I was not overfamiliar with the work of the singer and TV presenter Jane McDonald. From what little I know, she comes across as a lovely person who has worked hard throughout her career to get where she is today. It’s just that the places she inhabits are not the sort of places I would normally inhabit. But yesterday, I learned something about her that has endeared her to me for life.
Ms McDonald came to public notice when appearing in a show called The Cruise, which was all about – surprise, surprise! – about her performing on a cruise ship. I am in that small minority of folk who wouldn’t be seen dead on a cruise ship, which is partly down to the sheer numbers of cruisers (is that the correct word?) on board, so I never saw what the fuss was about, but clearly millions did and it made her a star. Fair play that girl. By the same token, I didn’t see her appearances on the lunchtime ITV show Loose Women on the simple grounds that I saw a bit of it once, came over all sick and had to turn off. My reaction to her work does not seem to have dented her career. Yet it was something she once said on Loose Women that made me warm to her.
McDonald, you may have noticed, is a proud Yorkshire lass and has never forgotten her roots. In 1984/85, her father and brother were miners and went on strike for the best part of a year in order to try to stop Margaret Thatcher closing the pits. “That were hard work,” she tells The Guardian. “Terrible. It wasn’t just about miners. It was every industry: the mills, the steelworks. The whole north just collapsed.” When Thatcher died, McDonald was booked to appear on Loose Women. She said this:
“All the Londoners on the panel were devastated. And I went, ‘My thoughts are with all the miners that she … that actually died.’ A lot of people couldn’t stand it. They couldn’t look after their families.” All the miners that she … yes, I can see where that sentence might have gone.
I didn’t expect to read that from a Cruise Ship singer but it certainly restored my own memories of that long and ultimately unsuccessful struggle by the miners and indeed by workers in all manner of industries. When people say today, “We don’t make anything these days,” I reply with the truth, which is that Thatcher single-handedly destroyed British manufacturing. It is but one of her terrible legacies and Jane McDonald had the guts to speak her mind at a time when post death media coverage of this terrible prime minister was obnoxiously fawning. Contrary opinions were not allowed, but there were plenty of us who had them, just like Jane McDonald.
Once, she was subject what is known as “a credible death threat“. I have no idea what this was about but it does go to prove what Noel Fielding said when playing The Hitcher: “You oughta be careful boy – there’s a lotta weirdos around ‘ere, lotta nasty people… lotta nutters”.
I might become a fan, now. McDonald has even made a country album called Nashville and as I age disgracefully the country music genre I am beginning to enjoy more and more. Either way, I’d like to know a bit more about her and I may even dip into a few old episodes of The Cruise, which have recently re-emerged on the BBC iPlayer.
This is all about small-minded me, mind. If it turned out she was a big supporter of Nigel Farage, I’d have the exact opposite feeling about her. But a humble Yorkshire woman who knows where she came from and crucially has never forgotten will certainly do for me.
