Columnist Liz Jones, about to pounce. Photocredit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8t-QeQMpQY
Is there nothing that Liz Jones won’t do? The famously confessional writer is no stranger to baring her inner thoughts – she excrutiatingly detailed her break-up with Nirpal Singh Daliwal (as did he, from the other side.) Now she’s popped up claiming that, in her desperation to have a baby, she stole sperm not only from an ex-boyfriend, but also from Daliwal. Come on, though, she’s a serious journalist, isn’t she? She did go to Somalia after all.
Men! Watch out! She was in her late 30s, she said in her column in The Daily Mail. Her boyfriend didn’t want to settle down, and insisted (when he did eventually have sex with her) on using a condom. One day, after sex, she went to the bathroom and did what she had to do with the used contraceptive device. As she reasoned, she’d bought him enough Marks and Spencer ready meals. It didn’t work, though. She tried again with Daliwal – and failed. She warns that many women may be resorting to such tactics, and men should be wise to them. Life without a child is still seen as a failure. So watch out, guys – if you’re getting close to a woman in her 30s or 40s, she might be planning to spring a sprog on you.
Dishonest milking. Crikey, said The Mediablog, which responded quickly, calling Jones an “idiot-in-chief” amongst The Daily Mail’s columnists. What risk, exactly, is Jones warning against? That women might try to inseminate themselves in the bathroom with a used condom? She also finishes her piece with a huge insult to all of womenkind – although predictably, she’s the talk of Twitter. Whilst “she may not be able to impregnate herself with the dishonestly milked contents of a discarded condom,” “she can still spark a Twitterstorm.”
The Twitter reactions: Comedian Charlie Brooker said “That Liz Jones article is enough to make you pull an ‘oh face’. Her next column will read like Kevin Spacey’s diary in ‘Se7en’.” Ian Martin, a writer for The Thick of It, said “They should ask Liz Jones to become patron of the Charitable Trust for Missing Seamen.” Independent journalist Tom Peck, however was a little more scathing:”Depressing to watch, like a wasp flying up a window, everyone rise again to the Liz Jones bait. She knows precisely what she’s doing. Ignore.” The spoof Liz Jones Somalia Twitter feed said that she was feeling proud for “ erotically siphoning off [their] daddy juice for my own nefarious ends.”