What the hell was Kellie Maloney thinking about?
She’s shown immense courage by revealing her impending sex change, but what on earth possessed her to join the Big Brother House?
I am not really interested in Frank Maloney becoming Kellie. I wish her well, of course, but what she does in her private life is not my concern, it’s none of my business.
I admit I was surprised when the news came out that the legendary boxing promoter Frank Maloney, who guided Lennox Lewis to the World Heavyweight title, declared he was a woman. I’d known of him in the macho world of professional boxing and he seemed the gruff Londoner who mixed with the big boys in the fight game, where men were men and the women were grateful, but I knew little about him apart from that.
His previous political life worried me far more than his sexuality. When he stood in the London mayoral elections in 2004, he declared, “I don’t want to campaign around gays, I don’t think they do a lot for society.” It does not take someone with the brilliance of a rocket scientist to work out that during his previous incarnation as plain old Frank Maloney, he stood for UKIP where bigotry is compulsory. Even Old Etonian Dave has more liberal views than that, even if his party doesn’t.
Kellie has got a lot of back-tracking to do because a lot of what she said was utterly hateful. It was seriously homophobic. Now Kellie isn’t gay, I understand that, and she has the right to live the life she chooses but there will be people who won’t easily forget her comments in one of the most high profile elections in the country, if not the world.
Hopefully, she has seen the error of her ways. I haven’t read the red top articles about her so for all I know she has apologised and retracted the really bad stuff and if so, fair enough.
The Celebrity Big Brother appearance looks poor to me. We all react differently to events and to me she has done no favours for the transgender community. I am not impressed that C5 has apparently ensured there will be psychologists close at hand during the show, but wouldn’t they be better utilised in a society where mental health services have dwindled to almost nothing? This is Celebrity Freak Porn.
Hopefully, at some time in the not too distant future, a Kellie Maloney story will not trouble the media.
In the meantime, she should really have left herself to get on with life instead of inviting a media shit storm. I am sure the big cheque from Dirty Desmond was not influential in her decision to go on the show.
