Trust me, there’s no such thing as a happy house husband
She’ll have feminists fuming, but TV’s Queen of Mean says it NEVER works when women earn more than their husbands . . . they must learn to act like geishas
tried but I don’t think it’s easy once you hit in your mid-30s and I never went down the medical route.’
She made no secret of her longing to become a grandmother, not just once but twice over. ‘When my first grandson was six months old I had him on my own for two weeks and sent Emma off on holiday to the Caribbean so she could get pregnant again. I told her to. I thought she was cracking on a bit.
‘She did and there is only 17 months between the children. I think I am a good grandmother because I mind my own business. It’s about keeping your mouth shut and being on tap.
‘They cycle over with their big stupid dog and have supper and stay overnight and I take them to school the next morning. They spend a lot of time in Gloucestershire with me, too – they were there the whole of August and I was quite glad to see the back of them. Then they turned up the next weekend…’ She looks pretty happy about it, though.
Anne hates the fact that mothering has become ‘a competitive sport’, and doesn’t approve of stay-at-home dads either. ‘There’s no such thing as a happy house-husband. No mother puts her son on her knee when he is two and says, “Son, when you grow up you are going to marry someone who is brighter than you, who earns more money than you, and is more important than you.” What you have is house-husbands resentful that they have to stay at home and go on play dates with other mothers, and a woman who is earning the money and walking on eggshells so as not to upset him.’ Anne says this as someone who was the breadwinner in her second marriage to her former agent, John Penrose. They were married for 27 years. ‘For the girl to be main breadwinner is a ballbreaker,’ she admits. ‘I probably did not realise it until too late – not that I could have done much about it. ‘I was genetically programmed. I had a career mother who said, “Do not do what I have done, be the breadwinner and work your socks off but find a man to keep you,” while not on a single day of her life showing me the skills to do that. I didn’t have any geisha skills. I still don’t. I did not know how to say, “You are the most handsome man in the world or aren’t you clever.” That’s where I went wrong.’
Her mother was Liverpool-Irish, a woman described by Anne as ‘Mother Teresa styled by Vogue and schooled by Stalin’. She imbued her daughter with ambition and selfbelief, as well as an appetite for designer clothes. By the time Anne broke into journalism, she sent her to Fleet Street with a mink coat so she wouldn’t get cold on doorsteps.
Anne gives herself a seven out of ten for her own mothering skills and says Emma’s ‘miles better’ than she ever was. But she’s not one for looking back. ‘I am very glad to be alive, I nearly killed myself with alcohol and have had 40 years of unadulterated pleasure since then.’
For her part, Emma says her job is to walk around after her mother saying sorry because she’s so rude. ‘Yes,’ says Anne, ‘Emma’s very good at being on crap control.’
After parenting, pets and body image there’ll be another documentary, tentatively titled How Happily Are You Married? which will delve into modern relationships, though probably not Anne’s own.
While she may be dating, she’s unlikely to marry again. ‘I’d never say never but I can’t see the point. And I doubt I would have a live-in relationship again. I don’t mind a sort of part-time relationship. That suits me best. You do get fussier and fussier – you want someone funny, with integrity.’
It turns out the sex DVDs were a freebie brought home from an American spa holiday with Emma ten years ago. ‘They are still in the wrapper because I’ve never bothered to get them out. Magnificent Lovemaking? Maybe I should unwrap it before I go to geisha classes…’
And what does she think she might study at geisha classes? ‘I could learn to be nice and stop never letting a thought go unsaid. I don’t filter because it is funnier not to.’
It also makes for great television… parents, pet obsessives and porky people, you have all been warned.
Anne Robinson’s Britain, is on BBC1, on October 6, at 8pm.
I’ve just had to settle a £4m bill with the taxman