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 time, there will be a book written about the downfall of a TV host who falls out of favour when it’s common knowledge that the mutilation and sterilisation of children is the biggest medical scandal since lobotomies.
Please goddess.

it physically hurt. How did that pish get through editing?

Ha! Love it @LamonicBibber1. Publish it. Also love your user name. I could barely read the Mr Gum books to DS2 I was laughing so much😆

The same way 50 Shades did - also a physically painful read. The editors knew it would sell, especially with Kelly's name on it. The fact she'd be booted out of a creative writing class if she came out with that dreck as an exercise is irrelevant.

To add an extra layer of confusion, the journalist Magnus Linklater has a daughter called Freya.

Remember how rude she was to Esther Mcvey? Ghastly woman her nicey nicey smiley act doesn't wash with me, she's nasty.

It must be the new version of the woman who leaves a corporate job/ an abusive relationship and moves to the countryside/ seaside (possibly following an inheritance) and sets up a sweet shop/ bakery / café, and has an affair with a mysterious village resident.

The gorgeous mysterious villager who is always conveniently single/separated/divorced/widowed.

@Tessisme ohh yes I laugh more than the kids do at Mr Gum books! They really got my youngest into independent reading. What really sold it for him was the scene where Alan Taylor gets his raisin eye nicked by a stray cat 😅

She was awful last night. I wasn't expecting that as I dont watch her normally. Felt the couch was too over-crowded anyway, but she butted into every segment.

You just described my retirement plan!

Just listening to WWH. LK on, what a load of fucking shite. I know R4 is not what it used to be but bloody hell. It’s like a radio version of ‘Take a Break (Shite) ‘

Early on she bangs on about having a houseful of books when she was growing up (in very reduced circumstances in Glasgow). If she had actually read any of those books surely she would have known that writing her own was a bad, bad idea .

And how can Freya be, in part, based on her grandmother ?
Unless her grandmother had also begun life a a wee boy ?

Probably won’t read the book but LK does have a writing background. She worked as a journalist on newspapers and in TV production for many years before her big break in days when those industries were v tough for women.

What I find interesting is that this didn't come up at all when she was on radio 2 this week!

That writing is awful and also seems to correlate being fat with being female??

I bet readers just pick it up straight after finishing the latest Anton du Beke book. A nice read where you don’t miss a plot point while also watching QVC at the same time.

That makes it worse, that it's so poorly written.

But also you can be good at writing but terrible, creatively, at writing a novel.

I think it kind of makes sense that she was a journalist, as there's a formula for writing TV and local news stories, especially positive/lifestyle ones, and cliches are part of the style. It's not that she can't string a sentence together, it's that the explication and didacticism are so clunky and the characters and dialogue are so unrealistic (at least from that one-page excerpt) - and any thought to what those characters would actually be like in reality is sacrificed to making a point. I don't know when LK thinks the gender ideology she's now espousing became a big thing, but older people in remote parts of Scotland more than 10-15 years ago would at least have given a 15yo boy "coming out" as a girl a mixed reception, if any of therm were on board, and probably still aren't all on the same page today. They wouldn't be universally "ah well Magnus always wore girls' clothes and now we know she's a girl it all makes sense! So sorry if we accidentally misgender you, we're old you know." Implication: Aren't old rural scottish folks the salt of the earth!? If you don't feel the same about a teenage boy heading down the road to castration with no one even checking whether that's a great idea, shame on you!

When you feel a book is preaching at you, it's offputting anyway, and even worse if it's unrealistic.

However this thread has educated me that Anton du Beke is a novelist! I had no idea!

Also I'm not on board with calling her evil! What's that about!? I mean she might be but that's a bit of an unproven accusation. I think she's badly misinformed, incurious and lacking in critical thinking skills, like so many celebs on this bandwagon. And maybe she's self-centred and ruthless - a lot of famous/successful people are. But implying she's a witch who'd bite off your finger and worse - steady on! Even if you think that, the woman's got money and lawyers (and maybe even human feelings) and I don't think you should say it.

I love the X account "where is Lorraine" which documents how many of her own shows she misses. The current stats are 70.5% attendance so far this year 🤣

For someone who doesn’t watch Lorraine and has very little interest in her, that account is hilarious! Thanks!

I read ALL of these when I was 14.

Here’s a peak (Google books).

Wincing. So Magnus managed to go through male puberty and still ended up five foot four as "Freya"?

Most of the comments on this thread are better written than that extract.

I mean, some adult males are 5’4” so it’s not impossible. But it’s so clearly shoehorned in, in a hapless attempt to make us NOT think of a TW as a hulking and intimidating, or just male-seeming, figure like so many of those who publicise themselves or end up in the news for unsavoury reasons. Which kind of just goes to show that’s an image that came to LK herself too.

That's bizarre. If I were Magnus Linklater I'd be a bit freaked out by this (unless they're friends, and it's some kind of tribute).