When mocking Janet Street-Porter, most are tempted to stick out their top teeth and put on a grating Lahndan accent. You could also add that she’s a reprehensible shit of a person, with stattering views on the world.

She’s been on the Mail payroll for nearly two years now, so we donned our protective gear and delved into the archives.

Her most infamous article – “Depression? It’s just the new trendy illness!” contains such jaw-dropping assertions as:

At this point, I’m afraid to say, I laugh out loud. The idea of feeling sorry for a bloke with low self-esteem is, frankly, risible. Let’s just call it karmic revenge for all those years men have been in charge of everything.

and

I truly believe that illnesses go in and out of fashion – at the moment, trendy women are allegedly suffering from ‘depression’

Clearly, the demented ramblings of an imbecile. Someone who has no desire or interest in finding out about what they’re talking about, and instead squatting over a keyboard and literally allowing her feces to hit the keys. Alistair Campbell effortlessly made her look like a dick in a Mirror column.

Men in particular find it tough to come forward. Big boys don’t cry, and all that. It goes some way to explaining why men are just as likely to experience depression as women, but half as likely to seek support. So when Janet Street-Porter says: “The idea of feeling sorry for a bloke with low self-esteem is, frankly, risible,” I wonder if the fact that out of every four suicides, three are men might cause her to reconsider. Probably not. But reasonable people might.

She even bothers to smear back-pain sufferers in the same article by insinuating that they’re making it up.

Only ten years later, the number of backache sufferers had shrunk by nearly half. Now, did chairs suddenly get more ergonomic? Did car seats undergo a radical redesign? Does a rash of health and safety directives imposed by bureaucrats in the EU suddenly mean we all bend our knees when lifting heavy objects or remember not to slump at our keyboards or on the assembly line? Of course not.

While being sensitive about illnesses that she doesn’t understand, she says of ‘stress’:

Can you believe that over one million people in the UK are suffering from this mystery ailment, which as far as I know didn’t exist before the 1960s?

Even a cursory google would reveal the existence of a book “The Stress of Life” by Hans Selye. Published in 1956.

To quote the sublime Chris Morris: You’re wrong, and you’re a grotesquely ugly freak.

She also talks of her desire not to read difficult books:

But I can’t face ploughing through the story of a slave girl in Jamaica in the 18th century (Andrea Levy’s Booker ­nomination) or Peter Carey’s tale of the birth of American independence. In short, I read for relaxation, not to indulge in mental pyrotechnics.

Rather than challenging herself, Janet is far happier watching a period drama on the tellybox:

Meanwhile, we’ve been gripped in our millions by two lavish telly series both of which revolved around the fraught relationships between posh people and their serfs — Downton Abbey and the new Upstairs Downstairs.

But why is she such a fan? Oh, because it reminds her that she’s very much one of those in control, and a way to live out her dreams of having a full-time servant to wipe her bum and cut up her dinner:

In modern Britain, most people have a ­servant, only we’re too embarrassed to call them that. We call them ‘help’.

but…

For most of us, though, the notion of employing a butler or a housekeeper must remain a secret ­aspiration.

That’s certainly what we aspire to – a slave to hang around wiping bums and bowing whenever we walk into a room.

In part two, we’ll look at Janet’s weight, and the rise of the “Real Woman”.

Comments

1. sonofajoiner says:

   April 6, 2011 at 6:28 pm

   Most people have a servant do they? I think mine must have been stuck in traffic since 1994 or something as I’ve yet to clap eyes on them.

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