Meyerson denies authoring "Living With Teenagers" column

[morningpaper]

[[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mandrake/4962988/Julie-Myerson-and-the-extraordinary-ca se-of-the-copycat-column.html Meyerson denies authoring "Living With Teenagers" column

"There have been rumours on the MumsNet website, but she is adamant that it is not her," a spokesman for the author, pictured, tells me. "It is no more than a coincidence."

oooer!

youngvisiter...you made me laugh ...and you were so quick to 'headlinify'...a talent

What tmmj just said. I thought it was an appalling way for people to treat each other.

BTW who can read Wiki edits? I'd be interested to know when it started claiming she was the author of the columns

I think a lot of people have guessed this - not only the ladies of mn. A friend announced it to me as fact over a year ago. And remember how the column ended? With "Jack's" friends embarrassedly admitting they'd known for ages? That's an ever-widening circle of people.

And I do wonder. The column was a piece of writing, but tied subtly yet ineluctibly to the real. The Guardian editor states that much of the response was grounded in relief that these teenagers were "real" yet "worse" than readers' own offspring. Myerson says they were composites and we can also assume were shaped by the force of writing.

So I don't think we should assume the "real" teenagers are quite as bad as their portrayal. Goodness knows, they're going to spend enough time shaking that assumption off.

Still ... the power of mumsnet!: "The internet alive with speculation" indeed!

I find it depressing that all the Guardian readers seem to have been congratulating themselves that their teens weren't as bad as all that

no-one comes out of this well, do they?

no effie you are right

It is good fun looking at the History on wiki isn't it?

It's like a battle

Oh dear, you all seem to know who Julie Myerson is, I have not a clue

I hadnt heard of her at all until reading this thread.........

Is myerson a mumsnetter, d'ya think?

She hardly desrves the pitchforks at dawn treatment. Wasn't there another thread about kicking someone when they're down? Not nice.

doubt it, she makes her living exposing the everyday trivia of her own life, why would she share it for free?

Plenty of hacks on here but I've not come across one who would do the dirty on their own children like this.

Down? In what sense is she down?

Jake is down, & she's kicked shit out of him

Agree, edam. Just something someone said earlier, on another thread, and something nagging at the back of my mind about the identity of one of the journo types...

Well, it's not one of the MN journos I know. And I think Myerson's style is quite distinctive. Of course, you can change your style but her voice is so clear when she's writing about her home life, not sure it would be possible to maintain a completely different voice as a regular poster on MN.

Good!

we are being nice

the Guardian talkboards are populated by child-free dope-smokers

they are combusting

She is being discussed because she has written a book and done countless interviews on the back of it. I can't see how in any way that's knocking her when she's 'down'. She's asked for it - it's not like she's some publicity-shy person whose been thrust against her will into the public eye is it? The irony is that if she and her husband just shut the fuck up, I'm sure it'd all go away but they do keep on doing interview after interview after interview.

I'm not entirely sure why you're being so sympathetic MT

The column wasn't like that. It was mostly quite boring. Dealing with the minutiae of domesticity with teenagers. And, as plenty MN threads show us, many of us have made worse mistakes.

She hasn't killed anyone, her kids are not damaged, and they will get over it having all learned something probably

had a look at the the guardian comments pages and was pleased to see a 'why are we discussing this triva when there are starving children in Africa' post