Carrie Symonds & ‘the scarlet woman’; & the end of Big Brother
The High Low
The High Low
4.8 • 9.6K Ratings
🗓️ 19 September 2018
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The High Low inbox was full of people asking us to cover the media coverage of Carrie Symonds, the former Tory comms director accused of having an affair with Boris Johnson. We discuss the ‘scarlet woman’ trope, historically embodied by Monica Lewinsky, the then intern who was globally shamed for her affair with Bill Clinton (if you haven’t watched her 2015 TED talk yet - DO IT.) Let’s stop with the ‘tabloidese’ whereby women accused of having affairs with famous, married men are party-loving sluts designed to attack the patriarchy. Here’s a thought: let’s cover women in the same way we do men?
Also today, we celebrate the 18 year tenure - yes, 18 years - of Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother. Whether 'civilian or celebrity' (our new favourite phrase), Big Brother was once a pop-culture phenomenon, at the vanguard of the zeitgeist. Rather than examine where it all went wrong (nothing lasts forever) we dive into the nostalgia and share our favourite bits plus YOUR favourite bits, as garnered from Twitter. Plus, Dolly interviews an ex story producer of MIC, ex head writer for TOWIE and culture journalist, Ed Cripps, to discuss the BB phenomenon in more detail.
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Hadley Freeman on Serena Williams https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/15/give-serena-williams-break-working-mothers
Sophie Heawood interviews Lily Allen https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/sep/15/lily-allen-brazen-behaviour-didnt-care-sophie-heawood
The Pursuit of Love, by Nancy Mitford https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pursuit-Love-Nancy-Mitford/dp/0141044012
Episode 59 of Fortunately with Fi and Jane, with Susanna Reid https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06f8njn
Killing Eve, on BBC iPlayer https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p06jy6bc
Fran Yeoman on Carrie Symonds for iNews https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/people/boris-johnson-carrie-symonds-affair-allegations-sexism-media/
Monica Lewinsky’s TED talk, ‘The price of shame’ https://www.ted.com/talks/monica_lewinsky_the_price_of_shame/up-next?language=en
Nadia Petschek Rawls, Director of Social Media at TED, on Monica Lewinsky’s TED talk https://ideas.ted.com/want-to-help-prevent-online-bullying-comment-on-facebook/
She Wants It by Jill Soloway: https://www.amazon.co.uk/She-Wants-Desire-Toppling-Patriarchy/dp/1785032844
Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to episode 69 of The Highlo, the weekly current fairs and pop culture podcast |
| 0:20.6 | brought to you by journalist Dolly Alderton and Pandora Sykes. |
| 0:24.6 | Episode 69! |
| 0:25.6 | Oh God. |
| 0:27.1 | I thought we'd got through it without that. |
| 0:28.9 | There was a little pause and I thought, is she going to be bored? |
| 0:31.8 | Yes she is. |
| 0:32.8 | This was the week that was London Fashion Week also, but of trivia. |
| 0:36.7 | This is also the week a hot air balloon was first launched into the sky carrying a sheep, |
| 0:40.9 | a rooster and a duck in Versailles in 1783. |
| 0:44.7 | It's the week New Zealand where the first nation to grant women the right to vote in 1893 |
| 0:49.9 | and it's the week that documented emoticons that's the precursor to emojis to our generation |
| 0:56.3 | said listeners which are made up colon's and brackets to denote smiley or unhappy faces. |
| 1:02.5 | They were first recorded this week in 1982 posted on the Carnegie Mellon University Bulletin |
| 1:09.7 | Board system. |
| 1:11.2 | Strange but riveting start to the cod cast there. |
| 1:13.8 | Is that going to happen every week? |
| 1:14.8 | I mean I'm all for mixing up the template. |
| 1:16.4 | No, it's just this week. |
| 1:19.1 | It's also the week that Hannah Gadsby returned to our screens. |
| 1:22.4 | She was presenting an award at the Emmys to Stephen Daultery who wasn't actually there. |
| 1:26.5 | So she said, should I take this? |
... |
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