‘WRONGED FOR 38 YEARS?’ Anne Diamond EXPOSED for False Memory over 1987 on-air Pregnancy Crit1cism!
Did the Guardian really criticise Anne Diamond for being unmarried, pregnant, and on TV in 1987? Marina Hyde takes a look through the archives
“You pompous cow,” runs one of Lost in Showbiz’s favourite Pauline Calf exclamations. “You get a couple of CSEs and you think you’re Anne Diamond!”
And so to the clearing up of a confusion. I’m not sure if you’re aware of what appear to be false claims that the BBC has not hired Denise van Outen to do its latest 13-week Andrew Lloyd Webber advert because she is pregnant. But the Mail are all over this one, and to this end have conscripted Anne to pen an article about her own experiences of getting knocked up as a star presenter back in the day.
“In 1987,” she writes, “while anchoring Good Morning Britain five days a week, I announced that I was expecting my first child. The news made headlines on every front page. At first, reactions to my pregnancy from the media and viewers were overwhelmingly supportive. I was inundated with flowers, cards and hand-knitted bootees from every corner of Britain.
“But then things changed,” Anne continues. “My pregnancy was even the subject of a leader article in the Guardian, along the lines of ‘what is the world coming to when a pregnant woman expects to continue with her high-profile job as though nothing has changed?'”
Anne, Anne, Anne … DO ME A FAVOUR. You can level many charges at the Guardian, but the idea that you can claim this paper implied a pregnant woman continuing to work was unseemly is silly in the extreme.
So, to assist Anne’s faulty memory, here follows the leader in question, in its entirety. As it’s a period piece, I’ve linked to some of the more recherche names.
“Miss Anne Diamond is an interesting phenomenon: on the brink, perhaps, of being very interesting indeed. For Redhead junkeys, Bough buggs or those who simply take three hour baths in the morning, Miss Diamond is the leading light (redeemer and salvation) of TV am. She earns, it is said, around £170,000 a year. She is perpetually perky, goggle-eyed over showbiz gossip; and nobody’s fool for all that. She handles politicians with tolerable aplomb. And, for those who note these things, she is the centre of the Camden Lock universe. The men who sit by her on the sofa are interchangeable Nicks, Mikes, Adrians and Richards. They are bit part players. Statutory males in the same way that 99 TV programmes out of a hundred have statutory females. Miss Diamond, in short, is bright, rich, sharp; and every mother’s dream, the living archetype of the British girl next door. This week, in a shimmering two page interview with the Daily Express, the girl next door announced that she was going to have a baby in June. She added (and this is where the issues become potentially very interesting indeed) that she had absolutely no forseeable intention of marrying the baby’s father (another Mike, in another part of the television jungle).
“It is at moments like this that you learn curious new things about British society. One populist assumption (witness the occasional preachings of Mr Norman Tebbit) is that the electorate, alarmed by the swinging sixties, sybaritic seventies and Aids-ridden eighties, hankers powerfully for the fusty fifties. Things are going too far. A welcome soapbox awaits Mr James Anderton on every street corner. But look back three decades. If Sylvia Peters or Mary Malcolm or even (unthinkably) Joan Gilbert, had solemnly announced that they were unmarried, expecting, and proposing to spend the next four months growing a little bigger on the morning couch every day, there’d have been the devil to pay. The Archbishop of Canterbury would have gone to the Lords. The BBC governors and IBA hierarchs would have gone into permanent emergency session. Yet, save for one passing bleat from Mr Peter Bruinvels, Miss Diamond’s little bombshell passed without question. The second wave of reaction has been consumed entirely by cards and telegrams of congratulation for the girl next door. Rival tabloids have decorously chronicled a universal joy, which certainly equals any attention the Duchess of York may expect when (and if) she becomes pregnant.
“On the sofa at TV am is it instant business as usual. The company, if we are to believe The Sun, is building a special studio creche for its prime asset. The Post Office expects a bumper fun crop of hand knitted bootees and the like. Father Mike’s non-legally binding role in these impending festivities is almost irrelevant. It is by no means the point of the story. Only a generation ago, marriage was an indispensable part of the ritual. Elizabeth Taylor got married; Joan Collins is still getting married. But now (and not merely for the non-public figures chronicled today on page 10) you can decide what you like in the open, across the centrefold of the Daily Express, and no-one who matters will seemingly bat an eyelid. Life, again, moves ahead of the soaps. While EastEnders bestrides the ratings, teasing whether unmarried mum Michelle will or won’t marry Lofty, unmarried Anne proceeds as though the whole soapy problem didn’t exist.
“This is not one of those leader comments that sets out to judge anyone, or anything. No on the one hand, so no on the other hand. We wish Miss Diamond well. Likewise her baby. Likewise all those who knit the bootees. Four months of prenatal TV icky goo, followed by four years of attention for Britain’s Number One Baby and ‘Number One Unmarried Mother’ (the Express’s instant accolade) may get a touch glutinous; but that is not a moral judgement. The point is what’s been announced, and what people have done next. And that, coolly considered, is a rather fascinating real sign of the real times.”
And that, readers, concludes our journey back into 1987. Anne Diamond is hereby instructed to amend her memories accordingly, and recall that it was in fact the Daily Mail (and others) who took such delight in reminding her that she couldn’t have it all until – as they sweetly put it once – “her TV career slowly shuddered to a halt … and Ms Diamond was left to tackle her own growing emotional difficulties. A rollercoaster of rapid weight gain followed by dieting mirrored the ups and downs of her private life after – ” But we’ll leave it there. You know their shtick.
