested that she become a realist. Having big aspirations and imaginative ideas is great, but life is grounded in reality, practicality and facts, not idealistic visions otherwise these dreams become living nightmares. She serves as our case study in point!

I don’t envy her life one bit. She married the first man she could, not for love but because he would. Had kids. Neither of these dreams panned out and she left them all. No I’m sickness and health, until death do us part, despite the flash ceremony. She had the affair we can’t talk about because she thought it would make a career dream come true. It didn’t. She had an alleged shag against the Brandenburg Gates with an old school friend while married. She ran off with “the love of her life” who fast turned out to be anything but. She now living a dream of half parent, half fantasy writer, yet from the outside in, from a pragmatist not a dreamer this looks like a house of cards built on dreams of unreality. I’m here for her to prove me wrong. To land her dream life. Perhaps this is the turning point for her and I’ll learn not to be such a cynic. My stable marriage, work and family versus her dream world 🤷‍♀️🌈🍯

@Tortiemiaw . The vest! 😂😂

And @CloudBayOz totally agree with you about the dreams of unreality. Ms Fraser’s whole life appears to be something of a fantasy (or series of fantasies). Her motives are often very transparent, particularly the attention-seeking social media posts, but some of her actions I still can’t quite get my head round. I do wonder if somehow the extra-marital affairs were less to do with the men involved and more to do with Ms Fraser having viewed the lives of other women in her social circle imagining she can take the whole thing lock, stock and barrel for herself, in similar fashion to a cuckoo laying its egg in another bird’s nest. It’s quite telling that the affairs were with people she knew, she knew were married – and to women she knew. I can’t imagine she was actually ‘friends’ with these women due to the fact that she doesn’t seem to ever have had any female friendships as most people would understand them, but it is on record that she and the other women were all in the same social circle. I imagine her thinking, even if subconsciously, “that looks like a great marriage. All I need to do is get the bloke away from his wife and voila! Here’s Liz. I’ll be the replacement. As you were.”

Life doesn’t work like that, though, does it? Most people don’t leave their partners, marriages, family lives without a second glance, something I’m not sure Liz understands. Most people cannot simply walk away from the turmoil of hurting others without regrets. Maybe this is one of the fundamental reasons that Mike had such a hard time during their relationship. Maybe he had a lot of guilt about what he had done to his wife. Though Ms Fraser seems to have had not one iota of guilt regarding all the trashing of lives that followed in her wake, for others it’s not so simple.

In the same delusional way, she wants people to believe her fantasy of being a publisher, but after a flurry of SM posts, promotional interviews with establishments who ought to know better, she appears to have completely lost interest. Same with Headcase. What even happened there, other than a launch party in London, and some SM photos of winsome looking millennials proclaiming their trendy middle-class MH issues with photographs of them holding up a banner? As an aside to that, at the time of the relentless promotion of Headcase I came across an absolutely crazed individual in my local city. He was careering towards me and other people in a public square, bleeding from his legs, one shoe on, dishevelled, grimy, greasy and yelling “GET AWAY FROM ME YOU FXXKING BASTARDS”! As I carefully changed my course so there was no chance of making eye contact, I couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t going to help if I gave him Liz Fraser’s details and told him she was going to make mental health beautiful. Just a hunch! His problems seemed more fundamental than simple aesthetics.

So, yes CloudyBayOz, its all a house of cards built on dreams of unreality and enabled by privilege. I don’t think you will be proven wrong any time soon!

Once again, our tone-deaf traveler is at it. We all know it's essential for our children to be aware that there's more to the world than their tiny bubble at home. However, even more crucial is ensuring that their "tiny bubble at home" is psychologically safe. That children have equal access to their parents and their families.

Our own communities in the UK hold multiple languages and cultures - if we choose to open our eyes to them. As an NHS midwife, I come into contact with a diverse spectrum of people, experiencing the highs and lows of life, some avoidable and some not.

Liz NEVER expresses gratitude to the legions of people from various nationalities and social statuses who have helped her during her challenging times. Due to the nature of their work, most will have limited incomes, few leave days, working shifts and emergency call-out rosters.

Amazing, hard working, selfless people stand behind every recovering victim of domestic violence, addictions, mental health challenges, child protection and court hearings, yet they remain essentially silenced by her.

These people strive to provide their children with experiences similar to what she can provide hers, WHILE they play a crucial role in helping her get her life back on track until she no longer needs their assistance. NHS EMDR practitioners earn a pittance, yet will change her life faster than she will forget them.

She needs them more than they need her. However, she seems to easily forget their contributions. I doubt that many of those who have stepped up for her are white, middle class, privately or Cambridge-educated individuals. Instead, they are unsung heroes, struggling to make ends meet as the cost of living crisis surges on. Oh yes it does, though her grid might suggest otherwise.

Just think back to Covid and who the key workers turned out to be. Almost all, lower wages who are unable to offer their children the material travel and cultural experiences that she can. What they can give, though, is a moral and ethical example worth following. A home that they’re not too uncomfortable to spend time in.

It’s been mentioned many times. What makes her Oxford home such a hot potato while Venice, the epicentre of her latest destruction such a safe realm? The poor child, now living between her parents, is never in one place for any length of time. Though it might seem boring to spend 6 weeks summer holiday at home, it is just this, home.

Surely for the child, Venice must have a troubling vibe. Her time there was ruptured with domestic violence and she was forced to flee from there with her mother to sofa surf. I wonder if travel is such a wonderful experience for this poor child. Quite literally fright, fight and flight in a perpetual circle.

Anyway, to all those key workers out there who have helped her over the decades, I see you and I salute you. We might not be able to afford fancy holidays, but we can afford our children psychological security. Xx

@NHSarah Fabulous post! Agree 100% with everything you say.

@RhinoRhino and @NHSarah Hear hear. Thank you NHSarah for all you do. Without people caring for us, society would be more broken than it increasingly seems to be. She walks roughshod over those she depends on. The only people she can depend on are people like you who have made it your life’s work to give rather than take. She had the worst ever pregnancy, mental health struggles, ptsd, DV, you name it, but you and your services colleagues came out for her every time. I personally don’t know how you do it.

Friends! All these “friends” and in all these years of sharing her private life publicly, never once has she shared a photo of her and a gaggle of school friends, uni pals, her and H in the throws of young love. Pictures of her as a child or with her brother, but none with friends. I’ve albums full of these sorts of photos.
My kids love to look at them. Laugh at our mad/sad glasses and buck teeth and dodgy 80s clothes. Us sleeping in cars in Bournemouth car parks because we couldn’t afford B&Bs because we’d spent our money on alcohol! Post exams camping trips. Live Aid parties. These weren’t dreams, these were realities at 16,17. 18 even through our early 20s, but then reality struck.
She’s played a blinder, buying two houses outright by the age of 45, but as one who’s worked in the media for my entire life, granted not TV, I can tell you, she will not have earned enough as a very part time freelancer (remember she’s told us many times how much time she’s had off over the years either on mat leave it too ill/damaged to work) to have bought these alone. These are expensive cities. She has expensive tastes. Despite what she might suggest. All this said, the lack of memories for this dreamer is telling.

To be fair, I have very few pictures of me in the early 90s

@ZolaBudd Not even any photos of you running barefoot in the Olympics?

Liz wouldn't like any such pics! No, no, no. She would counter with pics of passing ALL the men in the Oxford half and vids of her going 'gosh! apparently I'm the fastest in the ladies' race EVER' and then proudly posting pics of her Garmin. Garmin Schmarmin. 😆

Nostrils was on the bingo card, yes?

Four days ago in Copenhagen. Yesterday out in Oxford. That was one short writing retreat in between especially given the wall painting and other stuff recorded in minute detail ..still if it’s being published by EP no rush eh?

I see she has recovered from imminent death and will still be in Venice, sorry, Venezia, when she is 95. Probably in that shabby vest, too.

She has WORKED SO VERY HARD FOR her OWN PIECE OF PARADISE (or something ) in VENEZIA. I'm blown away with admiration.....

Come on Twitterphants! Your comments are needed re the "up since 2:30am" selfie on SM. Choose any of the following words "amazing", "beautiful" ("bellissima" if you prefer), "stunning", "fantastic", "brave", "strong" and fit them into your usual fawning response.

What are the three of you waiting for?

Ade! Get to it. Emergency sycophancy required .......... presto, pronto, rapidimente!

Haha. I wonder what the sophisticate Venetian dinner is that she has made back at Casa Liz. Some overcooked pasta without sauce (as someone pointed out upthread) with a couple of pieces of Herta plastic frankfurter (sorry @RhinoRhino didn't mean to mention sausages, and what's happened to @BiteMeSausage btw??). I'm sure it will be a culinary delight.

@Raffington55 looool. Maybe with a cracked open pack of sweetcorn and a splodge of ketchup as contorni. She certainly hasn’t learnt any Italian food etiquette that is for sure. Very much a miserly Plate of fuel.

( although as she reads this - expect there to be future plates with a little more effort - I mean with all of the time In the world a plate of fresh Italian market produce wouldn’t kill her would it?!)