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| My TV career then and ...then |
This morning I stepped on the scales to find that I had
magically gained half a stone somehow and my jeans were a great deal tighter
around my derriere than last week.Two things occurred to me:
Firstly, maybe this is what happens when you hit your 50’s
and spend the week before Christmas eating and drinking at a multitude of
social gatherings; your body just says ‘bring it on’ and there it stays. On
your middle, your thighs and your behind (never, I notice, on your chest where
it would be more
Nigella like). And secondly...if I was Pippa Middleton, my enlarged gluteus
maximus might have bought me
a publishing deal of epic proportions, well if I
was 25 years younger and my sister had just married the next king in waiting of
course. And too, if the bottom in question was a great deal more uplifted than
it is these days, as it peers downwards seeking the comfort of any available
couch.
As I poured light milk on my porridge to counteract the
maple syrup I’d liberally doused it with, my husband pointed out the Dom Post
article about the Nelson couple who have ‘hit the mother lode’ with an
8.5 million dollar Lotto win. I hope it’s the friends we go camping with so that we
can ditch the tent this year and all go and stay at a luxury resort on their
money (they’d shout us wouldn’t they?) I’d like to rest my weighty buns on
something more supportive than a camping chair this season. I refused a piece of toast proffered by hubby, not just because
the bread was a bit mouldy, but because if we did go and stay somewhere posh, I’d
need to look fabulous in togs and I have a week to do it.
This bought me to another realisation...why do I need to
look like a 25 year old when I am clearly not? My mother and grandmother never
had this compulsion. But they were never on the telly. And low... the light
went on- I am not on the telly anymore! With the demise of
Avalon and
Good Morning moving to Auckland, my current (sporadic and tiny) TV career is at an
end. I no longer need to look good on the streets in case someone sees me and
it’s all over the Women’s Day that Fifi the Craft Queen wears daggy old jeans, a
threadbare Glasson’s tee shirt and no lipstick on a daily basis. Not that I
ever made Woman’s Day of course- it’s a scenario that we like to play out in
our heads isn’t it? The fame and fortune one. It’s one I’ve been playing for
years and like Monopoly (which I suck at) never goes the way you dream of. A
roll of the dice and the empire you hoped to build is rubble before you even
finished the foundations.
Fame and fortune, like winning Lotto, rely heavily on two
things; commitment and serendipity. The Nelson couple played those same numbers,
regularly for years. On the rare occasions that I buy a Lotto ticket I go for a
Lucky Dip- my odds of winning are not improved by buying a ticket 3 times a
year; and...the numbers simply never come up. Likewise with my TV career. My 7
year stint on
What Now as a Craft Queen and 6 years on The Good Morning Show
came about not because I was set upon having a job as a television presenter,
it was because I was persistently and consistently doing something I really
enjoyed; arts and crafts – then someone in broadcasting noticed and wanted me to
show viewers. I couldn’t have got the work if I’d taken myself off to broadcasting
school and bombarded TVNZ with my CV, show reels and egg cartons. It’s not the
way it works.
The flipside of such random luck is the voice inside your
head that says ‘This is it baby, you are on your way and now the deals will
come in- you’d better start getting professional about this!’ And then you
worry about your clothes, your wrinkles, what you might say on Twitter and if
your arse is too big. When I worked on What Now there was no internet or
digital media; opinion and gossip spread a little slower. Getting drunk on a
Friday night didn’t mean your audience would see pictures of you on Saturday
all over Facebook, hair and dress askew chatting up a bartender.
Since I’ve been on Good Morning, I’ve sanitised this blog so
that it has become mostly a (fairly boring) web page for craft instructions, set
up a
fan page for facebook so that my personal life is kept hidden from my art
followers and chewed my adult son’s ear off in the supermarket car park for
being surly to a check out operator...”Do you know how hard I have worked to build
up a public profile? And I don’t want you jeopardising that with your attitude-
you hear me?!!!” And still the offers of further greatness haven’t arrived; and
at 51 with a sagging bottom, they aren’t going to- unless I take up the art of cuisine
(and that is never going to happen).
And you know what? I don’t care! I don’t have to do any of
the above anymore; I’m not accountable to viewers who might sit in their
armchairs scoffing Cheezels whilst criticising TV presenters for their back fat
(the cruel things people say on forums is unbelievable) And I’m going back to
why I set up this blog in the first place. To write about stuff that makes me
mad, makes me sad or makes me laugh. No-one is going to offer me a £400,000
publishing deal because of my connections and shapely rump. I don’t envy Pippa,
she has her whole media scrutinised life to lose ahead of her. I’m delighted to
just be ME- an artist, teacher, wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt and friend who
loves drawing, making stuff and writing odds and sods to amuse myself and
others. I shall also let out my waistbands.
Wishing you all a very happy holiday season
xxx Fifi
