Trolls only screw you up if you let them
BEFORE Holly Willoughby even poked a toe on Australian soil this week, one of the witches of the right-wing press spewed up bile as she commented on the This Morning host’s suitability to co-host ITV’s I’m a Celebrity... alongside Declan Donnelly.
I’ll refrain from insults, but I can’t resist passing comment on how easy it is to sit alone at a laptop furiously bashing the keyboard as one hateful bitchy comment after another piles up on the page. I’ve always taken my mum’s advice on that which was: “If you haven’t got anything nice to say about someone, say nothing at all.”
I’ve tried to follow it, but there are exceptions. Bitchy newspaper columnists who take joy in bringing other women down are top of the list.
I say this because when I was on TV every weekday morning for years hosting GMTV, female columnists just couldn’t leave me alone. Apparently they knew everything about me, including the bizarre “fact” that my kitchen taps cost a fortune (totally ridiculous, totally fictitious).
The worst was reading a particularly bile-infected column which “reported” that I’d “stormed” out of GMTV one morning before even going on-air because I wasn’t happy about something. The truth was I’d felt unwell, went to the dressing room to get changed for the show and had a miscarriage, so couldn’t co-host the show.
I was just over three months pregnant. When
I called the columnist a few days later she said nothing. Let alone sorry.
Why am I telling you this particularly gruesome piece of personal history? Because these days it’s a hundred times worse. Before the explosion of social media, it was really only newspaper columnists, viewers or weirdos that took us apart.
GMTV had a duty log to record viewers’ comments. They’d phone in to air their queries or observations. Eamonn Holmes and I were handed the messages while we were live on-air. Being a woman, most of them were about me.
Some of them were vile, cruel and very personal, which made me shrivel inside, all while trying to carry on presenting. I nearly always travelled home in a cloud of selfhatred and anxiety.
Thankfully, back then, phoning, texting or emailing were the only main forms of communication.
My self-doubt, sleepless nights and anxiety all came horribly flooding back when I read about the lovely Scarlett Moffatt’s relief now that she’s beaten the anxiety and self-hatred she endured thanks to low-life online trolls who remarked on her looks and body shape.
She’s joined Holly in the Australian jungle to host ITV2’s spin-off show Extra Camp, where she gave an insight into why being thrust into the celebrity spotlight isn’t all champagne and adoration. She says cruel strangers’ vile, uninformed comments delivered straight to her handset made her cry her eyes out.
Thankfully she’s since learned that trolls are the ones with the problems – not her.
Nasty trolls can seriously screw you up. But only if you let them.
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The messages were vile, cruel and personal, making me shrivel inside Teaching is one of life’s most noble professions, so it must be heartening for teachers to learn that people in a poll rated them as one of the biggest influences in our lives. Personally, I’ll never forget Miss Clarke from Kingsmead Primary School in Canterbury who, when I was seven, told me I’d become “a writer” when I grew up. I told her I wanted to be a doctor. It turns out Miss Clarke knew best! Teachers generally do.