on screen, it will keep you in a job. That’s all it comes down to, I said. Nothing more sinister than that. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s scapegoat.
It was Sara’s show; she was the producer. Julie is married to the boss of the network. And Holly and Leah thought it was little old me that got them fired? I was just a hired hand with a big mouth. Don’t pick on me , ladies.
For season two, the premise of the show changed. We were still five mothers, but we could talk about whatever we wanted. That was manna from heaven for me, with one small problem. It’s live, and I sometimes forget myself. As we all get on so well, it’s easy to think I’m sitting round a dinner table and chatting to my mates. And in situations like that, we sometimes say things we think are funny, but which we don’t really mean.
Luckily, given my propensity to swear, we are on a seven-second delay and have the lovely Kingsley, whose job it is to hit the big red cut-out button every time one of us – admittedly, mostly me – lets a rude word slip out. Kingsley is English and has a great sense of humour, so I walk past him each morning and say, ‘Fuck, shit, fart,’ to get it out of the way, and he raises his eyes heavenward at my naughtiness.
But Kingsley’s job is only to hit that button for swear words. After that, we’re on our own, and one or two of my off-the-cuff quips that I thought were funny at the time have got me into trouble afterwards. It’s usually something glib that just pops into my head, and when I analyse it the next day, I think, Why did I say that? It’s about finding that balance between speaking your mind, even if your view is controversial, and saying it in a way that isn’t offensive to viewers.
In July 2011, a Californian woman called Catherine Kieu cut off her estranged husband’s penis and threw it in the waste-disposal unit because he had reportedly started seeing an ex-girlfriend.
Before I knew it, I had opened my mouth and uttered the words, ‘I don’t know the circumstances… However, I do think it’s quite fabulous.’
Obviously , I don’t think it’s fabulous at all and, to this day, I don’t know what possessed me to say it. It just popped out. Luckily, Sara counteracted it slightly by saying that it was sexist to joke about it because if it was a woman’s breast that had been cut off, we wouldn’t be making light of it. Quite right – I was completely in the wrong.
But the damage was already done. By the time we came off air, the ‘indignant viewer’ emails had started pouring in. Some of them were absolutely furious. It had been such a knee-jerk comment, I didn’t really think anyone would take it that seriously. Little did I know quite how serious it was yet to get.
A couple of days later, a message came in from some men’s group saying that I needed a bullet to the back of my head, and suddenly the production team were having crisis meetings. CBS were fantastically supportive and put on extra-tight security for the following two weeks. The threats didn’t keep me awake at night, but I’d be lying if I said they didn’t unnerve me a little, because there’s always one nutter, isn’t there? It only takes one.
I had been planning to address the issue again on air, but after all the backlash, and receiving a death threat, I said diddly-squat about it. It was like, what penis remark?
That’s what I find so hard about all this new technology now. There is always someone, somewhere who takes offence, and all they have to do is write a quick email and push the ‘send’ button. In the old days, when you had to write out a letter of complaint by hand, stick it in an envelope and wander off to the postbox, you really had to care about the point you wanted to make.
After the Catherine Kieu incident, I half expected to be given a talking-to by someone from the network or production team, but it didn’t come. They were really good about it. They’re the number-one network
It was Sara’s show; she was the producer. Julie is married to the boss of the network. And Holly and Leah thought it was little old me that got them fired? I was just a hired hand with a big mouth. Don’t pick on me , ladies.
For season two, the premise of the show changed. We were still five mothers, but we could talk about whatever we wanted. That was manna from heaven for me, with one small problem. It’s live, and I sometimes forget myself. As we all get on so well, it’s easy to think I’m sitting round a dinner table and chatting to my mates. And in situations like that, we sometimes say things we think are funny, but which we don’t really mean.
Luckily, given my propensity to swear, we are on a seven-second delay and have the lovely Kingsley, whose job it is to hit the big red cut-out button every time one of us – admittedly, mostly me – lets a rude word slip out. Kingsley is English and has a great sense of humour, so I walk past him each morning and say, ‘Fuck, shit, fart,’ to get it out of the way, and he raises his eyes heavenward at my naughtiness.
But Kingsley’s job is only to hit that button for swear words. After that, we’re on our own, and one or two of my off-the-cuff quips that I thought were funny at the time have got me into trouble afterwards. It’s usually something glib that just pops into my head, and when I analyse it the next day, I think, Why did I say that? It’s about finding that balance between speaking your mind, even if your view is controversial, and saying it in a way that isn’t offensive to viewers.
In July 2011, a Californian woman called Catherine Kieu cut off her estranged husband’s penis and threw it in the waste-disposal unit because he had reportedly started seeing an ex-girlfriend.
Before I knew it, I had opened my mouth and uttered the words, ‘I don’t know the circumstances… However, I do think it’s quite fabulous.’
Obviously , I don’t think it’s fabulous at all and, to this day, I don’t know what possessed me to say it. It just popped out. Luckily, Sara counteracted it slightly by saying that it was sexist to joke about it because if it was a woman’s breast that had been cut off, we wouldn’t be making light of it. Quite right – I was completely in the wrong.
But the damage was already done. By the time we came off air, the ‘indignant viewer’ emails had started pouring in. Some of them were absolutely furious. It had been such a knee-jerk comment, I didn’t really think anyone would take it that seriously. Little did I know quite how serious it was yet to get.
A couple of days later, a message came in from some men’s group saying that I needed a bullet to the back of my head, and suddenly the production team were having crisis meetings. CBS were fantastically supportive and put on extra-tight security for the following two weeks. The threats didn’t keep me awake at night, but I’d be lying if I said they didn’t unnerve me a little, because there’s always one nutter, isn’t there? It only takes one.
I had been planning to address the issue again on air, but after all the backlash, and receiving a death threat, I said diddly-squat about it. It was like, what penis remark?
That’s what I find so hard about all this new technology now. There is always someone, somewhere who takes offence, and all they have to do is write a quick email and push the ‘send’ button. In the old days, when you had to write out a letter of complaint by hand, stick it in an envelope and wander off to the postbox, you really had to care about the point you wanted to make.
After the Catherine Kieu incident, I half expected to be given a talking-to by someone from the network or production team, but it didn’t come. They were really good about it. They’re the number-one network
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