As an avid reader of newspaper columns, the ones I’ve always looked forward to are the ones where something has gone wrong. You read fascinated, horrified, about families crumbling, a little night illness, a dog’s slow death. We’ve been poring over old issues of the Observer Magazine as we celebrate its 60th anniversary and, over the years, we’ve had plenty of memorable columns, some of which were expanded into books, some used as examples in spitty debates about the state of journalism, many ushering in a new kind of honesty. On this page, Kathryn Flett wrote about her husband breaking up with her, only for the columnist who took over from her, India Knight, to write, a year later, “Stop me if this sounds at all familiar, but my husband is leaving me.” Even now, more than 20 years later, I read it with a hand over my mouth.
For 50 weeks of the year, most columnists will tap out their cheery thoughts on, say, their love of baths or have you noticed how nobody smiles on the bus any more and then, one day, something awful happens and they share it and, having got to know them through the stories they tell about their cats or wives, you lean in.
As a columnist, I’ll admit, when something horrible happens it can be kind of a relief. Not only do I have something to write about, delivered, gift-wrapped, but I have the chance to retell the story in a way that helps it make sense to me – to control it maybe. More importantly, I know it will connect with a reader far more than a column about something lighter, or easier, or duller.
While there is a fierce argument to be made against employing people (usually women) to write about their lowest moments for 36p a word, when non-writerly friends have been through something awful, I’ve sometimes thought what a privilege it is to have the opportunity, going through similar horrors, to write a column about it. There is the good hard work of retelling the story, shaping it, giving it an ending, and the simple, almost administrative neatness of sharing bad news. But also, the few times I’ve written anything that could be described as confessional – when I’ve written, for instance, about a shocking health diagnosis or the sharp slap of family tragedy – I have been surprised and moved and, occasionally, mortified by the response. I’ve had letters of concern, along with many, many notes from strangers who wanted to share their own stories. I’ve received confessions, fury, advice – stories invite stories, don’t they, and an odd disparate community is forged in my emails. The trouble is, it can feel dangerously seductive: the more vulnerable you’re willing to appear, the more attention you get.
When I first took this job I was nervous about how much of myself I would be expected to give. Still, I remain horribly aware when writing about my experiences that everything that happens to me has not happened just to me; that I am part of a constellation of people who might be hurt or humiliated by the tone in which I relay it to readers. For this reason I skitter, sometimes, around discussions of my own life and for this reason, too, I remain in awe of confessional queen Liz Jones.
She is the writer who has spent decades revealing ever more shocking neuroses and bad behaviour in the Daily Mail. There was the column about her facelift, her eating disorders, the one where she stole a boyfriend’s semen to try to impregnate herself (and how men should beware the broody woman) and the piece that most recently made me gasp, the one where she met up with her cheating ex after 15 years, transcribing every vile thing she says he said to her over lunch. Yes, some people write confessional columns purely for cash, or brief fame, but some, telling their single side of the story, are seeking a kind of redemption.
Years ago a wise editor told me we didn’t need to worry for Jones, that she knew exactly what she was doing, but having seen how addictive it can be, the sharing of self, I still wonder. What I am sure of though, is how fascinating it is to read the undiluted thoughts of somebody so plainly injured by men and the media, and possibly also, us.
But equally, looking back at old Observer Magazine columns, from Sue Arnold in 1979 writing about “engaging the taxi driver in amiable conversation” because she knew she only had £1.26, which wasn’t quite enough for a tip, through columns by Jan Moir about being stuck in a bathroom, and Phil Hogan on taking his kids on a day out, and Barbara Ellen on poppies, something else becomes clear. For all the big columns, the divorces, drama and deaths, the weeks where writers tell us about cleaning the car or losing the cat, or where their mind wandered when on a walk are far more exposing, far more truly confessional. The stuff of a memorable column is not in the drama, it’s the detail.
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