Edwina Currie thinks I am Evil.
She said so when we dialogued ~ ok, ok, mud-slung ~ on Five Live
I think I have achieved, woooohoo! Evil! Has a certain ring about it No? She could have chosen a myriad of other adjectives, most of them much more offensive, but Evil is awesome, Evil has a touch of glamour ~ I may get a t-shirt printed.

To be honest, being called evil by a disgraced Member of Parliament was hardly on my to-do list, but if in my attempt to bring fat-discrimination to the attention of anyone-who’ll-listen, I have provoked a minor celeb fat-hater to make such a pronouncement well… icing on the cake.

And what was it that I said which was so heinous, so utterly dastardly and offensive to be deserving of such an accolade? Well she was there and so was I, because she had said in a previous interview on Five Live that fat people appearing on television was wrong, wrong, wrong ! Fat people or even it seems the mildly overweight, should be removed from our screens immediately, just in case viewers should mistake us for role models. Well there you go Oprah ~ you’re a bad role model, forget that you are the most successful broadcaster in history, if you’re fat, you’re banned!

So the nicely rotund Steve Nolan[1] who is about to begin another TV series,  invited me onto his Five Live late night programme to challenge Edwina on her lust for fat-censorship. She was in full flow explaining how dangerous fat role models are, complaining that fat contestants were being allowed on x -factor, that soon there may even be a fat news reader, God forbid!

I listened to this degrading outpouring of body fascism for a long minute or two, then simply encouraged any larger people listening to this nonsense to go to their mirror immediately and tell themselves that they are loved, valued and appreciated, which was the best idea that occurred to me at the time. I wish I could have thought of something more witty and devastating to say, which might have arrested her poisonous ejaculation more succinctly, but, hey-ho, it was the best I could do in the moment. I hoped perhaps it would  not only reach any fat listeners hearing themselves reviled and rejected, but also get our Edwina to realise that  she was insulting between 30 – 50% of her audience. Mind you, given that I had told her this earlier in our conversation and as she had ignored me completely, she clearly didn’t give a flying sausage how half the audience was feeling listening to themselves being described as unfit for public viewing. So I decided talking directly to the people she was insulting was my best shot.

She paused for a media-nanosecond and then said, Kathryn what you’re saying is Evil, it’s just wrong! But unfortunately, and here’s the rub, she didn’t clarify why encouraging larger people in a little mirror work is evil, or perhaps she just felt I was evil in suggesting that fat people should feel anything else than the utter shame she was heaping upon them ~ who knows. The last thing I want to do is to delve into the complex psycho-porridge of Edwina Currie’s motivation, I’d rather put needles in my eyes.

But as you’re pressing me, I’ll hazard a guess that she thought, as do so many self-appointed-body-police, that it is perfectly ok to publicly insult fat people and suggest they be banned from our screens, our talent competitions and our newsreader desks, in much the same way bigots before her have called for the removal of aging females, homosexuals and people with brown skin from TV, or indeed any other form of public life, for no other  reason than they feel they are not ‘normal’ or ‘average’ whatever that is. That’s why it’s called fat-ism, it’s ‘an extreme and irrational aversion’ just the same as racism and homophobia and ageism and all the other discrimination-isms, which affects arguably a larger section of our community than all the others ~ which is exactly why we need to add fatism to the list of irrational prejudices that have long been the subject of ant-discrimination law.

I am going to email Louise Hay [2] Immediately ~ she should know mirror work is evil. Or maybe it’s just raising the self-esteem of fat people which is evil, I mean what would the billion-pound diet industry do if fat people liked themselves?

Doesn’t bear thinking about.

1. Steve Nolan has two regular slots on BBC Five Live and begins a new TV series  on 2nd May 2012   http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/nolan/

2. Louise Hay, the originator and magnificent teacher of the power of mirror work and affirmations. http://www.louisehay.com/