Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Black Friday on the roads
No regrets over controversial move
KIRSTIE Allsopp says she does not regret smashing up her children’s ipads… and will not replace them.
She insists their lives are better since she broke the devices in front of sons Oscar, 11, and Bay, nine, in June to punish them for spending too much time playing computer games.
The Location, Location, Location host, 47, sparked fierce debate after admitting what she had done, but says her sons had a “much better summer” without their devices.
She said: “They were fine about it. It was 24 hours of tears and then gone. They have loads of other things they can be getting on with.
“It’s not like they are living in a vacuum where that was the only thing. They really discovered their toys; their skateboards, their rollerblades, playing chess. They don’t have any devices at the moment. I have not replaced them.
“Absolutely, no. And I don’t intend to do so. It’s not worth the fight.”
Kirstie added: “There were letters from other mums, saying: I ran over ipads in my car, I cut the plugs off, I hid them in the attic. And some quite sad ones, saying: I really want to do what you’ve done.”
Kirstie told of her move on Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine show in September, saying: “I smashed my kids’ ipads… I banged them on the table leg. There’s a game called Fortnite, we’d made all sorts of rules and times when we said you can’t play them. All those rules got broken… I said, ‘That’s it, I have to physically [break them]’.” Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas is on weekdays at 5pm on Channel 4. A WEEK Friday will be the busiest day on roads in the festive period, a poll shows.
Nearly 19 million drivers are to set off for a break or last-minute Christmas shopping on December 21.
The AA, behind the poll, said: “Check traffic reports before you go and try to travel when it’s quieter.”