Shame on you, Carol Vorderman

The TV personality has taken her criticism of the government to a crude and personal place by leading shameful, moralising and misogynistic attacks on Petronella Wyatt

I really didn’t expect to be writing this essay at the end of the week. I had previously thought that the fact of Petronella Wyatt’s affair with Boris Johnson between 2000 and 2004 was a rather niche, very definitely ‘Westminster bubble’ piece of trivia. It has been in the public domain for nearly 20 years, since Johnson was dismissed as shadow arts minister and vice-chairman of the Conservative Party after not only denying the relationship but describing allegations as “an inverted pyramid of piffle”. His flimsy defence was shredded completely when his lover’s mother, Hungarian-born Verushka, Lady Wyatt, disclosed details to the media including that Johnson had promised to leave his wife and marry Petronella, and that she had only a month before terminated the pregnancy of a child fathered by Johnson.

After the scandal subsided, Wyatt seemed to fade into relative obscurity. She has written of the past decades being “chiefly marked by shyness and chronic insecurity, punctuated by tears over unsuitable men”, and alluded to excessive and harmful drinking. Recently, I had vaguely noticed her re-emergence: her words still appeared sporadically in The Spectator, of which she had once been deputy editor, she acted as a consultant on last year’s Netflix production Ghislaine Maxwell: Filthy Rich and her stock was raised in 2019 when Johnson became prime minister, as she could speak with authority and experience on his character and habits. She has written regularly for The Daily Telegraph since earlier this year, and once or twice I have spotted her, with surprise, on television.

This past week, she penned an article for The Daily Mail on the reinvigoration of menopausal women (Wyatt is 55), but yesterday, foolishly, she waded into the ongoing media storm around former ITV presenter Phillip Schofield. In a story which barely warranted column centimetres, let alone inches, it was reported that one of Schofield’s temporary replacements on ITV’s This Morning, Alison Hammond—made vaguely famous 20 years ago as the second housemate to be evicted in the third iteration of Big Brother—had broken down in tears on air after watching an excerpt from Schofield’s interview with the BBC’s ubiquitous Amol Rajan, released on Friday morning. Hammond was experiencing conflicting emotions: “I loved Phillip Schofield. It’s weird because I still love Phillip Schofield. However, what he’s done is wrong, he’s admitted it, he’s said sorry.” This was in the approaches of the foothills of the Schofield story, itself perhaps some kind of piffle-based monument, but Wyatt made a mistake.

Petronella has been on Twitter for 11 years, and has a none-too-shabby 16,000 followers, more than Fatima Whitbread but fewer than Michael Gove. Having watched Hammond’s tearful episode, she stretched her fingers and took to the keyboard in a rather stern and admonitory mood:

Why is it now obligatory to sob on television? Maybe I’m old school, but what happened to dignity? Moreover, the more they cry, the less believable it is.

After a pause, she doubled down and intensified her language.

People who sob on tv @AlisonHammond are not fit to interview Prime Ministers. They are an embarrassment to themselves and to television.

These may have been genuine feelings. I have no reason to believe they are not. But if Wyatt wanted to attract attention, she succeeded in a very damaging way. Inevitably many users weighed in to criticise her, many citing her relationship with the former prime minister as disqualifying her from holding an opinion, demonstrating her poor judgement or simply being an object of disdain and mockery.

Let’s just pause for a moment to make a few things clear. I don’t know Petronella Wyatt and have not, so far as I’m aware, ever met her, let alone had a conversation with her. I dare say we have friends or at least acquaintances in common, but Westminster is a tight-knit village. Having an affair with a married father-of-some, even if he promises to leave his wife and marry you, and you believe him, is problematic and shows no-one at their best and most virtuous. That said, given what we know about Boris Johnson and his modus operandi, I’d be very reluctant to apportion any more than 50 per cent, if that, of the blame to Wyatt. Moreover, I had hoped that we were becoming less censorious and hypocritical as a nation and a society; we have all at some point conducted our private lives in ways of which we are not proud.

Wyatt has not, so far as I’m aware, preached strongly in favour of social conservatism or the sanctity of marriage. Indeed, the late, dazzling Frank Johnson, who edited The Spectator between 1995 and 1999, once composed a witty parody of Wyatt’s romantic prospects.

As light faded last night the search was called off for a husband for Petronella Wyatt. Officials say the search may '“be resumed at day break” but that “they are not hopeful a husband will be found”.

One Irish newspaper, at the time of Boris’s dismissal for lying about their affair, larded an article with semi-euphemisms which indicated Wyatt was not on the road to the cloister. She was described as “vivacious” and possessed of a “free-spirited attitude”, and it quoted her as saying, with reference to her father Woodrow Wyatt, a Labour MP who was ennobled by Lady Thatcher and had a close friendship with the Queen Mother, “I’m not easily embarrassed by anything because I had it all as a child”. Whatever else can be said of her affair with Boris Johnson, therefore, it can hardly be argued that she was guilty of gross hypocrisy.

Yet the Twitterati has descended on Wyatt with a fierceness and sanctimony which would have made Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne feel she had escaped lightly. Some were merely critical (“You were shagging Boris Johnson”) or vaguely patronising (“Alison Hammond strikes me as a very nice woman. Genuine, warm hearted & with a great sense of humour. Since when was it wrong to show some emotion?”). Others just fired insults (“You literally gargled the semen of a man who smells like a drenched raincoat left in a mouldy basement.”), which anyone on Twitter must expect. Inevitably the hypocrisy grenade was thrown, without any obvious foundation (“Says the woman that shagged #Boris don’t be a #Hypocrite”). But something nastier was going on.

The really unpleasant accusation was a blend of two charges: firstly, that as Johnson’s one-time sexual and, I suppose, romantic partner, Wyatt was in effect responsible for anything he had subsequently done, or at least could justifiably used as a proxy for Twitter users’ disapproval, dislike or outright hatred. The second element, atavistic and potent, was that it was entirely legitimate to exercise moral judgement on a woman’s choice of partner, and that Wyatt was not just a bad person as a proxy for Boris, but was herself a bad person because she had been in a relationship with him.

One of the loudest voices in the mob—she has, bafflingly, more than three-quarters of a million Twitter followers—was former professional solver of arithmetical problems, Carol Vorderman. I’ll be absolutely honest: I had next to no opinion on Vorderman in her Countdown days. I liked the winningly hapless (and, I suspect, acutely self-aware) Richard Whiteley, of blessed memory; a warm and rather clever man, he found a perfect niche and grew to fit it perfectly, presenting the quiz show for 23 years and, along the way, being the first person ever to appear on Channel 4. Vorderman obviously had a good rapport with Whiteley as she displayed the numbers and letters as well as solving the problems thrown up by the numbers round, and she was… fine. Probably nice.

Vorderman left Countdown in 2008, having graciously declined the opportunity to replace Whiteley as host after his death in 2005. Since then she has earned a living as a successful television presenter and personality, seemingly hard-working and versatile, an author and commentator, and a shrewd businesswoman (though there was some controversy in 2006 over her endorsement of now-defunct debt consolidation firm FirstPlus, a subsidiary of Barclays Bank; she rejected any suggestions of wrongdoing). She has done admirable charity work, and seems—this is not my area of expertise—to have been an inspiration for older women in terms of remaining active, glamorous and vivacious. All of this I will happily chalk up as Good Things To Have Done, and if she has been well paid for them, so much the better.

Recently, she has transformed herself into a fierce critic of the current government, motivated initially by instances of senior Conservatives seemingly exploiting their positions for personal gain. Baroness Mone, founder of lingerie brand Ultimo, which ceased trading in 2018, has been a particular target, as she is accused of using improper influence to connect PPE Medpro, a manufacturer of personal protective equipment, with the government, resulting in the agreeing of contracts worth more than £200 million and in Mone personally receiving via a trust based in the Isle of Man some £29 million. Lady Mone is under investigation by the National Crime Agency; I have no hesitation in saying that if she is found likely to have acted criminally or improperly, she should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and her conduct is inexcusable.

Obviously, I’m a Conservative, but I’m not an uncritical one, and I have written time and again that standards in public life are critical to trying to rebuild trust in our political institutions. I excuse no-one on partisan grounds, and I have been sharply critical of Boris Johnson personally. But, again, I’ll be honest: Vorderman irritates me. I dislike her pious manner (or so it seems to me), and her self-appointed status as scourge of the government. Earlier this year, The Herald described her as “the real leader of the opposition”, and she has been unsparingly withering in her criticism, for example saying that she was “disgusted” by the conduct of women’s minister Maria Caulfield.

This crusading attitude seeped from her assault on Petronella Wyatt yesterday. (Let’s remember that Wyatt perhaps unwisely and probably slightly pompously chided a TV presenter for crying on camera.) The gloves were off and thrown away.

Here’s one of the very many women Boris Johnson bedded behind his wife’s back, trying to belittle my friend @AlisonHammond. Keep your pathetic bigoted views to yourself @PetronellaWyatt. People who shag Prime Ministers should keep quiet. They are an embarrassment to themselves and to womankind.

That’s strong stuff. Vorderman’s dander is up because Hammond is “my friend”, so no quarter is given. First she criticises Wyatt for her relationship with Johnson “behind his wife’s back”. Well, there is a saying about stones, glass houses and their occupants. I know nothing more than the contents of her Wikipedia entry about Vorderman’s private life, and it’s none of my business, except to say that I hope, in the light of this, that it is morally unimpeachable and has no complicated or embarrassing episodes. If it does, that would make Vorderman, not Wyatt, the rankest of hypocrites.

Then she goes on to fire at Wyatt’s “pathetic bigoted views”. I don’t know what views she is referring to—the belief that people should not cry on television?—but she clearly feels no need to elaborate. But then, many critics of the government do not: too often it seems that being a Conservative is guilt enough for accusations of bigotry to be warranted. Finally Vorderman returns to the affair with Johnson. “People who shag prime ministers… are an embarrassment… to womankind.”

Notice that the final sentences of the tweet do not restrict the charge of being an embarrassment to womankind to those who have illicit affairs with prime ministers. No. It’s simply “people who shag prime ministers”. But we know, don’t we, that she does not mean to include Cherie Blair or Sarah Brown. (Or perhaps she does?) What she means, at the most generous interpretation, is “people who shag” Conservative prime ministers. This is tribal anti-Toryism. One might almost call it “bigotry”.

I’ve been pretty measured, I think. I accept that much of Vorderman’s campaigning has been against behaviour which, if proven, is unacceptable. But I have to make myself plain here. This is disgusting, hyper-partisan, judgemental and misogynist. In. vastly overreacting to a thoughtless or foolish remark, she has made serious, unfounded, derogatory accusations against Wyatt, used moralising language and imagery, and almost gleefully held partly responsible for the conduct and actions of Boris Johnson a woman who had a relationship with him nearly two decades ago. If this is how the “real leader of the opposition” wants to play politics, that is her right, and it is mine to say it stinks. I hope her own personal conduct is beyond reproach. I didn’t especially like Carol Vorderman when I got up on Friday morning; she’s now proved herself a willing denizen of some of the worst sewers of our political discourse. She should be ashamed of herself for this conduct, consider it very carefully, and apologise. If she doesn’t, she speaks volumes, none of them complimentary, about her character and beliefs.