In a new regular feature, Jack Lesgrin gives a wry perspective on what’s caught the eye over the past week
A shepherdess speaks
In a fluff piece to promote her new Channel 5 documentary, celebrity Yorkshire shepherdess Amanda Owen opined in The Times about how “the snowflake generation, they can’t do anything”. Laying the blame at the door of parents, and not knowingly affected by self-awareness, she noted of her own situation that “living here gives you a different mindset, a can-do mindset.” I imagine her motivational tips will go down as well as a tank full of slurry among the millions of parents who do their best to bring up children in small houses or flats in our inner-cities, with tiny or no gardens, limited outdoor space, low incomes, high crime levels, and sky-high property prices due to a planning system that favours rural NIMBYs. After all, not everyone is blessed by living on a 2,000 acre farm, or having lucrative second jobs such as presenting a hit Channel 5 show or being a best selling author. What next, tips on entrepreneurship by someone who inherited the seed capital from a rich relative?
Add Fennel for the flavour of success
Speaking of which, your correspondent was intrigued to gain yet more insights on the magic of success during BBC Radio 4’s Profile of the obviously talented Emerald Fennell – who readers may know as The Crown’s Camilla and who is currently Oscar-nominated for her film Promising Young Woman.
It is important that the world understands the elixir that could explain her mastery of more career roles by the age of 35, than most provincial towns could muster across their entire population during two centuries (actress, novelist, television writer, screenwriter, film director, television producer, film producer, and playwright).
Could it be the bohemian household of her childhood, which welcomed the great and the good from showbiz? I guess had most people been asked by family friend Andrew Lloyd Webber to re-write Cinderella for him, it might have boosted their confidence, too.
