Mary Portas: Queen Of Hypocrites

Mary Portas, the nation's favourite lesbian retail marketing consultant - has a new series on the tellybox starting tonight; Mary Queen of Frocks.
It's about how women over the age of 40 aren't being catered for by the fashion industry.
Purely by coincidence Ms Portas has just launched her own clothes line, Mary, aimed at women over 40.
She was talking about this on Woman's Hour yesterday.
She's also be appointed head of one of those government reviews aimed at halting the decline of the high street and independent shops.
She really didn't like it when she was asked on Woman's Hour why her clothes line was only available at House of Fraser stores.
Or when she was aked why her PR company Yellowdoor does the publicity for those mega out-of-town Westfield shopping centres.

Grazia: For The Man In Your Woman

"Monkey's second favourite celebrity fashion weekly with an iota of serious news, Grazia, is to introduce a blokeish insert with the strapline "for the man in your life". Among those who may be surprised by the Bauer Media mag's implicit assumption that its readers are neither single nor lesbian is Melanie Rickey, its fashion editor-at-large – she is the civil partner of Mary Portas, BBC2's Queen of Shops."

from The Guardian's Media Monkey's Diary

The Pink List 100: Sindy's List

Fagburn adores The Independent On Sunday's annual Pink List 100 of "the 101 [sic] most influential gay and lesbian people in Britain today."
Up and down this fair isle today, queens with an over-inflated sense of their own worth will be frothing at the mouth at their lowly placing - or worse - screaming that; "The clueless fuckwits have missed me off their stupid fucking list again!"
It is all but of course pink nonsense on a stick, and between you and me, I've a feeling it's not actually worked out by some incredibly complex scientific formula.
In fact, in Fagburn's experience magazine and newspaper lists - whether of the world's most beautiful men or of Britain's best new bands - tend to show bias towards names that will be headline/attention-grabbing, people of note and/or their PRs a publication wants to butter up, petty personal feuds, favours or friendships that are of absolutely no interest to anyone else, in house horse-trading, tokenism, and... "Oh, just get the student intern to bump the list up to 100."
This year two people share the number one position; as luck would have it a lesbian and a gay man.
Gareth Thomas; "Rugby player - The revelation of Thomas's homosexuality in an interview with the Daily Mail last December confirmed what had been an open secret in rugby union for years after his separation from his wife, but it highlighted the taboo over gay people in professional sport.
And Mary Portas; "Broadcaster, PR and Queen of Shops - For such a candid personality, it's a surprise that Portas has kept her private life just that for so long. Within the magazine and public relations worlds, her relationship with the fashion journalist Melanie Rickey was common knowledge, although she never discussed it in the media. This year it all changed [with] the couple's civil partnership in June – and discussion of it on Jonathan Ross's chat show and in Grazia magazine..."
Wow!
Thomas and Portas are two people who've been in the news a bit in the last year because they've come out in the last year.
But are they really the most influential gay man and lesbian in Britain today?
Gareth Thomas certainly deserves much credit and kudos for kicking open the professional sports closet.
You wonder if he's been chosen mainly because of his apparent incongruity; a gay man excelling at this most manly of sports.
A lesbian sports celebrity wouldn't have been quite as big news.
But then nor would a gay man who - as does Mary Portas - is best known for dispensing advice on shopping and style.
Fagburn shall return to look at the rest of this gripping list in a bit...

Getting Older, Turning Lesbian: This Summer's Must-Have Feature

Partly prompted by the movie The Kids Are All Right - and Alison Goldfrapp and Mary Portas late lesbian blossomings, this summer there have been more than a few features like this one by Kira Cochrane in The Guardian.
'Why It's Never Too Late To Be A Lesbian - More and more women are discovering after years of marriage to men, and having had children, that they are lesbians. Were they always – or is sexuality more fluid?'
It's a pretty good one.
I just hope they don't turn into the lesbian journalistic equivalent of "Why a gay man is a girl's best friend" though...