Thanks Barbara for your comment. I have plenty of books left and am doing a roaring trade through Trade Me. A lot of women are buying it for themselves or a friend for Christmas, and many have commented that they couldn't find it in bookshops. And I'm getting a lot of lovely comments and feedback which makes me glad I put it up for sale in the first place.
Good news. I can now offer some copies of my book Bitch and Famous at a special reduced price of only $15.00. You can get them on www.trademe.co.nz by searching Bitch and Famous or see other payment methods below. This is a significant saving as it retailed for $37.00 so if you haven't got around to buying it now is the time as I don't have many left. Perhaps there is a woman in your life who needs some work/life balance and would relate to my story or is interested in what goes on behind the scenes in the women's mags? It would make a great Christmas present for Mum, Grandma, your sister or girlfriend. Or maybe your book club would like to read it and you can take advantage of my special bulk offer which is $100 for 10 books. A bargain.
I have to say I really genuinely loved this book and I really didn’t expect to. I expected to gag at her bitchiness and shallowness and be irritated by an endless parade of pseudo macho conflict driven encounters by people who are famous only for being famous. There’s a bit of all that but Wendyl’s writing is so good and her personal insights so raw and honest that one simply can’t help responding to her as a human and not just the bitch of the title. Wendyl is best known as the editor of mega selling women’s magazines especially Woman’s Day right at the time when chequebook journalism came to town. So while this is very much Wendyl’s own story the loss of her child through cot death, her breakdowns, her husbands, her friendships it’s also the story of her industry - the media. She offers real insights into the daily life of magazine editors and journalists, their pre-occupations and the lengths that must be gone to, to secure stories. There are tonnes of famous people scattered through these pages. She seems to know or have known or no longer be speaking to many of our household names. Paul Holmes, Susan Wood,
Review by Margie Thomson, Easymix radio.
I bet there are a few A List celebs who’ve been trembling in their imported Italian shoes, wondering how they’ll fare in Wendyl Nissen’s expose of life behind the covers of the glossy magazines we see on our newsstands every week. Nissen is the ne plus ultra of magazine editors - at varying times, she’s been the brains behind Women’s Day and the New Zealand Women’s Weekly and during the eighties she was part of the process of creating celebs in this small town. Pre 1985, television presenters were heard not seen and it was considered a sign of poor story telling if you had to stick your face in front of the camera. By the end of the 1990s New Zealand’s small screen stars were commanding big bucks for selling their marriages and babies to the women’s mags and more often than not, it was Nissen who got the juiciest plums. This is an unflinching look at life at the top of the magazine publishing industry in
There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned panic about the price of food. The spectre of having to pay more for basics like bread and cheese can cause one to come over all retro and make like we are still in the middle of both World Wars and the Depression. Saving the roast fat for lard to use on bread instead of butter, plugging holes in shoes with newspaper, or taking a leaf out of Muriel Newman’s book of a few years ago which suggested making raincoats out of plastic bags.
Well maybe things aren’t quite that bad yet, but it’s an easy button to push. The announcement by the NZ Herald that we are paying 28% more for food would have sent a chill down most family hallways until we realised their exhaustive investigative team paid $5 for a bunch of broccoli. Shop around, Herald, shop around.
The only shortage I’ve ever faced was car less days in the 70s; and once I couldn’t find any kibbled wheat for my home made bread for months. So adjusting to not being able to get what I want when I want it, or having to pay more for it will be a toughie.
Which is when I rediscovered the Aunt Daisy Cookbook, given to us by friends and the edition my mother cooked from all my life.
“This,” I said holding it up for my family to witness, “will see us through the toughest of times.”
“Mmm,” they mumbled in unison. Which is what they do when I say things like: “Spiders are nature’s fly killers, we should learn to live with their cobwebs” as I gaze lovingly at the ceiling or “If we get three laying hens they’ll lay one egg each a day, that’s a total of 21 a week!” as I gaze adoringly at the back garden.
I eagerly read through the pages of Aunt Daisy putting Post It notes on all the recipes I remembered from my childhood, and that night in a rarely seen fit of penny pinching, decided that the few scraps of left over roast lamb were going into Aunt Daisy’s curry sauce. The one my dad used to make.
As he sipped his pinot gris (we’re not quite at cask wine yet) my husband tried to hide his astonishment at what I was throwing in the pot. This is a woman who prides herself on making her own curry powder by enthusiastically pounding various spices and seeds in her mortar and pestle, throws in curry leaves from her curry leaf tree and wouldn’t dream of making anything without her home-made chicken stock. Instead I was throwing in store bought curry powder, chutney, vinegar, cornflour, sultanas, sugar and plain old water.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I muttered. “Not even a can of coconut cream,” I twittered as I chopped up bananas and rolled them in desiccated coconut for the accompaniment. And then we sat down. We tasted. We looked at each other long and hard.
“Delicious, just like my Mum used to make,” he glowed.
“It’s very good isn’t it?”
And so the retro food revival took off. Chicken Hawaiian anyone? Hokey Pokey biscuits? Or how about a nice Salmon (tinned) loaf with Cheese Sauce?
Slowly but surely, the cooking of my parents started to come back to me, as did the strict budgeting my mother used to do, inherited from her own parents. Now I visit the supermarket every morning, when the meat is on special. My freezer is chock full of gravy beef, corned beef and something called a lamb flap which I plan to thaw and investigate at a later date, when the world food shortage has really kicked in. There’s also a particularly attractive pig knuckle which I wrestled off another woman, simply because I spotted it first.
And if the freezer wasn’t so full already I’d be investigating a frozen side of mutton and bagging it up like my Mum used to do.
Next I’m planning to camp outside Foodtown and collect signatures for a petition supporting the removal of GST on fresh food items, like they do in Australia. And when Don Brash mutters to me about compliance costs I’ll answer: “I’ve got two words for you Don ‘computers’ and ‘coding.’”
I’m not sure if we’ve actually saved any money by going retro, but I do know that living like they used to in the old days isn’t a bad way to be. Bring on the car less days.
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Herald on Sunday columns
Every woman has one moment in her life when she rates herself a 10 out of 10. Usually it’s at her wedding, when months of planning and hours of grooming have gone into the perfect image. For me it was neither wedding. It was the other day when I got out of my car at the Foodtown carpark having been shooting for TV all day. I had spent several hours in front of the camera filming some chat segments for April in the Afternoon on the Living Channel and I don’t mind telling you things were looking pretty good. Full make-up, straight hair, silk shirt care of top designer Claire Kingan Jones. As I strolled through the automatic doors I caught a glimpse of myself and thought: “Wow, where did that old chick with the frizzy hair go?”
As did the check-out operator who refused to engage in our usual daily banter, obviously not recognising the TV me. “Takes some getting used to, I guess,” was all I thought as I strolled confidently out into the carpark.
“Maybe one day someone will actually check me out after these shoots,” I wondered as I walked to my car. Even the most married of women appreciates the odd glance of interest. It had been years since anyone had looked at me for more that the standard perusal but I remember it being quite reinforcing the last time it happened, when I was 21.
And then it all went horribly wrong. As I unloaded my shopping I noticed a man sitting in the car next to me chugging a can of beer. He was old, bald, overweight, drunk and to top it all off had a unique growth obviously enjoying its stay on his cheek.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he yelled out his car window. “Wanna root?” At me. The one standing gob smacked in front of him, fixed to the spot in horror.
Great. I was looking the best I could for a 45-year-old woman, thanks to the ministrations of many. And the best I could do was an old, drunk Petri dish.
As I gathered my glamorous self up and carried her off, before my admirer worked out how to put two fingers in his mouth and wolf whistle, I heard a shriek from behind me.
“What the f…do you think you’re doing chatting up that old cow,” yelled a woman who was everything evolution’s little mistake was, minus the cheek growth.
“Wouldn’t you like to know you fat slut,” came his spirited reply.
She held up traffic at this point, hands on hips glaring at me, then him, then me again like John Wayne having a show down in the middle of a bad Western.
And there I was, the centre of a domestic incident in my local Foodtown carpark and I wasn’t sure which event was more offensive. The screaming drunks or the fact that I had just been described as an “old cow.” But there was no denying that in an instant I had become the other woman in a ménage a trios of bad genes, alcohol poisoning and a facial growth from outer space.
Which is when I craved the anonymity of bad grooming. It would seem that “looking your best”, as my mother used to say, comes with the dire consequences of an open invitation to be noticed. The old me wouldn’t have raised a glimmer of notice let alone hope from fungus face as I shuffled past beneath my hair.
Grooming also demands a high price. The necessity of having blow-dried and straightened hair, manicured and painted nails and make-up on most of the time has added an extra two hours to my day. Just to be able to face the cameras. I realise that for many people who aren’t on the TV being that groomed is a normal event. But for me it is a terrible effort.
And then there is the pressure of the show itself. The day I found myself looking down a camera and recommending a quick shot of hairspray to the buttocks to prevent undies giving you a wedgy my 25-year journalism career flashed before my eyes and glared at me with abject horror. The spirits of my mentors circled, laughing uproariously at what had become of me. The ghosts continued to follow me home cackling with glee from beyond the grave. I think it was the late Neil Roberts I heard saying “Stick to print.”
Illustration by Anthony Ellison
Labels:
Herald on Sunday columns
