Biography:
About:
Education:
Career: Written for The Times since 1996, initially news and interviews, then as media correspondent 1997/1999, and then as a features writer and occasional undercover reporter, 2000-
Current position/role: Feature writer, Columnist, TV critic - currently writes features in T2 and is the 'bargainhunter' columnist in the Saturday magazine
Other roles/Main role:
Other activities:
Disclosures:
Viewpoints/Insight:
Broadcast media:
Video:
Controversy/Criticism:
Awards/Honours: British Press awards: Feature writer of the year, 2004 Carol Midgley, who has been a Times feature writer for the past four years, won the Feature Writer of the Year award. The judges, citing a story on the voluntary euthanasia of an 81-year-old Parkinson's sufferer, praised her ability to take readers through difficult subjects ...
Scoops:
Other: Married to Daily Mirror columnist Brian Reade
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Articles:
- The Kerchers have been through enough - Little wonders viewers were outraged by this crass TV show - 6th October 2011
- Hallowe’en is just too scary - ‘I’m one of those killjoys who think Hallowe’en has become an amoral, consumerist crapathon’ - 29th September 2011
- You can ban cigarettes in films, but how do you stop your child seeing a cool girl smoking in the street? - Several years ago when my daughter had a crack-like addiction to the TV show Peppa Pig, I noticed that Peppa didn’t wear a seatbelt in her parents’ car. “That’s not setting a very good example,” I snorted — then instantly vowed to punch myself in the face for being the sort of pantwetter who cannot distinguish between real life and a cartoon ungulate - 22nd September 2011
- Spare some change for an old shed? - There is never a good time for a millionaire model to ask the public to cough up - 15th September 2011
- As words die out, our culture is coarsening - ‘Will anyone use “spooning” again? Will ears ever be boxed? Fizzy drinks called pop? Idiots be ninnies?’ - 15th September 2011
- TV trials will turn judges into Simon Cowell - It seems like a good idea, but show trials serve nobody’s interests. Plus: what is the true value of marital sex? - 8th September 2011
- No one loves their kids as much as celebs do - ‘Isn’t it sort of a given that one’s children come first? That’s like expecting praise for not kicking puppies’ - 4th September 2011
- I’ll pick Big Brother over a hoody every time - The anti-CCTV brigade have gone a bit quiet since the arrest of thousands of rioters caught on camera - 27th August
- Sorry, Sally, you can’t have it both ways - The Speaker’s wife has gone too far on Big Brother - 25th August 2011
- A-level results: a horror I’ll never forget -Plus: Gerard Depardieu’s mile-high ‘accident’, and why it can be fun to lobotomise yourself with an all-inclusive break - 18th August 2011
- Pinching bottoms is an old man’s game - Why Jeremy Irons has gone too far - 11th August 2011
- Beware the fussy hotel reviewer - I like TripAdvisor. I like the way it set us free from holiday-brochure gush, deceit and cliché, citizen journalism slashing through the tumid claptrap, our community bulls**t detector - 4th August 2011
- In defence of the bodice ripper - Do Mills & Boon et al that take their readers for idiots? Not a bit of it - 27th July 2011
- Smile! Every washed-out summer has a silver lining - The key to surviving a British holiday is to lower your expectations to somewhere below ankle level - 21st July 2011
- A vigilante who created his own ‘WikiLeaks’ - People who urinate in public places should be shamed, but so should the councils that fail to provide conveniences - 14th July 2011
- Why Cheryl Cole’s friends are in a bind - With divorces, be careful what you bitch for - they happen at such speed these days that people often regret them - 7th July 2011
- Foul language - With ‘hey’ and other Americanisms encroaching on our everyday speech, defensive measures are called for - 1st July 2011
- Pay up for a policy while we pimp your details - We must be honest when dealing with insurers, yet they have behaved with the integrity of hyenas - 30th June 2011
- Last of the summer wine for pensioners - Calling last orders on the elderly is cruel. With pension worries and terrible care, they need to drown their sorrows - 24th June 2011
- Keep Bagpuss off the bed - From crying to wearing espadrilles, via make-up, astrology and, oh, crying again: the female habits that turn men off - 16th June 2011
- Prostitute or affair? Take my love cheat test - Be honest: what would you rather your husband was guilty of? Would you rather be Coleen Rooney or Stacey Giggs? - 9th June 2011
- The hideous trill of TV sponsorship - Remember when you could watch an ITV programme without some brand piggybacking it like a fat aunt on a donkey? - 2nd June 2011
- Don’t try to guilt us into giving, Mr Cameron - The Government is urging us to give to charity. From where many people are standing, this is breathtaking cheek - 26th May 2011
- Death, where is thy sting? - One person in seven, given the option, would choose to live for ever, says a new poll. Well, now. That would present an interesting challenge for the state pension system - 19th May 2011
- Don’t let them bank on our ignorance - The London mortgage broker was so smarmy, I could see my gormless reflection in his dazzling white teeth - 12th May 2011
- Gallows humour? We’ll all die laughing - If gags about Osama bin Laden’s killing are inappropriate, then nobody is yet saying so - 5th May 2011
- Injunctions are women’s fault? That’s a good gag - The idea that kiss-and-tell girls are the villains when their famous lovers pay to have them silenced is nonsensical - 28th April 2011
- Ditch the water bottle – your kidneys will be OK - ‘I didn’t drink water that wasn’t mixed with Vimto until I was 19 and only got mistaken for a rhino’s arse a couple of times’ - 21st April 2011
- A great day out? Cruel and vile, I call it n- I went to the Grand National once — how’s that for hypocrisy? But I never will again. Nor will I watch it on TV - 14th April 2011
- The myths of cohabitation - Men and women have different reasons for moving in together – but who’s right? - 7th April 2011
- Ed, now you’ve let yourself down - Does the Labour leader Ed Miliband really want to get married or is he formalising things with Justine Thornton for the rest of us? - 31st March 2011
- Bringing down the curtain on theatre-interval drinks - ‘Everyone knows having one drink without the promise of a second is pointless, so you’ve basically paid to feel cheated’ - 24th March 2011
- Seek danger? Don’t cry to me if you find it - Some thrill-seekers put rescuers’ lives at risk and break their families’ hearts for little more than a willy-waving exercise - 17th March 2011
- How the strongest beer in the world sank me - Sink the Bismarck, a brew proud to be British - 10th March 2011
- Like Americanisms? Not so much - No one needs to sound like a Hannah Montana cast member. Except the people who actually are, obviously - 3rd March 2011
- Wedding fever? Sorry, you’re on the wrong track - For most of us the big event will be just an excuse for an all-day Friday bender - 3rd March 2011
- Porn again is not the way to beat the rap, Jacqui Smith - The former Home Secretary is making another error of judgment - 24th February 2011
- How to prove the Big Society is total BS - Cameron should get his MPs to clean the municipal bogs - 17th February 2011
- The skirt is dead - Celebrate! The stomach-compressing, VPL-displaying, heel-necessitating nightmare that is the skirt is officially out of style - 10th February 2011
- Down with these saddo upgrade hustlers - Since cheap flights levelled the playing field, all that matters is how far away you sit from the riffraff - 3rd February 2011
- Sexism? It’s a Gray area for most women - God forbid that females come to be regarded as delicate flowers who will faint at one dirty riposte - 27th January 2011
- I don’t give a monkeys... about anyone’s rear - When a female MP is up for the award of Rear of the Year, you know something’s gone badly wrong - 22nd January 2011
- When up the duff meant up the junction - In the Sixties, women like Justin Webb’s mother were sacked from their jobs if they got pregnant. That was real stress - 20th January 2011
- Women should stop playing men’s games - The victory over the BBC may help women to combat ageism - 13th January 2011
- Jabs at Tesco? You’re off your trolleys - 6th January 2011
- Ms English: our stellar role model - Forget Harry Potter’s sidekick, the Apprentice winner is the one we should admire - 23rd December 2010
- Winter fun?That’s just a load of old (snow) balls - Predictions that more snow and ice are coming does not make me come over all Bing Crosby; it fills me with horror - 16th December 2010
- Racism or are they just taking the pizza? - 9th December 2010
- A low-class act using the C-word about Cheryl Cole - Chav is now the acceptable middle-class term of abuse those poorer and less educated - 25th November 2010
- I’m Nick Clegg, get me out of here . . . - ‘I don’t want to depress Nick Clegg, but Öpik is a rejected MP who has taken a fee to eat grubs for a reality TV show’ - 18th November 2010
- Blood, sweat and tears on the 7.42 (delayed) - 11th November 2010
- You’ll never be grand enough, Carole, chuck - Kate Middleton’s mother may have been invited to Balmoral but she’ll never be one of Them - 4th November 2010
- Is Wayne’s world of greed really worth it? - Do these millionaires believe a few grand is worth their credibility? - 28th October 2010
- An awful disservice . . . even to shoplifters - Why do most vendors treat me like a criminal? - 21st October 2010
- Two into one doesn’t go for a woman today, Kirstie - When a twosome turns into a gruesome abberation - 14th October 2010
- Dave, drop the Del Boy act - Most people accept the need for cuts, but what we don’t need is people in high office titting about with empty gestures - 6th October 2010
- I don’t give a monkey’s... - ...about Hallowe’en - 1st October 2010
- The Shagger daddy of ten shows us how far girls’ self-esteem has sunk - Am I the only woman who feels a bit spurned not to have been pursued by the “Sunderland Shagger”? - 23rd September 2010
- Wayne Rooney’s middle-class escort - This public schoolgirl may reputedly earn £1,200 a night, but she’s badly in need of lessons in style — and spelling - 9th September 2010
- It’s not the chugging. It’s the way the chuggers chug - We’re happy to give. But don’t twist our arms when we do it - 3rd September 2010
- I am finished with holidaying in Britain - Blighty holidays cannot be done unless you enjoy headbutting the windscreen for nine hours on a motorway - 21st August 2010
- Spatchcocks, swimming and the sweet taste of defeat for clampers - Some clampers operating on our streets are not hugely unlike organised crime - 19th August 2010
- Hands up if you never cheat to save a dime - Ever paid cash to avoid VAT? Benefit fraud is grotesque, but the middle classes aren’t all sweet innocence - 14th August 2010
- Who was that? Not the big, bad Bill I fancied - I watched all a-flutter in a Birmingham pub as Bill Clinton polished off a pint and a plate of chips and garlic bread in minutes - 5th August 2010
- I don’t give a monkey’s for modesty panels - Modesty panels may stop people ogling your cleavage, but will lead some to question why your breasts are wearing a burka - 1st July 2010
- Why Boris Johnson is so resistible - Somewhere in his DNA is the genotype for the perfect Tefal politician. Nothing touches him - 21st July 2010
- Always drink responsibly, honourable members? - The House of Commons is notorious for discounted booze, though why MPs need their ale underwritten by the taxpayer isn’t clear - 15th July 2010
- Our survey said... - Conflicting polls suggest we are having no sex and more sex – so which is it? - 10th July 2010
- Second-class degree, third-class prospects - I suppose employers must sort out the Jedwards from the Leonas somehow, but it all makes for a very dull world - 3rd July 2010
- Waves of disapproval - I don’t give a monkey’s how many studies say that mobile phones don’t fry your brain - 27th June 2010
- A girl’s chumbawambas are her own affair - Fun bags? There are 138 obviously dreadful but slightly less offensive tit-slang words in the English language to choose from - 26nd June 2010
- Time to ditch our ‘oooh matron’ sex attitude - Seriously, when were you last chased around a bed with a tickling stick? - 24th June 2010
- Middle-class families don’t need child benefit - There are such gigantic disparities in wealth that universal benefits are now anachronistic. We need to save billions: Child Benefit should be means-tested - 17th June 2010
- Patriotism is the first refuge of the fake football fan - Few sights are more dispiriting than a fake England fannette “whoo-wooing” ecstatically in a pub, jiggling her chest in a Three Lions crop-top while cheering on the wrong players - 10th June 2010
- Is the iPhone really more important than a flushing toilet? - I don’t give a monkey’s... for iPhone love - 10th June 2010
- Cheer up BBC staff exiled up north, we’ve put our teeth in specially - Londoners apparently don’t like keeping fridges in their front garden - 20th May 2010
- Staying young is in our genes, so it’s back to the beer and fags for me - This would explain how Kate Moss can stay up all night and still look amazing - 14th May 2010
- Our voting system is brilliant — it brings out my inner patriot - My daughter thinks that going to vote is tremendously exciting. It isn’t, but I wouldn’t change it for the world - 6th May 2010
- Say what you like about journalists, we’d say it better - The spread of unsubstantiated celebrity rumours by “citizen reporters” shows how important it is to have professionals - 29th April 2010
- Please Miss, how big is your house and what do you earn? - Journalists should act more like children and just say what they think - 1st April 2010
- It's a fair cop? Not for Cabinet ministers - Con you out of a quid? But madam, I assure you I was acting entirely within the spirit of the published guidelines - 25th March 2010
- Let's forget this Celebrity Mr and Mrs - Wives gazing adoringly at their husbands is proffered as a voucher for their integrity and fitness for purpose - 18th March 2010
- John Terry’s shunned hand looked like a shamed, limp appendage - Emotional prematch confrontations could change the face of football for women - 1st March 2010
- The Tories' sexed-up dossier misses the point - Why is it that we are we so obsessed with painting teenage motherhood as such an absolute calamity anyway? - 18th February 2010
- The internet is killing the art of tabloid speak - The short, pithy words loved by red-top newspapers are becoming endangered - mercy dash needed - 15th February 2010
- Good on John Terry for having the balls to keep playing - The England captain’s affair is no more shocking than that of an insurance salesman. At least he’s facing the music - 4th February 2010
- Saving the planet or just toying with us? - Being lectured on plastic bags and the environment by The Disney Store really is the final straw - 1st February 2010
- Debenhams’ divorce gift list gets my vote - David Cameron's local department store could tell him that people care more about happiness than marriage incentives - 21st January 2010
- Why Nick Clegg's remarks about Gina Ford made headlines - 'Kids don’t come with a manual!' is the often-repeated cliché. Well, yes they do actually — about 4,000 of them - 14th January 2010
- We can’t just vote Big Brother out - Whatever its failings, the reality TV show, whose celebrity version is airing for the last time, has changed our viewing - 8th January 2010
- Skiing: slush, Sloanes and broken bones - Stupid clothes, red cheeks and a dewdrop hanging from your nose . . . you'd get the same effect collecting trolleys at an Asda car park in January - 17th December 2009
- Pass the sickbag - it's celebrity TV ad time - Ant and Dec’s TV ads have a scripted chumminess that is as excruciating as overhearing one’s parents having sex - 10th December 2009
- Beware men: it's a slippery, skin-waxed slope - Men will now gladly sting, bleach, peel and starve like girls to achieve the media-approved version of a 'hot' body - 3rd December 2009
- OK, you love each other — but not in public, please - I watched with amazement the procession of newly reunited couples who practically had sex in front of the waiting crowd - 26th November 2009
- It’s my party - and I'll cry if I want to . . . - The Christmas party season is a fantasy invented by the marketing industry and perpetuated by TV to feed our inadequacy - 19th November 2009
- Morrisey shows that Britain's still good at the important things - We expect things to be a bit rubbish and don't overreact when they are. It's one of the things that makes us nice - 13th November 2009
- Only a first-class t**t is that touchy about such twitticisms - Millions of us are interpreting every small slight as rejection and withering like salted slugs - 5th November 2009
- Should Rooney stay away from the birth? - I didn’t want my husband to be there when I gave birth, and if Coleen wants Wayne she should watch him with the nurses - 22nd October 2009
- Bruce Forsyth has the BBC in a tangle - Let’s see the Corporation wriggle of of this sticky race row - 9th October 2009
- The party's over, but the boomers rock on - Today’s 60-year-olds have the have the lifestyle that 40-year-olds had a century ago - don't expect us to cheer just yet - 1st October 2009
- My brush with a psycholist - After a recent encounter in a London cab, I know what a Lycra lout is. But I’d still advise you to hug one if you see one - 24th September 2009
- Marcus the martyred lamb of Romney Marsh did not die in vain - Marcus has done more to advance the cause of vegetarianism than I or any sulky student ever did handing out leaflets - 18th September 2009
- Happiness is no longer being twentysomething - Having a pelvic floor that could crack a walnut didn’t solve your problems in your twenties, did it? - 10th September 2009
- Zip up, you lot, and stop blabbing all your private details - Every day we sleepwalk into volunteering information - 3rd September 2009
- Please police me: clockwatching CID are useless - Uniformed officers, who are said to be avoiding plainclothes roles, should understand that some jobs just aren’t 9 to 5 - 13th August 2009
- The victims who don’t touch A-list hearts need support too - A council estate kid doesn’t carry the same kudos of Gary McKinnon v President Obama - 6th August 2009
- Jamie Neale and Richard Cass - taking good fortune for granted - My husband confessed that he plea-bargained with God when Liverpol were trailing 3-0 in the Champions League final - 30th July 2009
- Hotels tap into the inner thieves in us all - Is anything as tempting as an unattended hotel bar? - 16th July 2009
- Tattoos, tummy tucks and miniskirts - The female midlife crisis used to be a hidden beast. Now, though, it has come roaring out of the closet - 11th July 2009
- The BBC at Glastonbury: a waste of money? - Forty-seven BBC executives are paid more than the Prime Minister is. Whatever for? All we want are decent programmes - 2nd July 2009
- X Factor and Britain's Got Talent whingers have themselves to blame - Some are so ravenous for a break they would scale an Everest of dung and sell their granny’s kidneys to get to No 1 - 25th June 2009
- Skeletal celebs like Cheryl Cole just bore me - I’m glad the new role models such as Lily Allen think self-starvation is a passe hang-up - 18th June 2009
- Is this the most outrageous MP’s claim so far? - Gerald Kaufman reckons he needs a £220 pair of grapefruit bowls because he’s got OCD. Which he diagosed... himself. It makes a mockery of real sufferers' woes - 11th June 2009
- Heard the one about the male Pill? Seriously, it’s the dog’s neuticles - If the male Pill does take off, stealing women’s control, the population could plummet - 4th June 2009
- In praise of the childless: the workforce heroes - Non-breeders work every bank holiday - 21st May 2009
- Getting wed on a low-cost flight is plane silly - Couples can French kiss in the aisle while Wind Beneath My Wings is piped through the aircraft - 14th May 2009
- Kate Winslet’s titanic claims to be working class - Posh actors try too hard to be ‘geezers’ and apologise if they didn’t grow up eating a diet of lard - 7th May 2009
- Chicken-hearted, craven, faceless cowards. Yes, I'm talking about you! - Few beasts are more merciless than the great British public when snarling behind their anonymity - 30th April 2009
- Cheers, but alcohol won’t make you fat - Alcohol calories are not the same as food calories. If they were my backside would be the size of Kent - 23rd April 2009
- Watching porn may be smutty - but blaming wives is obscene - Womenfolk, it's your fault when he ogles Debbie Does Dallas - 2nd April 2009
- Grow up, Gazza, Jade's death shows how dull celebrity sob stories are - She would have loved to eat, but managed only a few sips of Coke. How's that for size zero? - 26th March 2009
- It's tough to prove insidious racism - it's not a case of black and white - Umpteen studies have suggested that, underneath, we're all more prejudiced than we think - 19th March 2009
- Why I'll spend, spend, spend if I win the lottery - What's the point of buying the ticket if you're going to keep the day job and drive the same old Ford Fiesta - 12th March 2009
- Lay off the BBC's disabled presenter - Chatroom comments from parents about Cerrie Burnell, the new CBeebies presenter, are just mindless wittering. Get a life - 25th February 2009
- Jade Goody: why resent the brutal reality show that her dying has become? - In her recent interviews she has displayed a wisdom never apparent in all those frivolous TV shows - 19th February 2009
- If Charles Darwin were alive today, he'd be Simon Cowell - The nearest we get to witnessing the survival of the fittest is in The X Factor - 12th February 2009
- The Americans aren't having ‘hope' sex - they've just been out on the lash - We Brits do tend to be sceptical of any story that involves Americans enjoying a conspicuous amount of leg-over - 5th February 2009
- Trying to castrate Ross just shows a lack of balls - If you remove Ross's daring then all you're left with is a treacly, old-fashioned plug show - 29th January 2009
- Can Kate Moss cure recession? - The supermodel's 35th birthday celebrations may seem excessive, but how else are we going to get out of the recession? - 22nd January 2009
- Barack Obama - world leader and dog owner - Obama will have to get used to his dog humping his leg when he's talking to Sarkozy - 15th January 2009
- Ban Spanker Lane? These daft councils need a Nether Wallop - Sniggering at double entendre names is a long-held British tradition and, God knows, we could all do with a laugh - 8th January 2009
- Food ads for Christmas? More heave-ho than ho-ho - Celebrities don't use supermarkets: they only ever eat in The Ivy - 18th December 2008
- Britain is no country for old women - With over-35s being excluded from pubs and presenters such as Selina Scott and Nicky Hambleton-Jones put out to early pasture, it's hard to feel good about ageing - 11th December 2008
- Shopping is hell among the greedy and the grasping - Today's shoppers are yobs who would head-butt a granny for a faux-fur gilet - 4th December 2008
- Listen up, celebrities, we want rows, not raunch - I've always been suspicious of couples who rave about their sex lives - 27th November 2008
- John Sergeant the dancing pig saved the BBC's bacon - Judges were wrong to roast the golden goose of ratings and now he's gone viewers will flock to ITV's The X Factor in protest - 20th November 2008
- Sorry gran, but being old is not a licence to be racist - Age is no excuse. Young people are a from “a different generation” yet we forgive them nothing - 13th November 2008
- Gotcha! It's funny how much pranks reveal about us - 6th November 2008
- Stop flying off the handle about airport security - The new passenger X-rays aren't undignifying, they're rubbish - just lumpen shapes with no rude bits - 30th October 2008
- Don't slag off the cervical cancer vaccine - Religious leaders who argue that inoculating 12 and 13-year-olds against HPV will make them promiscuous are dead wrong - 16th October 2008
- Jamie tucks into the poor and fat - TV’s staple diet - 9th October 2008
- How to look good naked: put a plum in your mouth - Trinny and Susannah can do what they like, but woe betide any Kerry Katona or Jade Goody who makes a public gaffe - 2nd October 2008
- Oh, just read the damn column - Been there, done that, and now I can't be bothered - 25th September 2008
- Ministers! Know Your Limits! - A toast to hypocrisy as the puritannical Labour party suggests a British booze-up and Noel Edmonds refuses to pay the licence fee that made his career - 18th September 2008
- Trust Jeremy Kyle to get the spongers back to work - the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions may shortly be unveiled as ... Jeremy Kyle! - 11th September 2008
- University entrance: why not give real talent a chance against privilege? - 21st August 2008
- Wine and fags make a good pension plan - the staff of a Cornwall care home that granted a 90-year-old woman her lifelong wish to be served fish and chips by a man wearing a thong have been forced to apologise - 14th August 2008
- Lads' mags and women - Women are their own worst enemies - 7th August 2008
- Angelina Jolie and the superfast generation - Nothing happens quickly enough for us anymore - wanting to accelerate every human experience is the sickness of the age - 31st July 2008
- I can't believe they've made me feel sorry for Opik - It's not that women should always stay quiet and never take revenge, it's just that sometimes it smacks less of female empowerment and... - 24th July 2008
- Where's the justice in a one-price-for-all-bras world? - It inverts economic logic not to charge big people more for their clothes - 17th July 2008
- Laura Robson: welcome to the bear pit of sporting hype - When we scrape a win against Andorra, you'd think it was 1966 again - 10th July 2008
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