Like the Dreary, the podcast gets progressively shorter each week. It's only 35 minutes this time
Liz announces her intention to discuss Angela Rayner. duck's sake this is gonna be PAINFUL. Liz handily points out that unlike the famous Basic Instinct scene, Rayner was wearing knickers. She repeatedly refers to Rayner's "front bottom." Liz's take on the matter is that it's all about class, not sex; Rayner was seen as less competent because she did not go to Oxbridge and public schools, etc. Liz, of course, has been discriminated against because she went to a polytechnic. It's All About Liz, Always. Liz brags that she has taken part in debates at Oxbridge, and whines that the undergraduates were "rude", "lazy", etc. just because they are young.
She takes a swipe at Rachel Johnson, "posh women who don't bother to dress up", and the female undergraduates "not bothering to wear makeup." It's entirely optional, Liz. It's not some kind of tax we must pay for existing while female. Then she says she told the female undergraduates that their education was a waste because "in five years you'll have got a job in a bank, got married, had two children, and left work and never come back." We launch into a bog-standard Liz rant about women taking maternity leave and not being grateful for what she gave them at Marie Claire. She says "I hate privileged people, I hate people who marry to get ahead, I hate people who've got fathers and mothers to give them a job." Evidently, David expecting an inheritance from elderly parents had nothing to do with Liz's desire to marry him.
She thinks women go to Oxbridge just so they can "chat up some Hooray Henry in a bar", get pregnant, and stop working. Rayner however "got there by her bootstraps and her own hard work" so she's allowed to be sexy. Nic says that women should't be judged for looking too sexy or having big boobs, and "misogyny is unacceptable." You have just sat there agreeing with it for over 10 minutes! After a brief rant by NIc over the House of Common porn scandal, Liz talks about watching an Imagine documentary on Miriam Margolyes whom she loves. There is some brief discussion of books dedicated to dearly departed pets. Liz hates Just Eat and thinks food delivery is lazy, as is having hot drinks in the afternoon. WTF? No matter what time of day it is, it takes the same amount of time to boil a kettle or brew coffee etc.
Back to Liz's anti-Oxbridge crusade! She insults an Oxbridge-educated journalist she once sent to report on Ukraine, who did not want to read a book about Ukraine as it was too long for her. Nic gives an enthusiastic and very positive review of a mystery novel by Joanna Cannon, but as usual Nic is not allowed to be happy and Liz interjects "do you want to go and work for her?" At least Joanna Cannon can write a novel. Nic complains about "jobsworths" in customer service which segues into Liz's archive column, a "Liz Jones Moans." She says it was "a very, very, very funny column" that the Mail should bring back, and that she was "born to moan." You certainly were, love.
The column is about Liz having trouble with customer service when calling a spa at Harrods to change her appointment. If you guessed that its main purpose was to name drop the spa and brag about the fact she could afford multiple expensive treatments there, you're right! How did you know? Liz makes fun of the way Nirpal speaks on the phone, and says that she doesn't think men get as angry on the phone as women do. She's evidently never met my stepfather, or the nut job I was once stuck next to on a train who kept calling someone to bellow obscene threats at them. Liz and Nic both get very heated over online chat bots for customer service. Liz makes an exception for Apple's customer service bot because when she ordered a £1000 iPhone for David ("if he died, no one would know!") the bot said the recipient of the phone was lucky to have her. Presumably the bot would not have said this had it known Liz genuinely thinks someone can call for help in the middle of a stroke.
But what about this week's column? Liz is at Pineapple Dance Studios for a Mail feature. She reminisces about taking fitness classes in the 80s and hating the way she looked, so much so that she lied to her "body conditioning" teacher about what her name was. But then saw in the full length mirror how thin she'd got and went to the doctor, who prescribed her the steroids that led to her CUTTING HER TITS OFF. Liz calls the makeup artist on the Mail shoot a witch for asking if Liz had eyebrows tattooed on. Don't you know that's £6000 worth of eyebrow TRANSPLANT, witch?! Some people have no bloody manners. Sue gets blamed again for causing Liz's anorexia by talking about toast and marmalade being fattening.
Liz talks about her decades of exercise addiction. Nic kisses her wrinkly old arse and tells her she still has a great body in a leotard, Liz says the photographer told her she looked like "a Miss World contestant." Now Liz's self-esteem is buoyed again and She Has Realised She's Good Enough. Nic has something on her keyring to remind her that "she is enough" and Liz cuts in "but you're not though." The harder they fall, I cannot wait for Nic to drop Liz like a sack of hot potatoes. Nic reads out the glowing comments from last week's column, not mentioning that there are only 13 comments overall and they were all heavily moderated to not allow anything critical of Liz. We get fanmail from someone who contacted Liz for help with a university project and is now writing back to say she got a 1st in her degree. I hope Liz realises a degree involves far more work than just one interview with someone ... but don't worry. No doubt this girl, too, will drop out of the workforce in five years' time and her education will be wasted.
