Today is my last day at Biteback. I joined this company five years ago, fresh from the bar. Behind the bar, I should say – The Carpenter’s Arms, to be exact. It’s safe to say they took a bit of a punt on this one. Having just revisited my initial letter to try to secure an interview, I can confirm that I actually likened myself to Mary Poppins and somewhere along the way decided that it was appropriate to use the adjective ‘juicy’ to describe the magazine Iain Dale was then publishing, Total Politics.
I can’t really begin to describe what the last five years have been like.
That’d be like trying to describe the fear I felt when Hilary Devey was scheduled to be my first presenter but suffered a bout of the runs an hour before we were due to go live with the Political Book Awards. Or the elation I felt when my colleagues and I spent half an hour replacing words in our book titles with ‘muff’, which was time acceptably spent because our MD found them funniest of all. Or the embarrassment I felt when, at a Daily Mail party, speaking to Anne de Courcy I confused Margot Asquith with Nancy Astor (don’t ask) and she prodded me hard in the chest, yelled ‘NO! Bone up!’ and immediately found other company.
A mix, shall we say…
Once or twice, perhaps thrice, I’ve been shown ‘the line’. ‘The line’ is a trail of Biteback catalogues laid out across the floor. They’re placed there to delineate the division between what is acceptable and what is not. If I have crossed the line, James Stephens, my line manager, will take me by the arm and make me step over it in front of my colleagues (that’s what a real line manager is, by the way). In extreme cases I’ve been asked resolutely to leave the room and think about what I’ve done. Proper HR.
There really is one thing I’ll miss above all, however. And it requires a little context, so bear with me.
Last Thursday The Spectator ran a review of one of our books. A biography of Dusty Springfield. Dusty, famously, was bisexual. This is the opening paragraph of the review:
“Call me a crazy old physiognomist, but my theory is that you can always spot a lesbian by her big thrusting chin. Celebrity Eskimo Sandi Toksvig, Ellen DeGeneres, Jodie Foster, Clare Balding, Vita Sackville-West, God love them: there’s a touch of Desperate Dan in the jaw-bone area, no doubt the better to go bobbing for apples.”
In this paragraph alone the reviewer has: wrongly equated bisexuality with lesbianism, made derogatory and sweeping remarks about the appearance of a number of female celebrities and literary women based solely on their sexual orientation, and, just for good measure, added a great smattering of condescension. It’s one hell of an achievement; I can’t even express how offensive it is in so few words.
The reviewer is Roger Lewis. What I didn’t realise while reading this last week – becoming increasingly riled and appalled at The Spectator’s decision to run such a crass review – is that the wheels were in motion, and a contract drawn up, for us to publish Mr Lewis’s next book. When I was told, I decided this was something Iain Dale should know about. His response (this is where Iain’s ever-poetic turn of phrase comes into play): ‘Fuck me gently. Put everything on hold.’ In the space of a week after the review was published, Mr Lewis and his agent have been informed that we will not be proceeding with the book in light of Mr Lewis’s homophobic comments, a letter has been sent to The Spectator, and we’ve burned bridges with one of the principal reviewers at the Daily Mail and The Speccie.
Roger Lewis is a highly respected, well-connected and prolific book reviewer. Indeed, he’s reviewed a great many of our books in the past. The decision that was made and the action that was taken could conceivably come back and bite us. But that’s what it means to be a Bitebacker. And I couldn’t be prouder.
Now I’m off to Sky News. I wonder what they draw their lines with…