Not for the first time, gossip is getting a bad press. A report in this newspaper yesterday explained how women undermine potential romantic rivals by spreading malicious rumours in the guise of anxiety over their welfare. “She’ll shag anything in trousers … I’m so worried about her mental health!” is about the gist of it. The gossip can thus disparage her victim on grounds of both promiscuity and flakiness, while bigging herself up as a solicitous friend. Men, the study claimed, are more straightforward: when we diss someone, we’re happy to admit it, not pretend to have a superior motive.
Admittedly, I’m out of practice, having been happily married for 26 years, plus eight years of partnership (courting? Betrothal? Going steady?) before that. But back in the day, I would routinely confide in Person A (a woman, say, I fancied) how much I admired the way Person B (a man, say, also keen on Person A) coped so cheerfully with his porn addiction/erectile dysfunction/child-bearing hips/inability to do simple sums/sadistic streak or whatever. It’s standard tactics, isn’t it? Keep your enemies close, and all that.
I do think it’s unfair, however, to equate basic mating strategy with gossip. Gossip is not primarily a weapon with which to skewer sexual competitors. Nor is it to be confused with indiscretion. If someone tells you a secret and you spread it around, that’s not gossip, that’s breaking a confidence, that’s an abuse of trust, that’s wrong. If you indulge in analysis and dissection of (or pronounce judgment upon, or speculate wildly about) a third party, that’s gossip. It’s not only harmless, it’s potentially helpful. Not helpful to the person being gossiped about, that would be to overclaim, all proper gossip necessarily taking place behind its subject’s back. But helpful for you, to get things off your chest. Gossip is good medicine.
It is also, of course, top-level fun.
Yet none of these justifications ultimately matters because gossip is inevitable. The desire to talk about someone who isn’t present is one of the great human urges. Not as strong as lust or hunger, but up there with greed or envy. And infinitely less destructive. You have to keep the right company, though.
Imagine a life without gossip. I don’t have to, because for years in my childhood, before I started talking to girls and later, gays, I despaired of other boys’ refusal to gossip. It was the Seventies, in the north. I wasn’t born locally so, none the wiser, aged about eight, I’d scamper (or rather, waddle, my nickname was “Doughnut”) over to the lads at playtime itching to share a choice morsel of scandal, insight or scantily sourced supposition. The information, or more likely shameless conjecture, might involve a classmate, a teacher, someone’s parent, a dinner lady, the caretaker, whoever. Could be medical, professional or most likely, proto-sexual in nature. The response? Negligible. Dismal. Perplexed. Unless my news concerned lavatories, sport or violence, in which case there’d be a grunt of interest.
Tough times. Mind you, I’ve more than made up for the drought since. Gossip, wondrously, in its various forms, high and low, global and local, institutional and individual, forms the life blood of the industry I work in. Long may it continue.
Ms Apostel needs Cruz control
I don’t know much about Cruz Beckham. I think he’s a would-be (or “pretend”, if we’re being uncharitable) singer, in the same way that his big brother Brooklyn is a would-be (see above) chef. Cruz is news because the comically named number three son is stepping out with a significantly older woman. He’s 19 and Jackie Apostel, a Brazilian pop star, turns 29 in a week or two.
This disparity brings our old friend the Acceptable Age Gap formula into play. The formula says half your age plus seven years is baseline appropriate for the younger party, younger than that and people like me are allowed to stand in judgment on your private life. Half of 28 plus seven equalling 21, young Cruz is out of bounds to not-so-young Jackie. What an outrage!
Ah well, we all know the rule only really applies in the more usual instance of older man, much younger woman. Although, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Emmanuel Macron, 15, and Brigitte Trogneux, 40, never ceases to strike me as creepy. Still, chacun à son goût.
15 million reasons to keep Kyle
Annie Kilner, the wife of the footballer Kyle Walker, has reportedly demanded £15 million, half the Manchester City and England star’s estimated fortune, to stay married to him. It’s like a reverse dowry, or a prenup, only they’ve been married two years already. You’d think Annie was being cheeky, except she’s in a strong position, because besides the four children they have together, Kyle has fathered two more, contemporaneously, by his erstwhile mistress Lauryn Goodman.
I think Kyle is getting a bargain. I’d pay my wife half of my fortune to stay married to me, for many reasons, but not least because I regard my fortune as our fortune, if fortune is the right word in the first place. I’d be giving her half of what she already has the whole of. What I’d really like to know, though, is whether this settlement means we’re able to call Kyle only half a love rat in future? A love gerbil, perhaps?