Latest news with #EmmaBarnett
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
Naga Munchetty's new book flops in the charts as price is slashed amid BBC Breakfast bullying probe
The price of Naga Munchetty's women's healthcare book has been slashed after it failed to set the book charts alight. Her tome – called It's Probably Nothing: Critical Conversations on the Women's Health Crisis (and How to Thrive Despite It) – only came out last month, costing £22. But now it is on sale for almost half price at £11.99 and is languishing at 1,825 in the Amazon book sales charts after attracting just 22 reviews. Naga penned the book to discuss her own and other women's experience with 'medical misogyny' after it took more than 30 years to receive her adenomyosis diagnosis. Adenomyosis, which affects one in 10 women in the UK, occurs where the lining of the uterus starts growing into the muscle in the wall of the womb. Naga's book currently has a respectable Amazon customer rating of 4.2 stars, however, one reviewer had an issue with BBC broadcaster's knowledge of oral sex. They penned on Amazon: 'I have one criticism: on page 184 she describes oral sex as licking or sucking the vagina, penis or anus. What the heck happened to the labia, perineum and clitoris?' Another said: 'This is a complicated subject and can't be presented in such a unidimensional way. The diagnosis that 'Its probably nothing' is overwhelmingly correct and the alternative is unnecessary tests. ' However, BBC pal Emma Barnett gushed: 'Sizzling with rage and disbelief, here's to a much-needed women's health revolution.' MailOnline has contacted Naga's representatives and publisher for comment. Naga has been on a publicity tour for the book amid her work on BBC Breakfast and on Friday kept a low-profile as she left the studios alongside co-presenter Ben Thompson The news show has hit headlines in recent weeks as a number of those working on the programme has come under criticism, including Naga and editor Richard Frediani. Staff have defended their 'overwhelmingly loved' boss under fire from Naga - and claimed 'he's not a bully at all and the truth will come out'. It was revealed last week that editor Richard has reportedly taken an extended period of leave, after an internal review of bullying and misconduct allegations was opened into the show. It was previously claimed that the show's staff are feeling increasingly 'uneasy' around Frediani, and just last week it was claimed that Naga and other presenters no longer speak to their 'loathed' boss. But now some have rushed to defend Richard. One of those members of staff told The Mirror: 'He is not a bully at all and the truth will come out. 'He's a great boss and was - and is still - overwhelmingly loved by the team, who respect his drive, expertise, and journalistic ambition. 'He has delivered great audiences and the first ever Bafta for Breakfast. He can be brash and opinionated but works so hard for his team and allows people to flourish.' Another said: 'Yes, he is old-school and can rub people up the wrong way but it's always in the pursuit of great television. 'It's the best-rating breakfast show in the country - it's not supposed to be a walk in the park. 'Some - Naga included - need to understand this. It feels like it's a case of presenter power turfing out a brilliant journalist.' A BBC spokesperson said: 'While we do not comment on individual cases, we take all complaints about conduct at work extremely seriously.' Last week the BBC reportedly launched a bullying probe into BBC Breakfast, which has been branded 'toxic' behind the scenes in the latest crisis for the corporation. Back in April, MailOnline exclusively revealed some staff had expressed unhappiness with the show's editor Richard, accusing him of being on occasion 'aggressive' and 'belittling' towards his underlings. Now, tensions are said to be 'rife' between hosts Charlie Stayt and Naga, who has already expressed her uneasiness about Richard's behaviour, with the probe said to have left the newsroom 'divided'. A source told The Sun at the time: 'To the viewer BBC Breakfast is a warm, gentle programme, one that is flourishing in the ratings. But beyond the cosy red sofa it is a very different picture. 'Several people — crew, production and even presenters — have been very unhappy'. 'Tension between Charlie and Naga is rife. Fredi is very old-school and has some slightly tyrannical tendencies. 'He is very cerebral but also quite aggressive in his methods. Some people think a recent promotion has gone to his head'. 'Meanwhile, Naga, who is passionate about speaking up if she believes something is wrong, has spoken to people who are unhappy. 'Formal complaints have been lodged, so the BBC has to be seen to act. The probe has really divided the newsroom'. More recently BBC Breakfast staff have reportedly compared the studio to 'the Hunger Games' after an internal review of bullying and misconduct allegations was opened into the show. BBC Breakfast has been on screens since 2000 and Richard joined the show in 2019.
Telegraph
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Stacey Dooley took her baby to a brothel in Nevada
Stacey Dooley has revealed she took her eight-month-old baby to a brothel in Nevada while making a documentary about prostitution in the United States. The broadcaster, 38, recalled the story in an interview about balancing motherhood and professional life at the Hay literary festival in Powys, south Wales, alongside fellow journalist Emma Barnett. Dooley, whose book Dear Minnie: Conversations with Remarkable Mothers was published in March, said: 'There's nowhere that child hasn't been. 'When she was eight months', Dooley said, 'we had this gig in the diary to go to the States to make a documentary about this legal brothel in Nevada. 'I'd sort of signed the contract and was like: oh, she'll be eight months, that'll be fine. I'll be fine to go to a legal brothel in Nevada! 'Anyway, the trip comes, and I'm nowhere near comfortable leaving her so I take my eight-month-old child to this brothel in Nevada. 'I have to ask the sheriff for special permission, because she's under 18. It sounds like a comedy sketch, but it's legit! 'I have to then rent a trailer to put [my child] in. Her dad stays in this trailer with Minnie looking out the window while I'm filming and then going back to the trailer to breastfeed Minnie, and all the girls [working at the brothel] are like: 'Morning Miss Minnie!' 'I'm like: she'll be open minded if nothing else!' Campaigner for gender equality Nevada is the only US state that allows legal prostitution in the form of regulated brothels. Dooley has been a campaigner for gender equality since she began her career as a documentary filmmaker with the BBC. She chose to focus one of her first films, in 2010, on sex slavery in Cambodia. Dooley has been in a relationship with dancer Kevin Clifton since 2019 after the two were paired up on Strictly Come Dancing in 2018, where she was the winning contestant. Asked for her views on the shifting language around motherhood, such as terms like 'chestfeeding', Ms Dooley said: 'For me, I suppose I always try and prioritise other people's feelings. 'And I've also had to be aware that even when having these kinds of conversations, I don't want to ever equate motherhood to womanhood. That's something I'm really clear about. 'I don't think becoming a mum means you're any more of a woman or any less of a woman. 'So for me, it's all about trying to be aware of people's opinions, and you know what their preferences would be while talking about my experiences.'
The Guardian
29-04-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
My mum died in A&E last month – and the place was like a war zone
Another morning, another absolutely bananas conversation about transgender people, without any trans people involved, following the supreme court ruling that permits the exclusion from single-sex spaces of anyone not born into that sex. On BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Emma Barnett was asking care minister Stephen Kinnock about wards in hospitals, and came out with the immortal line: 'Do you think it's right for trans people to be segregated from other patients, as an interim measure, or for the future?' Great save, that 'for the future' – because if you're going to interpret this ruling as a requirement to exclude trans people, what does that mean in practice? Trans women on men's wards, trans men on women's wards? This delivers dignity and respect to precisely no one; so, sure, 'segregate' away, and it would have to be for ever, because it would otherwise be an interim measure on the way to what? The relentless demonisation of trans people has led us straight to a place where every choice is impossible, using words that recall, or should recall, the darkest days of prejudice and hatred. I've spent the best part of 2025 in and out of various hospitals in London, and I have some observations that in a sane world would give a little texture to this debate, but in the world we're in are just waved away, because of course it's more important to focus on harassing the small number of trans hospital admissions there are, and ignore a wider system that's in crisis. There isn't a single NH hospital in the UK that could afford a separate trans-only wing, but that's just the tip of the iceberg of things they can't afford. My mum spent some weeks admitted in south and west London, and, in any six-bed, single-sex ward, a minimum of four people had dementia or, at the very least, had been so discombobulated by infection and unfamiliarity that they lacked capacity. Never mind what you would make of a trans man in the bed next to you, following the supreme court decision; nobody in any ward needs to be dragged into a hot-button issue. They need calm, kindness, emotional support dogs and a social care system that's functioning well enough that they can get out of hospital. My son, meanwhile, was in a male-only admissions ward in central London, after a pneumothorax, next to a guy who needed a pretty urgent mental health intervention. I was not wild about leaving my kid there overnight, but nor was I wild about where we've got to, as a society, that mental health provision is so poor it's blue lights or nothing. When my mum died, though, it was in A&E, which is the last sentence I ever wanted to write. It would not have occurred to you to worry about who identified as which gender, nor would it have been possible to separate anyone, because the place was like a war zone. There was a woman in handcuffs, a man who vomited for 11 hours straight, people lying face down on the floor … I swear I glimpsed a man's internal organ. It was an absolutely brutal scene, full of people doing their best in impossible circumstances. It looked nothing at all like the healthcare facility of a developed nation. So I don't want to hear Wes Streeting off in some fantasy world where trans people are treated in private rooms in NHS hospitals, or Stephen Kinnock tying himself in knots about all the things that shall be done after 'careful consideration'. I want to see politicians dealing with real problems, and journalists asking real questions. I want to see the discussion recentred so that priority is given to things that matter – the life-and-death business of a health service – not lost in some vindictive land of riddles where trans people don't belong anywhere so they'd just better hope they never get ill. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
The Guardian
22-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Emma Barnett: ‘People ask, is that the radio you or the real you?'
At school, I was the girl who wanted to dissect sheep lungs. I had a lack of horror around gore, I'm not squeamish at all, which was helpful when it came to all those needles for IVF. I thought about being a surgeon. I also thought it would be interesting to become a fishmonger. I'm fascinated by fish – I don't know why. As an only child, radio was my companion. I had a little battery-operated radio at the table next to my cereal bowl. I broadly exist on six hours sleep. After Today, I've got about half an hour of chat left in me before I need to be silent. The goal in every interview, the absolute dream, is fresh snow. You're walking somewhere no one has gone before. I wasn't a rude child, but I was certainly inquisitive. I have a curiosity. Sometimes, in conversation, people say, is that the radio you or the real you? Radio me is me. I routinely work through bone-grinding pain. Work is my salvation from endometriosis. It fills my brain. Being a parent teaches you how to not be the main character in your own life, to play a different role in your own existence. When you're forced to learn that, you're also forced to relearn what made your life enjoyable before, and how to access that. I was left with two kids when my husband returned to work. I decided to survive the week by writing down everything I felt – a portrait of maternity leave. I hadn't expected to have a daughter and thought it would be a great map for her should she ever go down this road. On radio, you need to think of someone to talk to, so I think of my Auntie Jean, always a crafty fag on the go, on the white wine by 6pm, maybe a champagne cocktail depending on the night. I thought of her the first time I did Question Time, the first time I did Woman's Hour and the first time I stepped out seven months ago and did Today. She meant so much to me, and that has helped me in moments of doing something new. There are parallels between maternity leave and lockdown: only being able to get out once a day to your local park, knowing your area better than you ever have before, there being limited things you can do, wondering who you are, having an existential crisis. The thing I find hard is toggling between work and parenting. The jaggedness comes in the gear changes between my different roles. It's almost like relearning a dance step every time. Remember that those who matter don't mind and those who do mind don't matter. I have a job where I can get judged on a moment in time, and it amazes me how judgments can be formed without the full picture – but that's the world we're living in. You've got to back facts, you've got to back yourself, you've got to have people around you that you trust. Maternity Service: A Love Letter to Mothers from the Frontline of Maternity Leave by Emma Barnett is published by Fig Tree at £12.99. Buy a copy from at £11.69
The Guardian
16-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Maternity Service by Emma Barnett review – a tour of duty in early motherhood
'It's a bloody weird experience, maternity leave, and it's OK to acknowledge that,' Emma Barnett writes in Maternity Service, her short, no-nonsense guide to surviving this curious – and relatively recent – phenomenon that can feel, in the thick of it, like a temporary exile from the outside world. For many new mothers, the abrupt severance from their professional lives and previous identities can leave them flailing in a strange and destabilising limbo where it seems almost taboo to voice any feelings of dislocation, in case these come across as a lack of maternal devotion. Barnett proposes that the whole business should be rebranded – rather than 'maternity leave', which suggests a nice relaxing break, it should be styled 'maternity service', with all the latter term's connotations of a military tour of duty. Words such as 'duty' and 'service' are unfashionable these days, she says, but it can help to reframe this strange, formless, sleep-deprived time as a finite period in which you are performing a series of tasks in the service of keeping your newborn alive. There are echoes here of Claire Kilroy's brutally honest novel of early motherhood, Soldier Sailor, in which the narrator is the soldier of the title; Barnett mentions that she and a new mother comrade still greet each oother as 'soldier'. This may sound rather a grim and brutal depiction of what is widely supposed to be a joyful time, but Barnett's mission is to separate maternity leave as an experience from the new mother's feelings about her baby. Even when the child is adored and longed-for (both Barnett's children were born after gruelling rounds of IVF), these early months can leave women feeling cut off from the wider world, their partner and their former selves, and her aim is to offer ways to navigate this rupture. By her own admission, she is not the first writer to attempt a warts-and-all rendition of the physical and psychological demands of this life-stage. Over the past decade or so, an increasing number of women have articulated, in fiction and memoir, the ambivalence, drudgery and isolation that attend new motherhood and were once considered unsayable. For this freedom to be candid, Barnett says, 'we owe a debt to those who initially transgressed and sometimes paid a price for it. First mention goes to the important writing of Rachel Cusk, starting with her searing A Life's Work.' If Barnett's book lacks the poetry of Cusk's 2001 memoir (my life raft during my own maternity leave, 23 years ago), it is written with a different purpose: less a literary and philosophical inquiry into the inequalities and conflicting emotions inherent in motherhood, and more of a practical how-to guide. Barnett explains that she is writing in real time, during her second tour of duty – thoughts jotted down in snatched moments between feeds or while her infant daughter naps. In an encouragingly breezy tone, she offers advice on how to adopt a practical uniform or build a semblance of a daily routine, as well as the importance of connecting with other 'sisters-in-arms' and being honest when you are struggling, to relieve one another of the pressure to look as if everything is under control. This frankness is also essential for future generations of mothers, she explains: 'And when they do ask us, the women who have gone before them, for an honest account of maternity leave and beyond, we struggle to explain it. We partly gloss over the truth out of loyalty to and love of our own beautiful babies.' There are, inevitably, limits to the applicability of these lessons. Barnett is careful to check her privilege at every step, but she is writing principally for women from a similar demographic to her own – middle-class professionals, who find their work stimulating (more so than wiping up poo, anyway) and who miss their autonomy and the previous sense of equality in their relationship. These caveats aside, Barnett is a sympathetic and cheerful companion, and in writing this book she has provided valuable dispatches from the front line, the better to enable a more honest transmission of hard-won wisdom to her own daughter and all the mothers yet to embark on this bloody weird journey. Maternity Service: A Love Letter to Mothers from the Front Line of Maternity Leave by Emma Barnett is published by Fig Tree (£12.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
