Lorraine Kelly on Woman's Hour, plugging her new novel...

[WinterTrees]

Oh joy - Lorraine Kelly has decided to bless the literary world with her particular brand of perkiness in fictional form. Anita Rani (of course) in full fawning mode, expressing wide-eyed delight that it's been endorsed by Marian Keyes (as if celebrities don't all quote on each other's books because it's all a back-scratching club) and that one of the main characters - in a wild swimming club no less - is Freya, who started life as Magnus, 'a wee boy'. Lorraine making much of 'women supporting women' and 'being accepted for who you are' 'being allowed to live as yourself' etc etc.

It's annoying enough that another TV celebrity with no writing background has been given a premier publishing slot with the marketing budget, PR platform and retail shelf space that will now not be available to writers who make an increasingly precarious living from books. Even more galling that she's used this uneven playing field to promote her luxury beliefs and transmit her virtue signalling to a captive audience in a cosy, twee fictional setting where the likes of Isla Bryson and Amy George can be conveniently airbrushed out of existence. And to pretend she cares about empowering women.

In the cottage she inherited from aunt/ eccentric godmother.

Awful! I mean, that is so absurdly dreadful. It’s like a friend’s really bad self published novel.

I believe the ones that are on puberty blockers tend to be tall because it's puberty that makes the growth plates close (although it can go on for a while in any case with boys).

I guess it depends on when they go on cross sex hormones. Castrati, who didn't have their testosterone replaced by anything, tended to be very tall.

Ultimately though, your final height is mostly genetic hence shortish transmen.

The cringe factor reading that is up there with watching the apprentice

Hopefully Lorraine has it covered in her extensively researched tome.

I get the impression from a quick scan (didn't want to insult my eyes) that she talks to herself and writes it down. Taut prose it isn't.

100% this.

On other threads, it came up that continuous administration of puberty blockers on girls makes them shorter than they would otherwise have been.

So, it makes males taller, and females shorter, which is exactly the opposite way around, if the objective is to make the children more likely to pass for the opposite sex in adulthood.

That excerpt is also confusing because there’s a RL Scottish journalist called Magnus Linklater. I know they’re both Orkney names but I kept wondering why something seemed oddly familiar.

She is terrifying. The banality of evil, personified, in probably expensive slacks that look curiously Matalan. And a bright breezy viscose blouse, wrapping up the parcel of teflon-coated cheery horror.
Like Dahl's Witches, almost normal to the naked eye, but something is harrowingly off just behind the scenes, behind the scones. Pleasant teeth that would bite off your finger in the dusk, after the picnic blanket is lifted and the mask slips.

I get the distinct impression, were you to be at her house, she would trill and giggle, a chirpy brogue, a winking innocence. She would smilingly add four sugars to your tea even as you are politely protesting that you actually don't take any sugar thanks; her gentle titanium grip tightening on your wrist, all harmless teeth as she insists that you try her Lovely Scottish Homemade Lovely Oatcakes, pushing you into her verdant garden carrying a jazzy plate of them to go with the sugar tea.

She's showing you the tulips now. Now, she's pointing out a cute bird's nest in her oak tree. Holding your face under the flow of the gently babbling brook now, laughing disarmingly with a flash of cheeky eye-crinkle, polishing off a few of the Lovely Oatcakes while you drown quietly.

{Disclaimer; I may be wrong but I am not wrong and I actually might write this into a book too, main character can be called Korraine Lelly perhaps..)

Gosh, if parents, sisters, aunties, uncles, cousins, old men and even the old bint from the shop all accept that a feminine boy simply must transition, what is up with those TERFs?

This is genius 😂😂😂😂

probably expensive slacks that look curiously Matalan LOLOLOLOLOL

She reminds me of Dolores Umbridge with her tinkly laugh @LamonicBibber1 you have real genius 😅

in probably expensive slacks that look curiously Matalan
Oof! 😂

Thats exquisite insulting 👏👏👏

AMAZING!

Please write a book!

🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌

The extract posted is also terrifying. It's awful writing - I mean, execrable, I know she's famous but still, how did it get published? But it's the narrative that's being pushed, that then becomes part of her discourse, interviews, reviews, that's more problematic. The silly depiction of what it means to be trans - which is surely diminishing the experience of trans people, and the personal / physical challenges they may encounter if they make choices around transitioning?

She was unbearable and so out of place on Graham Norton last night. Smug, not funny, not talented, faux twee with an unfeasibly long career in a medium that usually spits people out.

Let's think about all those bloody good authors out there that don't get a look in with publishers as they don't have wealth, publicity or connections. Our country is just to some of the greatest literary names in the planet so why do we foist such cheap on the public, have we really summed down that much?

I could only read that extract from LK in her exact voice, so very tweee. @LamonicBibber1 I'd much rather read yours!

I think it would be a great book to tell the take of a group of powerful publicists and media execs mocking the public for their own gratification by using all their publishing and marketing might to make the public but a book which was objectively awful just to show it could be done......

I feel a review coming on!

Agree 100%
It must be galling as an unknown author (any genre) to get a breakthrough when every other celeb is writing or pretending to write fiction, lifestyle, cookery, their 3rd autobiography etc and then getting to promote it on radio and TV.

I turned Woman’s Hour off at the point AK got giddy with excitement that Marian Keyes had endorsed this book. WTF

LK drags her nepo baby daughter along now to almost everything, lining her up for a presenting job I predict..

It's got great^^ reviews on Amazon.

They can't be genuine unless that page is a hoax. 🧐 People can't read that and think it's any good.