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Good news: they're replacing me with an IT girl

Michael Bywater
Sunday 03 November 1996 00:02 GMT
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I've been told that we need to get a bit of bone into the paper, a bit of class, almost as if we were owned by Mr Murdoch. My part in this enterprise is to become a woman. Not, you'll understand, a woman who by skill and application, by endless reading and thought, by constant discourse among the people of this world from high to low, coupled with technical excellence in the deployment of your men the Words, has earned her the right to my column and your attention.

No. Not one of those women at all. What I have been told off to go and become is a -girl-. A posh girl, with bosoms. Ooh! And legs. Bosoms and legs and blonde hair and one of those names which hints at a bit of class until you deconstruct its components and distinguish between the give and the inherited-but-conflated. I have decided to be Anastasia Bloggs- Jenkins, and, gosh, aren't we going to have fun!

The first thing I must do is reinvent my parents. Daddy, Hugo Bloggs- Jenkins, is a tall, saturnine sod, still darkly handsome, still able to turn the head of a pretty girl with bosoms and legs much like my own. Daddy was of course devoted to me and I learned to twist him round my little finger at an early age. Nothing was too much for his little girl: ponies, frocks, bosoms, a sports car, the odd abortion. He is still my Dream Man, is Daddy, and perhaps that is why I like older men. In fact, that's definitely why I like older men, not because they are rich and, in their pursuit of riches, have become almost impotent and thus untroublesome; nor indeed is it just a pose, designed to delude my sad git readers, slumped in the hopeless fallows of middle age, into believing that they are in with the chance of a poke.

There. Going rather well so far, wouldn't you say? My boyfriend Gerald is in oil. Actually he's a sardine. Ha ha ha ha! No, seriously, he is, and he has a Ferrari, and he's doing frightfully well, with a flat in Mayfair and a house in France and some Gucci loafers from Gucci of Bond Street, and, guess what!, I bought him one of those Gucci ties to go with his Gucci loafers - you know, the ones that you never, ever saw small- time drug-dealers wearing, whatever anyone says - from Gucci of Bond Street, apsley my fave fave shop -ever-, no, really it is. We are deeply in love and have so much in common, eg, all his lovely money. No! Only joking! Ha ha ha.

Gerald is into SM. Actually no he isn't - he's rally rally romantic and we have a marvellous time in bed and we do it all the time, rally all the time, Gerald says my bosoms are amazing - but I think it's good to spice up a, you know, relationship, so I go down to Agent Provocateur in Soho, which is run by Vivien Westwood's son, who has become a rally good friend and always advises me what to wear, you know, nipple-clamps and latex and those fur-lined handcuffs. It's all in fun of course and if Gerald ever actually, you know, did anything, I'd kill him. Daddy would kill him, because Daddy's still my number-one man.

There'll never be a shortage of things to write about. I mean, in London, we go out -all the time- - when we're not making love in Gerald's flat in Mayfair - and meet these rally mazing people. Just the other day we met this rally rally mazing man who'd started off in quite a humble way (you could tell he was humble because he had one of those humble names, Jenkins or Bloggs, not actually Jenkins or Bloggs, but something like that) and had just made nearly pounds 40m in business! Apparently he'd been chosen to run some terribly exciting railway thing and then a bus company had bought it for apslute masses of money and now he's rich, which just goes to show that, even if you're a rally humble person, if you do your bit and work hard and build up your business and - I know this sounds silly but I rally, rally believe it - put something back into society, well, you get your reward in the end.

I'm rally proud when I go to a party like that, with Daddy on one arm and Gerald on the other, both looking so smart in their lightweight navy- blue blazers - which they got from their tailor!!!! - and their Gucci loafers. It makes me feel rally feminine which I like to feel because I'm a woman, even if I am a high-powered media person and an instantly recognisable figure (with my bosoms and my legs and my blonde hair) on the society circuit.

Mind you, when I say "society", I don't mean "society" in a sort of snobby sense. Nobody could ever accuse me of being a snobby, debby sort of person, just like they could never accuse me of being the sort of empty-headed bimbo who likes nothing better than snorting up a mugful of charlie and going upstairs for a wild shag with an Argentinian polo player with thighs like a stallion. No; I've always worked for my living and I like to see myself as an independent girl who's just been been vay, vay lucky.

But I don't think it's spoiled me. I'm still the same Stasi I've alway been, outgoing, friendly, basically cheerful, and apsley not a snob. I mean, a typical day takes in a whole cross-section, you know? One minute I might be at a high-powered media planning session, the next, enjoying a bit of girly talk at Groucho's with other independent, successful media girls like Tara or Tania; the evening might find me deep in conversation with Elton John or a successful West End estate agent or someone like the humble train man or even a bronzed, tautly muscular Argentinian polo player like my dear, dear friend Luis Basualdo, though not actually Lusi Basualdo because he's dead, I think, just sort of like him. But younger. Gerald doesn't mind. We have a good relationship like that, and he knows he is the only man in my life. Apart from Daddy!

So there is my World, which I shall be sharing with you in weeks to come. So much more fun than all that dreary, thinky stuff you used to get, don't you agree? !

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