I too am amazed at the kindness of 4,100 readers who wrote to columnist Liz Jones offering her cash and accommodation after she wrote about her debts and depression.
The generosity bestowed on this woman who is employed by the Daily Mail and makes a living by rubbishing her husband (now an ex-husband) and the rural community where she lives (she believes her home was shot at for barbed comments she made about living on the edge of Exmoor) while dressed from head to toe in designer outfits, included support from a man who earns only £46 a week and a woman who offered to share her £20 “emergency” money.
What I would like to know is if Liz has accepted these humbling personal sacrifices which came from the heart, and how would she have responded if people had sent her begging letters in her self-indulgent heyday.
I’ve just scanned Liz’s diary column in yesterday’s You magazine and it appears to be an extract from a book she she is plugging about living on Exmoor, and not a diary piece at all. Will she get paid for this? If so, could she share some of these proceeds with her deep-pocketed, sweet natured readers who are probably much worse off that she is.
yes Ellee she also has a book out..No way was I going to buy it…. a just get rid of her .. just googled her, found this..
Oh my goodness do, we need people like her ..
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1229399/LIZ-JONES-What-happened-I-tried-live-65-week.html
Anne, thanks for the link, and she gets paid a fortune for writing this. I do think Liz Jones needs some kind of professional help. She needs to consider her real values and try getting on with people, particularly her local community.
It strikes me that the standard approach as used with street beggars is appropriate – offers in kind.
“The shelter’s over there, luv, but I’ll buy you a bag of chips.”
Actually, on the evidence of what she’s written in that article, it’s almost certainly a complete fabrication. Consider:
The ‘Rock Bottom’ Diary entry went online Saturday May 8th at about 8pm and was published in the MoS Sunday the 9th.
The ‘thank you’ piece was printed in the MoS the following Sunday, the 16th.
In the latter piece, she wrote this:
“I woke last Sunday [i.e. the 9th] in my usual morass of extreme doom laced with high anxiety… I sat down at my computer. There were 4,100 new emails in my inbox… On Monday [the 10th], in among the bills, were dozens of letters, mostly addressed to ‘Liz Jones, somewhere on Exmoor’.”
Let’s be generous and say she had breakfast first, not sitting down at the computer until, say, 11am. That means that, for anyone not reading the online version of the Diary, they had at best ninety minutes to two hours to read the piece and send an email, assuming they got their Sunday papers delivered or got them early. Now, one or two, maybe a dozen is credible… but over four thousand on a Sunday morning ? Likewise the letters with ‘donations’ arriving on Monday, which had to have been posted on Sunday, a day on which there hasn’t been a mail collection since 2007. There is no possible way she could have received any letters arising from the piece printed the preceding day !
Bellagio, the thought had crossed my mind too. Isn’t that a bit desperate for attention? I think this story will come back to haunt her.
Very well put, Ellee. I know so many people who struggle and not through buying big houses with room for a pony, or two.