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I am quite a lot better, thanks for asking, but still got a cough and a bit of tiredness going on. It’s been a real fucker. Nonetheless I thought I should try and make an attempt to get back into exercising and had my first PT session in over a month. I was surprised by how much residual strength I had and hadn’t fully expected to get through the full hour, so was happy to complete the session, feeling better than I had at the start.
Shitting heck though. When will this unwelcome virus exit my body?
Took it easy for the rest of the day obviously, but did record April’s bonus Acast plus podcast, which got quite messy. But you’ll have to be with Acast Plus to hear it.
We watched the Paula Yates documentary tonight and it was hard to believe how hounded this poor woman had been, especially after the death of her partner. The tabloids didn’t give a fuck and pretty much immediately ran the story about her real father being Hughie Green. I thought that maybe this had all happened before Princess Diana had been hounded to her death and we’d all questioned whether the paparazzi were responsible. But no, it was a year afterwards. Not a thing changed. No one seemed to be worried that this was too much for a person to be expected to take.
And of course, things are no different now, and the people at the centre of this intense focus have to also cope with social media now.
Even the journalist whose interviews with Paula are at the centre of the documentary doesn’t seem to realise how selfishly and badly he comes across. He basically admits that he saw that Paula being in such distress made this the perfect opportunity for him to get his interview. If he questions himself at all it is very lightly and he seems to think he was just doing his job.
There is some suggestion that Paula might have orchestrated some of the attention (Hutchence’s sister suggests that Paula may have rung certain members of the press to let them know where her and Michael would be next) and obviously attention is one of the reasons that some people may seek out fame. But the kind of people who seek out fame are to some extent insecure or damaged and it must hurt when they discover that being famous doesn’t mean everyone loves you and respects you, that it doesn’t solve your problems, that it comes with many more problems.
Heartbreaking and weird though, that it’s some people’s jobs to hound people to their deaths and that having hounded people to their deaths they don’t think - oh God, we’d better not do that again and the whole thing carries onwards. Building people up to smash them down into the ground again.
