Tread on a worm and it will turn. And Stephen Fry has turned on his former friend JK Rowling, piously branding her a ‘lost cause’ and accusing her of being ‘radicalised’ with ‘strange’ views.
Hark at him. He sounds like an Iranian cleric trying to wrestle an impudent girl into a burka, not someone who exults in his laughable reputation as a champion of free speech.
Rowling’s sin has been, as it always has been in some bitter quarters, simply to stand up for women and women’s rights in the sex and gender debate.
She believes, like the majority of us do, that women are women and trans women are trans women. And that you can be supportive of both parties and accepting of their choices, but not to the extent that the rights of one group supersede the rights of the other. It is as simple as that. Except when it isn’t.
When provoked by trans activists, as she often is, Rowling has never been afraid to call a bloke a bloke or stand up for the undeniable truth of biology during a time when it has been difficult – even perilous – to do so.
She has repeatedly put the case for women when their rights have been threatened with erosion, particularly around the removal of safe spaces, along with the dangers and downright unfairness of women being forced to compete with male-born athletes in sport. And we are so grateful for her efforts.
A witty or more eloquent damsel defender would be hard to find.
Just this week, Rowling had a bruising joust with Boy George, who inadvisedly called her ‘a bored rich bully’ who tormented the trans community.
Harry Potter author JK Rowling has faced significant backlash for her views
Stephen Fry sounds like an Iranian cleric trying to wrestle an impudent girl into a burka, not someone who exults in his laughable reputation as a champion of free speech, Jan Moir writes
Fry has turned on his former friend, piously branding Rowling a ‘lost cause’ and accusing her of being ‘radicalised’ with ‘strange’ views. The two pictured in the 2022 documentary, Fantastic Beasts: A Natural History
Her reply was magnificent. Did she really want to hurt him? You bet. ‘I’ve never been given 15 months for handcuffing a man to a wall and beating him with a chain,’ she responded directly to Boy George on X, in reference to when he was jailed in 2009 for inflicting what a judge called ‘wholly gratuitous violence’ on a male escort.
‘You yourself have been convicted of violent assault,’ Rowling went on. ‘The overwhelming number of people who commit crimes of violence are male, just like you. That’s why I don’t want to see men identifying into women’s prison cells… not all men are violent or predatory but enough are to make safeguarding necessary.’
Time and time again, Rowling cuts through the fetid hypocrisy of the trans debate. Its not a fight that she ever wanted but she has a superhero’s sense of duty when the Bat-Signal flashes across the trans sky.
However, it has all been too much for Fry, who previously enjoyed the warmth of her friendship, not to mention a lucrative gig narrating the Harry Potter audio books.
He often had dinner with JK, but that’s all over now. No more chitchat over chicken dippers for this pair. Like the treacherous trio of kidult actors who starred in the Harry Potter films, Fry has finally turned against the famous author.
His treachery is bad enough. However, the patronising way he denounced Rowling tells another story and neatly illustrates exactly what women must endure. Particularly on this issue where our desires come a very poor second to what men want, whether they are wearing a dress or not.
Sir Stephen – if we must – may be a Left-wing actor with progressive views and a husband who is 30 years his junior, but at his core he is still an unreconstructed trad-dad hunk of me-first patriarchy.
He can’t just disagree with a woman. He has to crush her, to sneer at her, to show why she is wrong and why her opinions are so very inferior to his own.
She has ‘very strong, difficult views’ he said of Rowling this week, as if she were some shrieking suffragette chaining herself to a railing and he were an aristocrat in a powdered wig worried that she had lost her mind and wouldn’t iron his spats any more.
‘She has been radicalised, I fear, and it may be she has been radicalised by TERFs but also by the vitriol that is thrown at her. It is unhelpful and only hardens her and will only continue to harden her, I am afraid.’
Harden her? What is she, an egg boiling in a saucepan of water? He seems to be suggesting that she is not in control of her mind and is being manipulated by evil TERFS, meaning those trans-exclusionary radical feminists who don’t believe that trans women are ‘real’ women – and do you know why? Because they are not.
He can’t just disagree with a woman. He has to crush her, to sneer at her, to show why she is wrong and why her opinions are so very inferior to his own.
It is doubtful that Rowling will be much bothered by this fresh attack, even coming from an old friend who once vowed he would stand by her. She has always been steadfast in her views and refuses to be intimidated. Perhaps that is one reason why Fry believes her to be ‘a lost cause for us’.
I’ll tell you who is the lost cause here and it is not JK Rowling.
Over the past few years, Fry’s self-regard has risen like a mushroom cloud, casting a shadow over his shrinking popularity. All he seems to do these days is huff, puff and pontificate on podcasts, unfurling his grand opinions to the dwindling band of brothers who are still impressed by his thoughts.
High on his own supply of hubris and homilies, Fry doesn’t even listen to his own famous little sermons on the importance of free speech and why no one has the right not to be offended.
Look at him, a martyr to the deathly hallows of his own hypocrisy. From national treasure – I was never convinced – to pompous old fool, his journey of smuggery is complete. Expelliarmus!
More flower sprinkles, Petal? I can hardly wait
Some people have had enough of Meghan ‘I’m Sussex Now’ Markle but I can never get enough of the twerking lunatic.
This week, the Duchess beamed down from the ivory castle in her brain to explain to everyone all over again how she is just another ordinary hardworking housewife but at the same time so gifted, so gracious and so much more special than you.
On an accommodating gal gabfest show, she talked about an average day in Meghanland.
‘I love to drop off and pick up at school and do meetings in between and go to Disneyland for two days,’ she gurgled. ‘I volunteer to do the stir pot lunch at school and be the chaperone for the kindergarten school trip. And I love packing the lunchboxes. It brings me joy.’
How lovely, even if she is just another rich Californian yum-mum displaying a streak of narcissism while congratulating herself on being superfabulous and crazy busy.
The Duchess is giving interviews to promote her most precious and worthy cause of all – herself. Some new products are about to be launched on her As Ever line. Who knows what they might be this time – halo polishing kits, honey candles, hoof wraps for horses, calligraphy kits for banana messaging – but no doubt they will sell out immediately. Is this because she is so popular? Or simply produces so few items?
That’s the thing about the Duchess of Instant Success. She seems to remember every slight and imagined affront from her royal life, but there are never any details where it counts. In the meantime, will there be more flower sprinkles? As ever.
Jodie’s got just the spirit to help save our boozers
‘It would have been lost forever,’ says Jodie Kidd of the Half Moon in West Sussex
Cheers to Jodie Kidd, who became an unlikely landlady when she saved her local pub from being bulldozed in 2017.
‘It would have been lost forever,’ she says of the Half Moon in West Sussex, a handsome 16th century coaching inn. ‘In these villages the pub is the epicentre of village life,’ she adds. ‘Ice and a slice?’
Jodie is right – but British pubs are reaching crisis point. Covid, the cost-of-living crisis, rising costs, higher wages and changing consumer habits have taken a toll.
During the first three months of this year, 303 pubs in England, Scotland and Wales closed, while 46 boozers were converted to other uses. Others have reduced trading hours in a bid to keep afloat.
Kidd herself says that if someone spends £5 on a pint, it needs to be ‘a blinking good one’ – but fewer and fewer customers can afford even that. Especially when a fiver’s worth of beer at a supermarket will buy you just under four pints.
So more people are drinking more at home – bad for business and bad for the nation’s mental health.
Is it time gentlemen please, for the Government to step in and help the nation’s pubs survive?
The Cotswolds cowboy
Beyonce and her fringed chaps should fit right in, writes Moir
Can it be true that Beyonce is considering a move to the Cotswolds? Perhaps she can help Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi with their sheep while Jay Z enjoys ‘sausages of the day with beer gravy’ at Jeremy Clarkson’s pub.
Someone should warn her that neighbours would include Elizabeth Hurley, Kate Moss, Rita Ora, Kate Winslet, the Beckhams, Simon Cowell, Princess Beatrice and Stella McCartney – the dinner party from hell in other words.
Critics say the Cotswolds has become so rich, glitzy and celeb-studded that women go horse riding dressed as if they were off to a party. Beyonce and her fringed chaps should fit right in.
The Advertising Standards Authority says too many adverts stereotype old people as intolerant and grumpy.
Listen, it is not a stereotype. We really are irascible and gloomy – and no bloody wonder. Getting older is like being punished for some terrible crime you never knew you had committed. Every single day.
And we are not going to smile through that, no matter how many packets of denture fix, jar openers and shower chairs they try to sell us.
Carnival carnage must come to an end
London is at its most beautiful in June – but locals know to enjoy summer while we can. For the usual arguments have already begun about the Notting Hill Carnival, held on August Bank Holiday every year.
The organisers want taxpayers to stump up more for ‘critical public safety concerns’ over the three-day event, which is one of the largest street parties in the world and attracts two million revellers.
The parade route alone is over 3.5 miles. Stewarding and crowd management control is next to impossible in the labryinth of crowded streets in the area, while residents and businesses have to barricade their premises.
Last year there were 334 arrests, including 49 for possession of an offensive weapon, 37 for assault on emergency workers and eight for sexual offences. There were also eight stabbings and two fatalities. The sensible solution would be to move the carnival of crime to Hyde Park, with ticketed entrances, knife arches and a fighting chance for the police to keep control. That’s not happening any time soon.
I heard a woman on LBC burbling on about the beauty of multi-cultural London, diversity and the common bond between communities coming together that the carnival represents.
How many more people have to get hurt before it is taken off the streets and into a safer place?
No matter how successful, adored and famous a pop star becomes, there will always be a grump in the corner moaning that they can’t see what all the fuss is about. Usually that grump is me, but not when it comes to Taylor Swift. I love Taylor’s songs and her admirable, demented work ethic, which crested this month with the release of two new albums — The Tortured Poets Department and The Anthology — both written, recorded and made while she is in the middle of her worldwide Eras tour, performing on stage for three straight hours at every show.
