Agony Uncle Danny Dyer shares his "wisdom" with the readers of Zoo Magazine

[squeaver]

not sure if you can read this

Bloke asking for advice on how to get over a girlfriend is told "cut your ex's face then no one will want her..."

I do think this is a very sad thing for them to have published, even by the standards of the magazine. It reminded me of the documentary about Katie Piper, whose ex-boyfriend paid for someone to throw acid in her face.

I thought it was a very good documentary because the media spends a lot of time glorifying violent crime and discussing the criminal act - both real and fictious. It is very rare for there to be a documentary about how someone emotionally and physically recovers from such a crime, and I think we need to focus more on the victim's perspective.

Prior to the attack, Katie Piper's boyfriend had raped her and she did not go to the police because she did not think she would be believed. That seems to be a common story about rapists who go on to commit further violent crimes.

They have apologised:

www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/may/05/danny-dyer-zoo-magazine

I am not entirely sure who Danny Dyer is, but I get the general impression he's a thuggish Z-list knob-end. So surely the 'joke' is that anyone would set someone like this up as an advice columnist, and the extra layer of funniness is that people are wailing because they think that someone, somewhere, might actually take parodic advice like this seriously?

I don't think anyone has said they think the advice will be taken seriously.

Maybe not directly, but it is worrying that such ideas are even put out there. Could have an insidious effect - especially when pitched to readers of such an objectifying publication.

SGB that's a perfect DD description!

He's incited violence against women before in that column:
www.shoutingatco.ws/blog/2010/04/08/the-wonder-of-danny-dyer/

I hate him and the magazine. WTF were any of them thinking.

Not sure you can be misquoted to this degree tbh

Zoo mag tweeted that this was an error, not intended for publication (oh well then!)

I have come across this concept before. Apparently it was common in sicilian culture to cut a woman's face to keep her loyal as scar would make her less attractive to others. (I can't remember which artist but have seen paintings depicting these scarred women in a national gallery). Also in Kill Bill 2 there is a scene in mexico where a pimp says to beatrix kiddo "I wouldn't have killed you, I'd just have cut your face".

Sorry for boring tangent!

I was taking about the fact that dd himself said he was misquoted, to me that suggests he said something similar otherwise it wouldn't be called misquoted would it????

I think the likelihood is that this column is ghostwritten and Dyer actually just phones in a few of his so called opinions to be worked up into a column. My guess is that he said it as a joke (ho-ho) and the ghost columnist has put it in verbatim. Prepared to be proved wrong though.

sorry, i'll try that link again:
www.shoutingatco.ws/blog/2010/04/08/the-wonder-of-danny-dyer/

Don't really care whether it was purely him or not. He puts his "celeb" name to it and too many people in Zoo thought it was cool to publish it and for that himself and the mag deserve all that comes to them and far more.

I agree that it's appalling of him and the magazine. Just predicting how the media will cover this and how he'll attempt to shield his skinny arse.

No, I'm glad they backtracked and pretended it was a 'production error' and are embarrassed about it. Donation to Woman's Aid good.

They could have defended it by saying it was ironic/a joke, etc. And they didn't. I agree Danny Dyer prob didn't know too much about it, but he needs to be more careful what he puts his name to. Mostly cos it isn't funny .

Am hoping Zoo readers were supposed to go too. But seems unlikely. Nathan, that's interesting. Perhaps they were making cultural references...

I agree Adair, production error is more of a back-down excuse than joke.
Actually I'm rather cheered by how quickly this has happened and how much media attention it has garnered.

I think readers were meant to go ' Hey mate, fucking have a look at this! Cut her - that's good innit? Can't believe they fucking printed it!'
ie it will have derived its power/humour from the shock value and they expected readers to talk about it, but in a positive way.

that link to the OBJECT charter again, in case there is anyone on MN who hasn't seen it yet!

it would be great to capitalise on the backlash against this by actually getting some structural changes in place - the OBJECT charter asks for lads' mags to be regulated in the same way as magazines for teenage girls.

(sorry to go on about this!)

This is an excellent article: What about the rest of Zoo??

great article Franch, thanks for link.

Gah I totally missed Riven talking about this on the radio

Thanks for the link Franch - I am at those quotes. Makes an utter mockery of their 'apology' doesn't it

oops it was knockraven, not riven

I heard the guy who wrote in asking for advice (apparently there really was someone writing in to one of these things! Who knew?) saying he expected it to be like the first part (yaknow, smashing stuff up and enjoying yourself) but the last line was just sick. Tenuous moral high ground tbh but he took it nonetheless. How he can whilst having written into zoo of all places for advice truly baffles me.

Good idea Prolesworth! I got the standard reply from Tom Etherington too.

I replied and sent him this link

I said a one off donation, no matter how 'substantial' smacked of brushing the issue under the carpet and ongoing support of the White Ribbon campaign would go further towards encouraging Zoo's readers that violence against women was neither big nor clever.

But why would Zoo want to support a campaign against violence against women?

They're all about contempt for women. Why on earth would they be bothered about violence against us?