Woman's Hour - Gossip: why we love it, why we do it, professional gossips, & its use in novels, films and television

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

What comes to mind when you hear the word gossip? You’re probably imagining two women together whispering or laughing. Gossip has a bad reputation, but it can be a way of forming and maintaining, friendships. Comedian Rachel Parris and improv-artist Lauren Shearing who she works with on 'Austentatious: An Improvised Jane Austen Novel, talk about the role gossip plays in their relationship.Why do we gossip and why's it get such a bad rap when we enjoy it so much? We hear from Dr Kathryn Waddington, Emerita Fellow in Psychology at Westminster University who's researched and written about gossip for 25 years. In the Middle Ages the word gossip meant ‘women who supported other women during childbirth’ so when did it change into the ‘gossip’ we know today? Historians Professor Melanie Tebbutt from Manchester Metropolitan University and Dr Natalie Hanley-Smith from Oxford Brookes University discuss.So what if the discovering and reporting of gossip is your profession? Journalist Marie Le Conte, a former diarist for the Evening Standard and Camilla Wright the founder of Popbitch look at the life of a professional gossip.Sex and relationships are a cornerstone of gossip. It’s often - ‘who is doing what?’ and ‘with whom!?’ But what happens if you broadcast your life to the world? Rubina Pabani and Poppy Jay are the hosts of BBC podcast Brown Girls Do It Too. In the days of social media - how do they find the judgemental gossip mill?Gossip is often a key strand in storylines in films, TV and novels. Whether it’s introduced for comic effect or used in the build up to the climax of a drama, or to build intrigue in a reality television series Literary critic Alex Clark and film and television critic, Hanna Flint illustrate how.Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Kirsty StarkeyGuest: Rachel Parris Guest: Lauren Shearing Guest: Dr Kathryn Waddington Guest: Prof Melanie Tebbutt Guest: Dr Natalie Hanley-Smith Guest: Marie Le Conte Guest: Camilla Wright Guest: Rubina Pabani Guest: Poppy Jay Guest: Alex Clark Guest: Hanna Flint

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning and welcome to the programme and one entirely dedicated to gossip, the good, the bad and the ugly. What comes to mind when you hear the word gossip? Maybe you're imagining two people talking together, they might be whispering, they might be laughing, they might be lowering their voices, they might be checking who's behind them. Gossip has a bad reputation, but it is also a key way of forming and maintaining friendships and key bonds. Today we're going to explore the history

of it, how it's changed, what we need it for, why it's good and bad for us, and how gossip is changing at the moment, especially in the era of social media. Plus, we separate fact from fiction or gossip, if you will, on the differences between women and men when it comes to how we spread information about those around us. As I mentioned, it does form a part of our social adhesive and can play a key role in certain friendships. So where better to start today's special programme than with two friends. Comedian Rachel Parris, who you might know from the late night mash report or her book, Advice from Strangers. Or the theatre show, ostentatious and improvised Jane Austen novel, which she performs with her friend Lauren Shearing.

Also an improv actor. And I'm told that both of you are not adverse to a spot of gossip. A warm welcome to the studio. You're in the right place. Rachel, what comes to mind? Are you a gossip? I enjoy gossip. I think it's really important. There's obviously different kinds of gossip. Sometimes it's like a really important bit of information that women are passing to each other. But that kind of idle bonding gossip that I think is fairly harmless is really important in friendships.

And I think as long as you're at ease with the fact that you will sometimes be part of the gossip, and I think I am, then I think it's to be celebrated. Oh, I've heard all sorts about you. Oh, I don't expect no less from Lauren. Yeah, I've only met Lauren a minute ago, but she was busy to get me a praise. Lauren, what do you think of when you think of that word and especially with friendship? Yeah, I think it's, as Rachel was saying, it's essential for me. A good gossip, a cup of tea or a glass of wine, probably.

It really shows you who you can trust. You've really got to trust those women that you're gossiping with. And also, I feel like it's we're hardwired for gossip. It helps us to know who's doing what, are we judging them by our own standards? What's happening with their behaviour? How do I correlate that with my own? Also, it's super fun. What makes it fun, do you think? I think it's just the idea of, if there are people whose behaviour is a bit transgressive, a bit exciting, perhaps something you wouldn't do or approve of. If there's something you've noticed and you want to share it with your friends.

We've got a good friend who is in a new relationship. It's really exciting to be able to talk about that. I want to say to them, this is exciting and fun. But have you also noticed they look a bit like brother and sister? You know, I think it's incredibly cathartic to just get together with the women you trust and know that what you say isn't going to leave that room, you're in a safe space, and you can hang together in that way. I love it. Do you think it is key to bonding as well, Rachel? Because what you're saying there sounds like you have to talk about someone else to feel close to another.

I think that is partly true, really. I think obviously in any good friendship, you don't spend the entire time talking about other people. You're talking about your own lives, of course. But I do think there's something about finding common ground you can almost only find that common ground in finding commonality in talking about someone else and I don't think it necessarily is always a really serious hard-hearted objection to someone else I think if it's fairly kind of light and often even if it's negative it's sometimes with love or with care or worry about someone else then I do think it's often coming from a good place and I think it results in a positive within that friendship I mean you've really sold it there thank you because there's

no money from gossip for this by the way there's a message that came in from Loz we were telling our listeners about this program before it happened and she's written in say, I pride myself on being a trusted confidant. If someone talks to me in confidence, I will put it in a mental vault, except one time. A friend told me over text she was pregnant and not to mention it to anyone yet. I immediately contacted my mother

with a guess who's pregnant text. Only I messed up and I sent it to the friend. I lamely tried to cover up my mistake, but ended up admitting it to her. It was excruciating. I felt so awful. I was just super excited with the news after being the first among my peers to have a baby,

but that's no excuse for my lapse in judgment. It wasn't my news to tell and I'll forever cringe at the memory. That's a really bad one, isn't it, Lauren? Yeah, she's had an absolute shocker. And that's the thing. Have you ever had a shock Lauren? Oh, yeah. She's had an absolute shocker. And that's the thing. Have you ever had a shocker? Oh, many.

I think I've become really adept at doing the thing where you might be talking about someone and sharing an opinion and then you can see by the look on the person's face that they've come

into the room behind you. And I've become an absolute professional at changing the subject very quickly. Rachel and I were talking earlier about our lovely WhatsApp group that we have with women. And then sometimes you'll be talking on that WhatsApp group

and then you'll splinter off into a different group to say, what on earth is she talking about? Dangerous. Very dangerous. But you have to be a pro. That's the thing. I am now very well practised in the art of surreptitious gossip. You can't be messing around like that lovely lady

and not watching your own back. Which I feel like you wanted to say something after hearing that. Well, I was just going to say, that's an example of like, and I'm not saying, oh, of course there is malicious gossip. It exists, of course it does. And when it's about pregnancy, a particularly sensitive topic, you know. But I think what Lauren was talking about, like those splinter WhatsApp groups,

I can't think of a better example of that is a group of five women who absolutely love each other like sisters and those splinter groups while they are often they started off because we're like buying a birthday present for the other one but then sometimes it's like what's she talking about on the email but the gossip is being done by people who love that person so it may seem like oh a, what a gossipy, horrible thing to have a splinter group, but splinter groups are sometimes done with love. It's great if you're in it.

It's not so great if you're not. But I very much assume there's one about me, I'm sure. More than one. My blood ran cold when I read that message because I had a memory. Do you remember when you could do, for a while, three-way calls on landlines? And I once patched in the wrong person and we were talking

about that person and she just said down the phone I was about 15 this is your worst nightmare and so that's what came to mind and I thought well that serves me right because I don't I don't always think necessarily you know good comes from it it just makes you feel good maybe for that that moment or if it's done in love I don't know I remember once I had I forwarded an entire chain between me and my sister my sister is an incredible woman we're very close and gossip does really bond us together I had an ex-boyfriend and I had sort of forwarded an email of his to her and we had talked back and forth and we had drafted my reply together and my first reply she had just said oh this is way too vicious and I sent the entire thread to directly to the boyfriend and he just replied and said thanks for this it was nice to see the editing process

and I and I died inside What happened to the relationship? Oh, very much over. He's happily married now. Are you? Soon to be. Oh, OK. Congratulations. A bit of gossip about that for you.

It's always good to know who's doing what. I think also I mentioned there, and we will come back to this later in the programme about the role of gossip in literature, but I did mention Jane Austen as part of your work together, some of your work together. Lauren, what is it in Austen do you think about gossip? Oh, I think it's absolutely pivotal. I think Jane Austen is amazing at showing you the whole range of gossip. So she's definitely really sensitive to the moral danger of gossip, but she also sees that it serves to empower poorer characters and also just to move her

narrative along so gossip is a huge part of her novels um and she she knows that it's fallible and she's got this lovely quote about gossip being like a stream and the rubbish that it collects in the turnings will be moved away easily enough you You know that it's not necessarily the whole truth, but you can take what you need from it. I think she was amazingly incisive in showing that gossip could ruin a woman at that time, but also elevate and connect women. And save women. And save women, exactly.

You look at her novels, so you've got, as Lauren says, you've got the mrs jennings and the mrs bennett's and the miss bates who are these sort of immoral gossip she sort of looks down on them in her writing as gossips but then what is lacking in the society she's describing is useful gossip she shows what happens when men particularly don't gossip what happens when they don't share vital information so what happens when colonel brandon doesn't disclose about willoughby it puts eleanor in danger what happens when darcy doesn't disclose and spread the information about wickham it puts young women in danger again and it causes lydia to elope with him indirectly because that knowledge wasn't there

and actually i feel like she's saying you know gossip as it's called but actually you look at things like the me too movement the whatsapp groups we know about in the comedy like women sharing information as you say about predatory men if that had happened in those novels would these terrible events not have happened so I think she was very insightful about the uses that gossip can have yes I think that's also it's good to to distinguish between that where it's helpful and where it can look after you yeah and also give you some power because there are messages here talking about you know I loathe gossips for instance from Fiona negative gossip can be so damaging and yet there's also messages about it being a network a network of information and the two of you could be described, of course, by some listening who absolutely loathe it,

as I say, that we have had some of those messages, as just big bitches. How do you feel about that? That's another word for it. Bitching. I don't know that we bitch about anyone. So you don't think gossiping is bitching? No.

Go on, what do you think the difference is? Well, bitching is quite specific. It sounds like bitching is like being unfairly criticising women for... good reason kind of thing. Whereas gossiping, I think, is essentially sharing. It includes bitching sometimes. Because people say, oh, can we just have a bitch? Can we have a gossip?

You know, there's different ways of introducing it. But in my feeling, gossip is occasionally bitching perhaps, but it's just sharing quite intimate information about family and friends in a really personal way and sharing opinions on it.

Well, you've defended it very well. I will till I die. Well, there you go. And as it sounds like with some of the novels and some of the historical examples, it was quite key to not dying

or at least getting the information out there. Rachel Paris, Lauren Shearing, thank you for making such a good case to start off a programme on gossip. Well, let's figure out why we do it. What underlines our need to share this sort of information? And do women really do it more than men? Are women better at it? To answer some of these questions, I'm joined by Doctor of Psychology at Westminster University, Catherine Waddington. Also, I'm told, very recently known as the international queen of gossip because she's written and researched about it for 25 years. Welcome to the programme.

Thank you. I thought we'd start with a definition. What is it and what is it not? Okay, so if I come at this in the academic space, there are many, many different definitions. And in the academic space, psychologists will study gossip, sociologists, anthropologists, communication studies, historians, and they'll all have a slightly different angle.

The definition that I think is most helpful is that it's evaluative talk and the evaluation can be positive or negative, helpful or harmful. It's between at least two people because you can't gossip with yourself and it's most often verbal, but it can be non-verbal. And also it can be visual just in terms of some of the looks that people give each other or the emojis in an email that might express some evaluation about the person that's the topic of the email. And why do you think we need to do it? Because it does seem to be a need. There's an evolutionary psychology argument. And back in the day, I used to think, oh, there's more to life than evolution. But actually, somebody called Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist, wrote a really influential book back in the mid-90s called Grooming Gossip and the Evolution of Language.

And his argument is that language actually evolved amongst female grooming circles in primates to exchange socially useful information about who you can trust, who you can't trust, who's a free rider. And that evolved in order to exchange information, social information that can be useful. And I suppose that, therefore, when we hear the word, I think often it is associated with being trivial. It's got a lot of connotations that are negative because we've heard quite positive cases so far being made. It has also dangerous points for people's lives

and endangers their reputation. But also, what about this idea that women gossip, men talk? I think that's a myth, and I've written quite a lot about this. Women might feel slightly more comfortable about using the term gossip in their women's conversation. When I was doing my PhD 25 years ago, and when I first started, I was thinking about the importance of social networks and organisational culture. And I remember one woman that I interviewed, and she said, so why do you use the term gossip? Because it's so

pejorative. And I said, yes, I used to talk about networks. And then she stopped me and said, yeah, actually, I know. I don't say, come into the office, close the door, let's socially network. Come into the office, close the door, that's socially network. Come into the office, close the door, that person is driving you round the bend and we need to... So women sometimes feel a little bit more comfortable about it. Men, in my experience, might feel less comfortable, but will use different words.

Oh, he's a great networker, good listener, good interpersonal skills, or we might need to have a briefing before that meeting. And so might use euphemisms rather than introducing the act of and then when they're actually doing it, are they any different? No, they're not. They're not. And I totally go for it in the same way. And so context is really important as to whether something is seen as gossip or not. If you look at evaluative talk between two men about a person that's not present but that's been playing football 25 to quarter to four on a Saturday afternoon,

that's evaluative talk but it's entertainment and it's football commentary. If it was two women in a different context it would be gossip. Yes and I also wonder if when you've been studying it if you've noticed if people are, regardless of men or are certain people better at it is it a skill i think some people are better at it yes maybe because of their religious beliefs or their experience if they've been damaged by gossip really don't want to engage i was interviewing men about their experience of gossip i said to one guy that i interviewed so what was your first thought when you agreed to be interviewed by me? And he said, do you know what? I went home and I said to my girlfriend,

there's this woman from the university, she wants to talk to me about gossip. And he said, my girlfriend fell off the sofa laughing. And she said, what do you think you and Gary do when you go down the pub on a Wednesday night for boys' night? You gossip, but you don't call it that. Yeah, I also think it's interesting, and I know everything we say when we try and look between the sexes, you know, ends up being a generalisation.

But I wonder if, as you say, men don't sometimes realise they're doing it when they're doing it, but then also can be some of the worst people at remembering it. You know, if I then ask a male friend or my husband, what was said? What did you learn tonight?

Maybe not quite in those words. Oh, we're just together and i though would come home from a meal or an exchange oh you'll never believe this and then they said this and the way that she said this was really interesting i want to like analyze debrief the debrief and i know that i'm also paid for a living to talk so perhaps it's a it's an occupational hazard but i do want to share again is that a different and again that that's how sometimes gossip can be validated and substantiated or sometimes how it can go through the chinese whispers route and then the end point of the gossip actually might be that's when it potentially can become harmful if it's untrue and and the bit

about harm and gossip there's always an ethical component, because the potential for gossip to cause harm is actually always there. But also thinking about the things that get passed as gossip and thinking about the Me Too movement, if that isn't raised and acted upon, then there might be subsequent harm. So harm and ethics is really important. A listener called Karen messaged the programme to say, strategic gossip is useful at work or moving to a new job or home. Choose your words wisely. A great way to get chatting, but confidentiality and respect is key. And on your point about harm, Mary said, for what it's worth, I now avoid gossip. And if I'm presented with it, I say,

I'm not okay with talking about somebody who isn't here in the conversation having had my reputation unjustly smeared by a would-be singing student who told everyone that my publicity was a lie meant that I saw my carefully built up workshop business collapse almost overnight I never got my numbers back up in that area and later I found out that she'd done this kind of thing before so was that gossip whatever it was it was certainly malicious and she obviously got some perverse pleasure out of telling everyone not to trust what I said about singing classes. Maybe this is the shadow side of gossip. Absolutely. One of my participants a long time ago, she said, I now always say, why are you telling me this? I don't know that I want to hear this. What's your motivation?

Do you want me to act upon it or do you want me to spread it? So that's a good question, like, you know, your listener. Okay, well, that's a good test, a good question to have in our minds. Dr. Katherine Waddington, thank you very much. International queen of gossip. Thank you. You're with that, good. Okay, I like it. We're going from the queen now to some history.

What a better way to do this. The history of gossip and how it did become something, certainly at first, mainly associated with women. Perhaps that's changing or maybe the word's staying as it is. The historian's Professor Melanie Tebbert from Manchester Metropolitan University and Dr Natalie Hanley-Smith, Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, both join me now. Welcome to you both. Melanie, I'll start with you because we've heard about how gossip is used now and perhaps also the different ways it can be used and the benefits and the harms, but it actually dates back to the 12th century. Is that right, the term?

Yeah, it does. I mean, it's a good example of a word that as it becomes associated with women is really downgraded. Originally, it denotes a godparent at Christian baptism, you know, the idea of kinship and God, that kind of thing. But over time, that spiritual relationship becomes more of a physical relationship between women. In the birthing room, the gossips were the women that a woman invited into her lying-in room, her birthing room, to help and support her bringing food and bringing drink. And it was a space from which men were excluded. And, of course, as a space from which men were excluded,

men were extremely curious as to what went on there. What were they talking about? Are they talking about me? Are they passing on salacious details of what I've got up to in the bedroom? That kind of thing. And interestingly enough, in France, it gave rise to a distinctive literary form called gossip at the lying in, which was based on the idea of a man hiding behind the bedroom curtains and picking up, eavesdropping on all kind of erotic, scandalous stories that women were thought to spread among themselves. But at this time also, you get a lot of criticism of women gadding about, women wandering the neighbourhood to spread the news of the birth. And this was also, rubbing around the neighbourhood was also suspect

because it held the possibility of giving away family secrets and it was also associated with sexual impropriety because somebody who had a loose tongue might also have loose morals as well. Gosh, so we go from godparent in the church to a group of women around a woman when she's giving birth to that. I mean, that's quite a journey for a word. Yeah, that is over several centuries. I know, I'm very grateful that you synthesized quite a lot of time for us and put that together. But it's an extraordinary journey and very influenced by the fact it was women.

Yeah, in popular culture by the 15th and 16th centuries, there are a lot of popular ballads which criticise women for gadding about and associating it with gossiping. So there was one ballad, a gossiping wife's gadding about, click clacking, never at home, everyone's business, minding abroad but never minding her own and there's this sense that women are going away from where they should really be back at the house i suppose in contemporary terms getting the dinner ready being there and their whole idea of women talking away from male society is actually seen as very threatening. So all this is really an attack in some respects over quite a period

of time on women's sociability. And it's later in really the 18th century that you get the first definition in a dictionary of what gossip is, which is defined by Dr Johnson as a gossip is someone who runs about tattling like a woman at a laying in. So there's very much this sense, again, that it's an inferior form of talk. So there's a malicious aspect to it. There are a lot of religious prescriptions against gossip, as you might expect. There's a demon called Tuti Villas, who is depicted as eavesdropping on idle chatter in church to record sinful speech. And while he's eavesdropping on

everybody, it tends to be the gossipers are almost invariably depicted as women, because they are seen as being especially susceptible to idle chatter and they can't be entrusted with secrets, especially those of their husbands. So again, there's this sense that women are occupying a space through their speech that is separate and threatening to men. Well, you've brought up the 18th century, which hopefully gets me to the work of you, Natalie, Dr Natalie Hanley-Smith. You look at, especially I understand the upper classes and how that was manifesting in the 18th century.

Take us there and what was going on, especially with women. Yes, so I look at kind of fashionable society and their affairs and their scandals towards the kind of the end of the 18th century and going into the 19th century. And I think at that time gossip, I mean, it's still very much frowned upon, it's seen as a trivial activity, still very much associated with women's social interactions. But actually, it performs a really important role in polite society and fashionable society, because it allows women to kind of discuss the rules of conduct or the codes

of conduct and their moral values. And these aren't values that have been written down anywhere. They're quite ambiguous, really, what sort of behaviour can be condoned and what sort of behaviour is really transgressive or too transgressive. So in that role, it allows women to kind of police each other's behaviour a little bit, I think, in the 18th century or the late 18th century. And there's also some really interesting developments with the press and gossip as well, with the creation of these early gossip columns, perhaps you might call them, like the fashionable world, which is in the Morning Post, it's printed every day. And it allows people to kind of read gossipy anecdotes about the misconduct and intrigues of polite society.

Yes, which often wasn't that polite. Definitely not very polite. There's a lady in waiting of Queen Victoria, Lady Flora Hastings. What happened to her in connection with gossip? Yeah, so gossip could have, you know, I mean, we kind of discussed this earlier, but a very detrimental effect on women's lives. Sometimes it was actually unfounded rumours that are circulating. Sometimes gossip was based on real relationships and real behaviour that was happening. But the case of Lady Flora Hastings was quite tragic, really. She returned to court with quite a swollen belly. And there's a lot of rumours going around. She was unmarried, that perhaps she was pregnant

out of wedlock. And even the Queen sort of believed it and gave credence to these rumours. And she was then subjected to quite a humiliating medical examination to prove that she wasn't pregnant, otherwise she was going to be exiled from court. And it transpired that she actually had some sort of liver disease and she died a few months later and was definitely not pregnant. And this was a big scandal in Queen Victoria's reign, so right at the beginning.

Yeah, and I suppose at that point, women are not really having the voice to reply, especially in those sorts of circles with her position. Yeah, I mean, it was difficult in her position, but towards the end of the 18th century, women are very much encouraged to ignore gossip about themselves or to try and pretend that the rumours aren't real and to overlook it, really. But there's certainly more of an emphasis in the 19th century to respond to rumours, to bring people, to bring newspapers to court as well for libel and defamation,

to respond to it, to be seen to respond to it so that people can't believe it. Yeah, I think it's interesting how the responses have changed, and especially how women have thought about what to do when they are spoken about. I read some really interesting letters when I was doing my thesis on this about women saying, have you seen this paragraph in the newspaper about your sister, for example, that has that kind of thing going on. Everybody's saying that she's eloped with somebody else. You need to bring her to London and make sure that people see her,

that they can see that the family is still supporting her so that the rumours start to go away. So how to respond and what to do when you are being talked about. Dr Natalie Hanley-Smith, thank you for that. And a big thanks to Professor Melanie Tebbert to take us through rapidly where we have come from and where it went with gossip and how it's still developing. We'll continue to look at through the programme in this special all about gossip. But we just heard there about the rise of the newspaper column and, of course, the media. I mean, if this was your job, if the reporting of gossip is your profession, does it change perhaps how you view it and how you do it in your personal life? If you continue to do it, maybe you need a break from it. What are your boundaries?

I've got some very well-equipped people now to help me with this. The journalist and author Marie Leconte was a diarist for the Evening Standard for a couple of years and claims while it might get dismissed or reported as an unsubstantiated rumour, gossip is also a key part of politics. It's not just celebrity culture. It keeps Westminster running. Camilla Wright is the founder of Pop Bitch, the legendary email newsletter with the secrets of celebrity, music, media and politics, sent straight to inboxes for over 20 years now. Welcome to both of you. Maria, I thought I'd start with you because of the political element. We talked a little bit about power before, but it is trivialised often, gossip.

It is allied to women, and yet politics has mainly been a man's game until quite recently, and there's a lot of gossip there. Oh yes, absolutely, and I think a lot of men spend a lot of their time gossiping. It's just that they don't call it that. And I found that really interesting. So I wrote a book about the role of gossip in British politics and reached out to many MPs, male and female. The men overwhelmingly were completely happy to chat, do it on the record, entirely fine,

you know, just having a nice chat. And nearly every single female MP I reached out to said, fine, we can talk, but I do not want my name anywhere near this, which I found fascinating, because that means that I think men, again, consider gossip as, you know, maybe a thing they can talk about from a slight distance, I suppose, whereas the women clearly were worried that if they talked to even one, you know, journalist about gossip, they would be instantly marked as someone who gossips, i.e. not a person to trust or not a person to take seriously. And yet it does have a key role in politics,

not just the reporting of it, you would say. Oh, it absolutely does, because I think fundamentally a lot of the time gossip is about the content of someone's character, how they behave in private, how they behave in their personal life, can they be trusted again, what do they really believe, etc, etc. And in politics in general, but I think British politics specifically, that massively matters, because British politics is a place where a lot of what happens is entirely informal. And actually, what matters is not just where you stand politically on X or Y issue, but on who you know, who likes you, who doesn't like you, you know, again,

whether you're someone who can do a job and do it quietly, whether you're someone who would stab someone in the back, someone who's got maybe a personal life that's a bit too busy and so on. So as a result, it is actually very important. For people who work in politics, it would be that MPs, journalists, special advisers, even civil servants, they kind of need to be aware again, I think, of that personal layer in people's lives. Do you think it stops you from getting on if you don't do it?

I think you can certainly give it a good shot, but it's probably harder. You probably have to be considerably better at your job if you decide to not engage, I think, in gossip at all. When you were a diarist, and I know you didn't just cover politics in that field, you covered anyone who was at the party or anyone who was out wherever you were. Do people walk away from you in that role? Oh, very often, many people. So George Osborne walked away from me mid-sentence. Alastair Campbell walked away from me mid-sentence. Did they know who you are? Oh, no. So it usually goes, hi. And they're like, oh, hello. And I'm like, Marie from The Evening Standard. And so it depends. Some of them walked away at that point when I said the word diary. And that always quite a fun one because I occasionally in their defense I would ask quite

cheeky questions the Osborne especially I will not repeat the question but I sort of got halfway through and you could tell in his eyes that he saw where I was going and he just turned around and left is it unrepeatable yes oh right I love a question I love an unrepeatable one. Camilla, hello. Welcome to the programme. Hi. It's lovely to have you. I get sent still snippets most weeks of Pop Bitch. I do need to subscribe because people say, have you seen this, Emma? You need to know this. And it's got this lovely element to it actually being sent it that's quite old school. And I wonder for you how you feel Pop Bitch has aged and changed as gossip has changed or has it not changed? I think the world has changed considerably in the last 20 years. When we started PopBitch, the Internet really was just starting and we were trying to find a way of sending information to friends and other journalists, other PRs in the creative industries.

Things that you weren't allowed into interviews, that when you'd met people or you'd interviewed them, but those were the things that everybody really wanted to talk about. And sort of email was a way of doing this. Back then, it felt like the Wild West. You could get away with anything. But I think over the last 20 years, the world has changed. Social media has very much changed it. And I think everybody now is much more circumspect, much more careful about what they say and to whom, because what could have been a fun comment about a pop star or even somebody who worked in politics or a newspaper 20 years ago could be career ending now. So I think what your contributors earlier were saying about context is everything in gossip.

I mean, your training is as a journalist. Do you try and substantiate everything that comes in? I know there are efforts when it's a bigger story to do that. What level of care and checks goes in? Because now everyone has a microphone, as it were. They've got an account, they can write whatever. Yeah, a lot of things do come in anonymously and that you have to be pretty careful about. But a lot of things come in to us with the name of the person attacked. So you can be pretty sure if it's a plausible source. And if it's not, you can try and find out from somebody else if they think this sounds like this is true, or they might have heard the same. You can get it wrong, but we don't tend to print

anything that doesn't seem to have legs. How many times have you been sued? We're just coming up to our 1100th issue. I think we've had a hell of a lot of legal letters because I think you're not a publication worth your salt if you're not offending the rich and the famous and the people who should be offended. But actually, we've had a couple of attempts at suing us, one super injunction, but the guy who took out the super injunction against us

ended up in jail for that very same story. So it wasn't something that we were on the wrong side of. It turned out he was. So yeah, I think we've done OK. Do you think that what you do is important? We've talked about the role of gossip and we've talked about where it features in different people's lives. We've also talked about on the personal level. Of course, you're writing about people who are usually very famous. I think gossip generally, but I mean, where we've tried to sit with pop, which is sitting in the gap between the public face of somebody who puts themselves in the public eye and the private reality. And I think people want to know the behind the scenes. Is X really like X? Is it just fake? And I guess popular culture in some ways does do a valuable service.

I mean, if we look at what's happened in the last 20 years in both America and Britain, we've had a president and a prime minister who essentially have come from the gossip columns. Donald Trump made his name through page six gossip columns and then being a TV presenter. Boris Johnson was really a TV presenter. So I think if you don't take seriously people in celebrity culture, things can happen. Or you get a completely different leader than you might have been expecting 10 years ago, or even 10 minutes ago. Exactly. So for you, Maria, I was interested when you work in gossip, how it changes you personally as well. Has it I mean, are you naturally a gossiper? Oh, yes. No, I'm such a massive gossip. So I think the two, the two main components, I think of a real professional gossip, as was mentioned earlier, was, I think, endless curiosity, which I definitely have. And you know, is also why I went into journalism. But also, I would of a real professional gossip, as was mentioned earlier, was I think endless curiosity, which I definitely have.

And, you know, is also why I went into journalism. But also I would say a good memory. And I would say that's really my strength as a person is that if someone tells me a juicy bit of information, I will literally never forget about it. I wish I could say, oh, yeah, I wish I could say working in gossip in a professional manner changed my attitude to it personally. And I stopped. Maybe I grew up a bit, but actually that would be a complete lie I still really really enjoy gossiping. And then what does that mean in terms of how you feel about some of the stuff you've printed as well have you ever regretted any of that have you ever thought maybe we shouldn't have shared that? No so I think we're always fine but then so diary columns are quite interesting and they nearly feel

quite sadly outdated I think in some ways because often a lot of what we do would be a sort of wink and a nudge so we kind of we very much knew where the line was and we never ever crossed it so actually looking back there's nothing I think I really regret. Have you got a favourite story from when you were a diarist? Yes I mean I'm not going to talk about the sort of various winks and nudges because I don't want to get sued but I think my favourite one which very random, was when Chris Grayling was at the Ministry of Justice. I got a tip that before becoming an MP, he was working at a television company, the same one that made Wizardoro, which I'm told was a famous TV show before I moved to Britain. And Chris Grayling got increasingly annoyed because Wizardoro is kind of the star of the company, whereas his bit was

the very unglamorous bit that made all the money. Anyway, eventually, people one day went to the studio to record more episodes of Wizard Aura and found that Hangul, one of the puppets, had been kidnapped and there was a ransom letter written in cut up newspaper letters. And when they saw that and they thought, OK, that's going to be Chris. And so marched onto his office and apparently Chris resentfully gave the puppet back. And as I learned this, I had to call, obviously because we're a newspaper, I had to call the special advisor, the Ministry of Justice, to say, Hi, I've got a bit of a weird one for you today. She said, OK, let me talk to him and come back to you in a few hours.

And she called back and she said, which I absolutely love. So Chris doesn't actually remember this happening, but it sounds like something he could have done. So, you know, fine to run with it, which just baffled me so much. How many puppets can you kidnap for you to not remember that one specific kidnapping? Especially as the minister in such a department as Justice.

Exactly. The kidnap of a puppet, a very good one. Camilla, I'm sure you have many to pick from. Is there something that comes to mind if you think of a story that either maybe you couldn't quite believe or something that crossed your desk? This is quite an old one, but I think it's probably my favourite when it comes to thinking about why people like gossip

and probably why the subject matter of puppets has sustained all this time. There was a story in a photo shoot Kate Moss was at, and it was in a derelict house in East London. She was delightful on the shoot and at some break said to the crew, can you show me where the toilet is? I really need to go to the toilet. So they said, yeah, just over there in the corner, but just to warn you, Kate, it's got no door. So she turned around to them and them and said well how the hell do I get in then and it's just one of those things that just makes me always think that it's the perfect story about how you think about models and celebrities and gives you the opportunity to gossip and laugh without feeling bad about yourself. Yes I think

I think where there isn't necessarily a victim if you like of the gossip and it's also quite funny is is hopefully where your your job probably leads to a lot of entertainment for people. And also, as you say, makes you smile. Has it changed how you gossip in your life, your job? I think unlike Marie, yes. As a gatekeeper of so many secrets, you know the power of gossip and you know for both good and for bad what it can do. So I think I'm super careful about absolutely anything my friends personalize or anything like that that would come my way. Interestingly, more than 50%

of our readers are male. We're talking about women being associated with gossip. I think the internet gives a sense of anonymity and men piled into this space quite happily and gossip away. You know, it is a male friend of mine who often sends me these snippets from Pop Bitch. He's almost like my Pop Bitch correspondent. So there you go. That tallies with something in my life. It's almost like getting permission to gossip. Indeed. Camilla, thank you so much for talking to us. Camilla Wright, the founder of Pop Bitch and Marie Leconte, former diarist for The Evening Standard, but a journalist and author.

Let's talk now, though, we have touched a little bit on it, about how sex and relationships are often a cornerstone, I should say, of gossip, not all gossip, but it's often who's doing what and with whom. But what happens if you don't try to hide what you're doing? And in fact, you broadcast it to the world. Rubina Pabani and Poppy Jay are the hosts of the award-winning BBC podcast Brown Girls Do It Too. And this autumn, they'll be going on tour for the first time with their live show premiering at London's Soho Theatre. No topic is off the table.

They love to talk about what perhaps others do not think they should. And it's lovely to have you on the programme, Rubina Poppy. Welcome. Thank you so much. Rubina, I'll start with you. How do you feel about gossip yourself? Because I suppose in some ways you're getting ahead of the gossip. Yeah, it's true. I think we try to be really like chatty and open about our personal lives. So that makes other people feel comfortable. It's kind of that thing of like, if you're the weirdest person

in the room, somebody who feels weird will feel less weird because you're the nutcase. I'm really into gossip. I think it's really important to like check in with other people about stuff and I think sometimes negative gossip things that we think are bad especially coming from an Asian community if you say well you know she's divorced this happened to her that opens the door for lots of other people to think well maybe I can get divorced or if it's a bit more salacious gossip like did you know she actually loves up the bum and you quite like it up the bum that's great you know it makes it kind of accessible for people we make anal accessible that's what we do also we're asian honestly i think we've got this sketch on our show we're actually rehearsing today we've called it the kind of auntie sketch but it's two of us or donning headscarves we call it samosa soulmates

that's our app and we're just like looking at all these women swiping right swiping left she's too fat she's like this she's like this it literally does make our community go around is the lifeblood of what we do. And, you know, we keep giving women a bad name. We call it the bitchy auntie network. Men are just as bad. They're just as bad. Have you found by trying to disrupt, Rubina, what is said and what isn't said that you felt more control? Oh, yeah, big time. Like I think if you're the one saying all the things that you felt more control? Oh, yeah, big time. Like, I think if you're the one saying all the things that you think people are saying behind your back first, that tends to help. The only example I can give you is when I was at school, people used to tease me because my name sounds a

bit like Ribena. And so they'd always tease me first, but I'd be like, hi, I'm Ribena, like Ribena and get there first. And then it felt like they couldn't really touch me because I'd already like, yeah, exactly as you said, taking control. And I suppose also what you're alluding to again, Poppy, I wonder what's been some of the response from, I don't know, some of the family members or those older than you who may have been part of almost the Jane Austen kind of, what will they say? What will this person say?

What will the neighbours say? Have they reacted well to the podcast? Do they listen to it? Do they admit to listening to it? I mean, how much time do we have it's almost like jane austen and bridgeton is like asians on speed um sisters three and five stopped talking to me when they heard the podcast for a year that's pretty bad um and then yes yes yes they did someone was talking about whatsapp there's like an offshoot whatsapp group there's a whatsapp group with the three older siblings we call ourselves the better ones i mean i've got more family whatsapp groups than i have clean

knickers but put it this way someone clipped a thing on a sort of a shade borough style instagram and then they saw it and then of course gossip rumor ensued and then of course they were like flabbergasted and i should have called them out individually one by one to be like hey i've got the news i'm doing this podcast but i didn't get around to it because there's six of them and i'm really busy um so one of them stopped talking for like nine months the other one for a year but they got over it and they're now on series two of episode one so they've gone through a whole other journey um my parents don't know but they don't speak english so that's fine and then uh we get loads of trolls don't we yeah well that that is another part of of this because i was thinking i I mean, I alluded to it with talking about Pop Bitch, where there are journalists working, trying to verify information.

But now with social media, anyone can say anything. It doesn't have to be substantiated. You don't have to look. I mean, we could channel our 19th century selves, as we were hearing earlier, where women were not encouraged to respond or end of the 18th century into 19th. And then you had to respond. I can't quite remember the order there. We went through a lot of history very quickly. But, you know, there's websites, we've talked about it on Women's Hour before, such as Tattle Life and other websites like that,

which are just spaces for people to talk about others. Do you look, Poppy? Do you have a peek at what people have said? Or are you someone who just doesn't go there? You haven't met my mother or my father. I am built like an armour. I've got very, very resilient skin. So I actually love it. And a lot of the trolls form part of our show because it's not like an homage to them. But it's so entrenched, like bitching and trolling and gossiping is so entrenched in our communities. And I think you, Rubina, at one point you were like not thinking

about even going ahead for the second series because some of the comments are a bit horrible. Yeah. I mean, you do a podcast. You're not expecting people to publicly shame you. I mean, some of the comments are quite funny. Somebody said I look like Noel Fielding, which I actually quite loved. So, yeah, I think you have to be able to like take some of that trolling and take it on the chin a little bit. But I did find it really difficult. And if you're a public person, as I'm sure everyone on here knows, you've got a Twitter account. If you're a woman on the Internet, it it's rubbish sometimes but that's why you have to empower it and own it and be like yeah all right say that whatever it doesn't matter well i was going to say there's ways of feeding it as well and and you know a lot of people ignore but a

lot of people just can't and then it gets into their mind and have you got a way of responding that you've come up with rubina oh god no you We use it in our show. Yeah, we just come, we just talk to each other about it. I think that's the other thing about gossip that's quite fun is like it's cathartic, right? You know, like if I'm feeling down about something,

I can come to Poppy and be like, some guy said I look like Noel Fielding and then Poppy will show me pictures of Noel Fielding and I'll be like, he's actually quite handsome. And then we'll kind of talk our way out of it and be like,

I look like Noel Fielding and that's, you know, you full circle. So that's quite good, isn't it? If you gossip about the gossip about you, you can feel a bit better. This is good. I like sort of redirecting the gossip. But a lot of people stay in silence with it.

I think that's the difference. They don't, you know, have a friend perhaps. Or maybe they're so upset about what they've read as well. Yeah. When you have a public profile, I think trolling is part and parcel. And you're right. I think some people are resilient, others less. So I think it's really important to have a network and, you know, redirect the gossip. Also what you were saying before about like people,

anyone can comment now, anyone's on it, but you also can create like a fake Instagram profile. You can be anyone you want to be as well. So like you can change who you are online and change that quickly if you feel differently about it. Like I think it's just an open forum for lies and disruption. Great. Going back to those who actually know you though, away from the strangers, because however you deal with that, when people know you, that's what can hurt. If you think that they're talking about you, family members, especially if they're talking about your personal life as well, whether you've been divorced, whether you've had issues in your marriage or a relationship or things going on, I don't know, with trying to have children. Poppy, what was your take on that and how do

you tackle that? I mean, I get gossiped about all the time. I went through an arranged marriage and a divorce and I was the first in my family to have a divorce and God, that was terrible. You were young, weren't you? Yeah, I was 19 when it all kicked off, 23 when I was separated and then 25 when I was finally divorced it was this big thing and prior to that like I was a good Muslim girl I was really sort of obedient I was the eldest of six I was just like perfect in every way and then obviously after my divorce I went turned into a whore and had a sex podcast but the trolling never bothered me my sister's not talking to me really stunned that really really hurt and it just took time and patience and we have very

different perspectives on sex and opinions and i'm probably a bit more liberal than they are and i just had to give them time and i just had to be patient with them and hope that they would they would come around i was gonna say if the point of sometimes gossiping within our communities is to shame someone so like did you know she was divorced did you know she's actually living with somebody that she's not married with that's definitely happened to me and like that is just to shame you that's just to make you feel bad about something but if you believe that it's you and that you're happy with that you have to kind of silence those voices around you yeah and you have to put up with it like people are always going to talk about you behind your back because you talk about people behind their backs you just

got to know that exists also I think the other thing is used as a bit of a currency as well so it's like you have to co-opt it and use it as a currency that fits your sort of narrative if you can but I know it's not always easy for everyone has it changed how you are having known you've been gossiped about as well have you thought well maybe I shouldn't say that maybe I won't do this or has it has it driven it into overdrive our problem is never maybe we shouldn't say that I feel like we should be gossiped about more so we can shut up sometimes I love the fact you seem to own it all. Even the Noel Fielding comment. But Noel Fielding's a great style icon as well.

So you're there. You're there. And the Ribena line as well. It's all good lines. Rubina Pabani, Poppy Jay, hosts of the award-winning BBC podcast. And it's very good too, I should say. Brown girls do it too. And they're going on tour for the first time.

I mean, anything's going to happen on that tour. But, you know, look out for it and enjoy it. And they want you to gossip about it. Go for it. All that to come. Thank you so much to both of you for joining us. I know that we've been talking the whole programme about gossip. And as I say, you've been in touch in advance of this programme to tell us your feelings on it. It would be very remiss of us if we don't talk about culture and especially television programmes, the role of gossip in films, also, of course, in books. Now I'm joined by the literary critic Alex Clark and the film and television critic Hannah Flint.

Welcome to you both. Alex, let's start with you because was it Truman Capote who claimed all literature is gossip? Yes, it was indeed. There's also another quote that I found from the wonderful Cynthia Ozick, who said the gossiper is often a grand imaginer and like the novelist, an enemy of the anthill. And I rather liked this idea of the gossiper as the enemy of the anthill and the novelist too. Yeah, literature is oral culture originally that becomes written down is about storytelling way back to the Canterbury Tales what were they but a group of stories being performed by pilgrims anxious to outperform each other and not necessarily always telling the truth. Yes and we did mention Jane

Austin right at the beginning of the programme but of course not the only writer far from it as you say to rely on gossip but not but not just as a background noise, but really as a key character. Yes, entirely. And the gossip and the idea of telling a story that might have a sort of fallible narrator or a loose and fluid grip on what the truth is, is right there at the beginning. You know, think of something like Tristram Shandy as a man telling the story of his life with huge digressions. But I think at the point where it becomes essentially a sort of bourgeois art form in the most kind of literal sense of that, it's a drawing room art form for quite a long time.

And then it also becomes an art form that is closely monitoring morality and the way that morality plays out in sort of bourgeois society. You see from Austen to Edith Wharton to Elizabeth Gaskell to Henry James, of course, Portrait of a Lady, where, you know, the evil Madame Merle is one of the kind of tormentors of Isabella Archer, kind of via gossip. And you understand that it really becomes part so often of the marriage device, of the idea of keeping women in their places. Again, look at something like Edith Wharton's House of Mirth, in which, you know, the almost ungovernable heroine is kept in place,

really, by the strictures of those who are talking about her. Hannah, let me bring you in at this point, because the same is very much true of many of the shows that we've enjoyed. And maybe we haven't thought about the role of Gossip, unless of course it's in the title like Gossip Girl. Yes, indeed. And it's so funny because I feel like a lot of the references, like so much of film is adapted from literature. So I'm thinking of like Pride and Prejudice

and like Gossip is a great plot device. Gossip Girl, of course, is one of the most famous TV shows about it. And again, adapted from the book. And when that book was originally written, digital culture hadn't quite established itself then. So this idea of having this like online omnipotent eye and looking at everything, seeing what you're up to and capturing images, it was quite ahead of the game. And also you've got this Manhattan elite society. So it's kind of similar to what you're saying about the Wharton stuff if you go back to the women which is that kind of based on the play adapted to the screen in 1939 and we see how

gossip as social currency can improve your standing or like bring you all the way down when you find out your husband's having an affair with someone who's working on a cosmetics counter but also interesting again where that film and that play, only women are in it. So once again, it's really defining the lines of gossip as being a specific female endeavour. And when we look at the women's film and how that evolved into the chick flick, we see far more of gossip playing into the kind of narrative and the storytelling. I think Mean Girls is a great example of how gossip can be myth-making. You know, there's this opening kind of montage about Regina George, about like, I hear she insures her hair for 10,000. I hear she does car commercials.

But then at the end, it becomes this real catalyst for chaos when the burn book with all these false rumours gets released and suddenly all the women in the school are just going mad. It can be really fun, but also kind of destructive. Well, because I was going to say on the destructive point, there will be some, I'm sure, who accuse some of our discussions today of glamorising gossip or excusing gossip. We have talked about some of the darker sides.

We had that message earlier from a listener where gossip destroyed part of a professional life. Reality television and gossip, talk to us about that because, you know, we've got constructed reality, haven't we, through these programs, but a big part of it is engineered gossip and some of it isn't engineered either. It's real. Yeah. It's so interesting with the Real Housewives and Selling Sunset, even our Kardashians, where you've got kind of two levels. You've got the gossip that's going on in the media,

and then you've got the gossip that plays out on the screen. And sometimes you hear about the gossip before we actually see the show, and then we see the reaction to how that's playing out. And I think also we have this parallel social relationship with these people on screen. And it's interesting how you can see something where just say on the Kardashians,

you hear rumors about Tristan Thompson like cheating on Khloe Kardashian and then you see what happens and you can see the reality of how this is like breaking this woman's heart we have this weird separation because we've got the screen between us we've got the newspaper articles so sometimes we can kind of lose the empathy I think what you're saying earlier in the show about how it can break things and how actually gossip can be negative it could could also create like slut shaming. I'm talking about the fiction stuff. Like I think there was a film in 2000 called Gossip, which didn't really get amazing reviews, but it went in the ideas of starting a room about a girl sleeping with someone and how that ruins her life. And we see that there's a whole narrative about the guy who

made up the rumor, raped her early on. So it's he said, she said. Easy A is a great film about how someone overhears something, misinterprets it, and suddenly riffing off the scarlet letter as it's Nathania Hawthorne in the film. We see how like a woman's reputation is ruined. I think someone else earlier in the show was talking about how actually with Me Too, we wouldn't have the reckoning, I don't think, if we didn't have people talking about it, women sharing their stories to warn people away. We had the book She Said, we obviously had the Harvey Weinstein expose, and we're going to soon have She Said the movie. It's so interesting to me because I feel like it's a pejorative term and it can do harm, but it also can do good.

And I think, again, this gendered way of looking at it. There's a great podcast called You Must Remember This, and there's a whole section about Luella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, famous Hollywood gossip columnists, and how they work within the kind of myth-making, building and breaking of careers in Hollywood. But even today, when you look at rumours, when it comes to who's going to be in a new Marvel film, theories about what's going to go down storylines, a lot of these are men. So I feel like as we expand, we should ameliorate

gossip a little bit more to show that it's actually far more than stereotypic. It's built up to be. Thank you so much for that, Hannah Flintner, the film and television critic. Alex, there will be some of our listeners, especially when they hear the words, the Kardashians, who will think, I'm above that. I don't watch that sort of thing. There'll be other people thinking that is my bread and butter. But through books, perhaps it's a bit more palatable. It's billed as highbrow if it's written by certain authors. And yet perhaps it does all just come down to gossip and talking about somebody to somebody else. Do you know what I mean? The Kardashians is just another way of viewing human behaviour and human dynamics. It just comes to us through a screen and books come to us through the pages,

and books are very, very various. But, you know, picking up what you were saying about rumour, you know, allied to gossip sometimes being a sort of engine of actual tragedy, you might forget that a book like Tess of the Derbables, I will come into the present day, but Tess of the Derbables is sparked by idle chat. It's sparked by a parson telling Tess of the Derbybills. I will come into the present day, but Tess of the Derbybills is sparked by idle chat. It's sparked by a parson telling Tess Derbyfield's father that they should really be rich, that they're really rich and famous. Now, what is that other than a sort of social media, internet reality TV sort of plot device? I mean, plots may seem very contemporary, but oftentimes are as old as the

hills. One of my great pleasures is to read sort of psychological thrillers, often set in kind of communities of women and couples, quite often with very nice houses. They're often on holiday. If I wrote a parody, I'd call it Kitchen Island. And they are frequently about somebody trying to maintain their social standing or get into a clique with a much more glamorous and apparently successful woman. And that is almost always done by gossip, by hidden identity, which again is a sort of ally of gossip, and by the manipulation of the truth.

I think you need to do it. I think you need to do it, Alex. Kitchen Island. I've got it out there now so no one else can steal it. Well, no, that's the opposite. Come on, you've not gossiped about it. You've put it on national radio. Now you've got to do it in case someone does steal it.

Alex Clark, thank you to you, the literary critic there. And thank you so much to all of my guests today for having a good old gossip about gossip and how it can be good, bad and ugly, as we said at the beginning. Thank you for your company today. I hope we've given you a lot to chew on. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies.

I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service,

The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.