An audio version of this piece (by me) is available here:

I have a box – okay, around six boxes – containing a load of ‘meaningful’ tat. In said boxes you will find a smelly leather friendship bracelet, origin unknown; a clay candlestick made in primary school that looks exactly as you’d imagine; an Employee Welcome Pack from Channel 4, complete with pension options, from my 2008 job there; and a CD from a teenage boyfriend’s band. His band wasn’t bad actually, but I do not own a CD player.

Recently, I had to find some important paperwork and so hauled out one of these boxes. I did not find the paperwork, but did find a 2013 couples travel card featuring me and my ex-husband. Handy.

There are legitimate treasures. Mementos from people – and versions of me – now past that make my heart hurt. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes less so. Photos, letters, trinkets. These have become crowded out, though, by tat.

Everything in those boxes I either kept because it meant something to me, because I thought I should, because binning it felt like bad mojo, or because the habit of keeping it became meaningful in itself. It’s the past made physical, squirrelled away under the bed. Yet, a lot of these things – these faded, torn, and occasionally beautiful echoes of the past – are weighing me down.

What’s it all for?

Many people do a clear-out when something big happens: a move, a breakup, a new year with its gung-ho optimism. I have moved house about nine times in 15 years, yet I still have loads of this shit. And please believe me, I’m not a hoarder – this is much less shit than I used to have. You don’t move house nine times (including internationally) without chucking stuff out.

It’s tough, though. I feel guilty both knowing I should get rid of some of it and about the prospect of actually doing so – as though I’d be disparaging my past self, the self I thought I’d be by now, or the self I might be in the future: someone with room for it all, who laughingly pores over it with their kid. Yet, what am I going to tell Billy: “This scratched CD was made by a bad kisser Mama was obsessed with when she was 13. Do you want it?”

I fear my reluctance to address the issue may also be attached to magical thinking: that if I get rid of it, or even think about getting rid of it, the universe will punish me for not appreciating the good times and good people I’ve known.

A dusty coping mechanism

My mum died when I was 20, and she’d been ill for a long time before that. When you grow up with the threat of death swinging over your head like a piano in a cartoon, you learn far too early that things are finite. That there is a limited amount of stuff connected to a person. I started collecting mementos young and treated everything with care. It’s why I still have 15-year-old dresses in good nick. (The fact that I hate them is, I have long felt, beside the point.) The deal I made with myself was simple: if I kept it, it meant something, therefore I should keep on keeping it.

This circular logic is ridiculous. But it did help. It reassured me that I would always remember my mum, my dad, and my grandparents when they passed. Being orphaned young(ish) imbues stuff with emotional heft. What I didn’t know then is that the memories that really get you are rarely attached to the things you’ve carefully saved. They tend to arrive suddenly, at the least convenient moments, and leave you winded.

My new decluttering rules

I have found a way to let some stuff go without having an existential crisis. It’s brutal, but it’s working.

I ask myself: “If I died, how mortifying would I find knowing people were going to have to go through it? If my partner, friends or family were left wondering how much that CD or couples travel card meant to me? Do I really want them to think I deeply treasured getting 30% cheaper train journeys with my ex?”

Thinking you might die is extraordinarily good for decluttering. Imagining your people at a post-funeral sorting party (what do you mean you’ve never been to one?), holding up a broken harmonica you never played or mentioned. (Yes, I have one of those.)

One of my peak “I’m going to die” cancer thoughts was, “Koen’s going to have to deal with those boxes” and I swear the horror of it helped me beat the disease. The vision of my grieving love holding our newborn baby in one hand and my Channel 4 pension options in the other, thinking, “Why did she keep the paperwork but never actually get the pension?”

He would see an entirely new and utterly confounding side to me. This person he’d adored kept… moth-eaten leather gloves? A ballet slipper encased in glass? A ticket stub for a band she didn’t even like?

The thought is intolerable. So I have made some decluttering rules for myself:

• If I won’t remember I ever had it: gone.

• If I wish someone else would chuck it away or that it would get burned up in a localised fire so I won’t feel guilty about getting rid of it: gone.

• If I don’t know what it is, who gave it to me, or why it supposedly matters: gone.

• If I do remember, but it’s served its time: gone.

• If I do remember, but it doesn’t represent the person or time adequately: gone.

For everything, I do what decluttering legend Marie Kondo suggests: say ‘thank you’, mean it, then chuck it.

This is an ongoing process. There are a lot of beautiful and really fucking sad memories lurking in those boxes, ready to scuttle out and bite me with grief. It’s also particularly fraught when you’re decluttering because there is still a fear that you must. That you’re doing it to save someone else having to do what you had to do for both of your parents: try to memorialise a life from things.

It’s not just about saving Koen, Billy and my friends from possible future sadness and befuddlement, though. It’s also me chipping away at the feeling that I’m being held in place. That lots of these things don’t bring me joy or pleasure anymore. That sometimes, even just knowing they’re lurking under the bed feels like fingers gripping onto my ankles. There’s a version of holding onto things that’s an act of love and tribute, and a version rooted in fear, guilt and shame. I’m trying to learn the difference now so I can clear out some space – under my bed, yes, but also in the middle of my chest.

Just One More Thing

I have started my 21-month post-cancer tests and have had an iffy result that needs further investigation. This is pretty terrifying. It’s also made me more determined than ever to streamline. If further tests are bad, there’s less for me and Koen to worry about. If they’re good (fingers, toes, eyes, and legs crossed), it’ll make me feel less beholden to a past defined by things. I don’t have stuff to represent all of the best moments in my life. I have a rush of warm feelings, tingling fingers, and prickling behind the eyes. I have flashes of scenes that make me catch my breath, bite my lip, and bark out a laugh. That’s enough.

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London Falling, a newly released book by journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, investigates the 2019 death of British teenager Zac Brettler. Zac fell into the Thames from the balcony of one of London’s most swanky-doodle addresses. Before his death, he had befriended dodgy businessmen and gangsters while posing as the son of a Russian oligarch.

Police eventually called it suicide, but their tap-dancing around glaring inconsistencies meant Zac’s parents didn’t buy it. The book is the culmination of their years-long fight to find out what actually happened to their son – and uncovers a London most of us only suspect exists: oligarchs, empty luxury properties owned through layers of shell companies and anonymous trusts, golden visas, non-dom statuses, informants, hitmen, drugs, and a city propped up by filthy money.

It’s a terrifically sad tale with lots of competing horrors and intrigues worth raising fists about. Yet, right now, for me, the overarching takeaway is how insanely corrupt (and incompetent) ‘the system’ is. “Which system?” I hear you ask. Well, ALL OF THEM.

The book’s underlying message is that the mega-rich and/or mega-connected can get away with anything. “Fresh take, Jo,” I hear you muttering. “Where have you been since the feudal lords?” Which is fair. However, the way multiple systems tripped over themselves not to help Zac’s parents when it appeared the facts might negatively impact wealthy and powerful people, taps into my growing rage that, sure, life is rigged – but the people doing the rigging aren’t even sheepish about it anymore.

In a time when we’re all being asked to do more for less, and pay more for less, it’s getting increasingly harder to be, “Cool, cool, cool. That’s just the way the world works” about it. We’re relentlessly banging our heads against staggering incompetence, complicity and complacency. The gap between how us ordinary plebs are expected to live and how the rich and powerful are allowed to behave no longer feels merely unfair, but openly contemptuous. Both the written and unwritten rules meant to keep us in check still exist, but increasingly only for those without enough money or clout to sidestep them. (Big hello to everyone in the Jeffrey Epstein files, by the way! Still living large, are you? Delightful!)

Greed as aspiration

I feel like greed itself is becoming more culturally legitimised and admired. There’s a “take it if you can get it” vibe in politics and online that treats morality as naivety and ruthless self-interest as evidence of being a clever clogs. A sense that ripping people off is acceptable as long as you become visibly successful doing it. It’s a view espoused by the Trumps, Farages and pyramid-scheme-come-manosphere-style ‘life coaches’. Struggle is reframed as failure; if you’re not thriving, you’re just not trying hard enough. To me, one of the maddest bits of Louis Theroux’s recent doc on the manosphere was when an online influencer openly admits to fleecing his fans… on camera! To said fans! And they don’t care! It’s all in the game, son.

In London Falling, Zac became so seduced by the world of extreme wealth that he invented an entirely new identity. (One of the few gratifying moments in the book is realising how all the hardcore gangsters had been suckered by a teenager putting on a fake accent.) For Zac, wealth itself was the aspiration. And that openness about money, status and power being enough in and of themselves feels increasingly unavoidable in everyday life now.

Piers Morgan was right (sometimes the man is, I’m sorry) to point out on Question Time the hypocrisy in defending Farage for accepting millions from a crypto billionaire when you’d have ripped Starmer to shreds for the same (as they did when he accepted a free pair of glasses). We now hold people to entirely different standards depending on how rich, useful, popular or entertaining they are.

It will come as no surprise to learn that wealth and financial disparity are on the rise. The world’s top 1% own more wealth than 95% of humanity and we’re set to see the world’s first trillionaire soon. (Happily Elon Musk is tipped to win that coveted title. I can’t think of a better bastion of good sense and philanthropy to own most of everything.)

At the same time, for us normal people, wages have stagnated, unemployment is on the rise and there are fewer jobs available, yet the cost of living is rocketing. We had the financial crash, austerity, Brexit and then the pandemic. Generally, most of us at peak working age are no better off in real terms than we were fifteen years ago – many are considerably worse off. On top of this, because of social media, we’re fed a constant stream of other people’s success: friends, colleagues, strangers all posting their wins and their side-hustles. It creates this surreal dissonance – wondering, “Am I the only one worrying?” while billionaires float around on giga-yachts, Trump grants himself and his family lifetime immunity, and the Instagram algorithm tells you that if you’re not monetising your hobby or your trauma, you’re a loser.

Don’t get me wrong – I’d bloody love to be rich. I just wouldn’t strive for it at the cost of everything else? I don’t think that’s a radical statement to make, and yet if you question the fairness of any of this you’re often made to feel a bit silly. Like you’re a loony leftie, a slacker, missing the bigger picture, or are too stupid to understand the intricate workings of ‘economics’ (always said in reverent hushed tones). Which is exactly what happened to Zac’s parents in London Falling: they were continuously made to feel ridiculous for even hinting that there might be bigger institutional failings at play in the cursory investigation into their son’s death.

Blind bids

A real-world example of this dissonance can be found in the Amsterdam housing market. (Every housing market is screwed up – I’m only using the Dutch example because it’s the one we’re currently navigating.)

Koen and I are trying to get on the property ladder here, where most sales run on a blind bid system: everyone must submit an offer by a deadline, along with a little letter explaining why they deserve the property(!). There are no second bids and no negotiations. So, even if you lose and have more cash to spend, too bad.

It’s a system built entirely on ramping up a sense of scarcity and competition. Properties are advertised with a ‘guide price’, which is often deliberately undervalued to get more people in. Viewings are scheduled all at the same time, so the property seems full and popular, and then the deadline creates a panic. People wildly overbid, picking numbers out of the air, and throwing everything at it because they won’t get another shot. We recently bid on a place that ended up going for €200,000 over asking. Two. Hundred. Thousand. Euros. (I can confirm that wasn’t our bid.)

Even if the winning bid is €100k higher than the second highest, it doesn’t matter. All bids are final. The winner will have overspent by €99k and them’s the breaks. It’s not like an open bid where everyone can see the budget ceiling and the whites of their rivals’ eyes.

After the winner signs the purchase agreement (without knowing what the other bids were), everyone gets a three-day ‘reflection period’ – and then they’re fully committed. If the buyers pull out after signing, they have to pay 10% of the agreed purchase price. After the sale is official, it’s possible to find out the other bids.

No one ends up paying what a property is worth according to any normal calculation, only what the system convinces them it might be worth.

A recent Dutch news article featured a man who’d been chuffed to secure his dream home for €70,000 over asking. After completing, he found out that the second highest bid was only €6,000 over. The man overpaid by €63k. He was absolutely devastated, saying how knowing that had pretty much ruined his life and he now hates the property. He can’t stop thinking about what else he could have spent that money on. He handed a stranger tens of thousands of euros for no other reason than because the system made him think he had to.

The article ended by explaining to readers how best to avoid a similar situation – by looking up recent neighbouring sales and what the seller themselves had paid for it, yadda yadda – gently insinuating that the man was at fault for not playing a savvier game, rather than the system for being deeply unethical.

I ended up having a bit of a go at an estate agent at a viewing about it, because sometimes I feel as though I’m going mad. “Do you think there’s a better way of going about things rather than artificially inflating an already tense market?” I asked. “Especially during a period of global insecurity when people are grasping for anything that feels stable? Isn’t this a bit morally shifty?” The poor woman looked like I’d started reciting Marx. And, to be fair, none of this is directly her fault… yet she does represent a broken system and AAARRRRGGGGHHH.

I don’t want to make lemonade

There is a monologue in The Fall of the House of Usher (Episode 3 ‘Murder in the Rue Morgue’) by Roderick Usher that strikes a chord. Here’s an abridged version:

“When life hands you lemons, make lemonade? No. First you roll out a multi-media campaign to convince people lemons are incredibly scarce, which only works if you stockpile lemons, control the supply, then a media blitz: lemon is the only way to say ‘I love you’, the must-have accessory for engagements or anniversaries. Roses are out, lemons are in. Billboards that say she won’t have sex with you unless you got lemons. Limited edition lemon bracelets, yellow diamonds called lemon drops. You get Apple to call their new operating system OS-Lemón. A little accent over the ‘o’. You charge 40% more for organic lemons, 50% more for conflict-free lemons. Timothée Chalamet wears lemon shoes at Cannes. Get a hashtag campaign.

“Then you patent the seeds. You write a line of genetic code that makes the lemons look just a little more like tits… and you get a gene patent for the tit-lemon DNA sequence, you cross-pollinate… you get those seeds circulating in the wild, and then you sue the farmer for copyright infringement when that genetic code shows up on their land. Sit back, rake in the millions, and then, when you’re done, and you’ve sold your lem-pire for a few billion dollars, then, and only then, you make some fucking lemonade.”

Hyped scarcity, manipulated desire, inflated value, and gaslighty corruption – none of it is new. Yet, it feels more visible, accepted, and lauded now and, for most of us, the rewards for playing along seem much, much smaller.

Just One More Thing

Since I nearly carked it from cancer in 2024, I’ve been trying to get my life admin in order: insurance, pensions, all of the boring stuff I’d previously ignored. (Turns out it’s very hard to get life insurance after you’ve dodged death, FYI.) Here’s an example of trying to do the right thing and still getting shafted: it has taken me over 12 months to try and pay the gaps in my UK National Insurance contributions so I can still receive a UK pension. In that time:

• my payment was misattributed

• a cheque was sent to an old address

• I was told I owed triple the original amount

• everything was briefly fixed (hurray!)

• my entire employment history was erased from the system

As of today, 20-odd years of work and payments have disappeared. Gone. Poof. I’m kind of excited by what an absolute shitshow it is. If it’s taken me a year to get to this point, maybe in another they’ll delete all records of me entirely and I’ll cease to exist?

I’d feel a lot better about being beholden to these entrenched systems – about playing the game, following the rules, making the lemonade – if a) they actually worked and b) there was some ethics underpinning them. If, when you signed up, they didn’t tell you that they’d not only lost the sodding lemons, but that actually the fact that they’ve lost them is your fault.

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I’ve always had hay fever. Most of my childhood summer memories are fuzzy because I saw everything through bloodshot swollen eyes while making that weird “gnurrrr gnurrrr” noise scratching my throat with the back of my tongue.

Back in those ancient times, teachers gave zero shits. The only concession granted to us histamine hostages was being ‘allowed’ to stand during PE rather than sit on the grass, which, on top of doing absolutely sod all to help, marked us out as other in an “I am Spartacus” way that still haunts my dreams. “Take some Claritin,” they’d suggest. “Yesssh, cheers, I can’t believe I shhhaven’t sshought of that,” I’d wheeze back.

When everyone treats something like it’s nothing, you start thinking that maybe you’re imagining how bad it is. It’s poor form, after all, to be allergic to outside. What kind of pathetic nonsense is that? Especially as I was good at sports – how terrible could it really be if I still managed to play hockey, netball, rounders and tennis? Hay fever, shmay fever, amiright? So, that’s how I lived, just accepting that come spring things would take a disgusting turn and I would become a slightly lesser version of myself for five months. C’est la vie.

Well, bollocks to that. I am refusing to put up with it anymore – because the summer version of myself now I live in Amsterdam is unacceptable.

Hay fever, but BIGGER

Since moving to the city in 2022, I have metamorphosed into the final boss of hay fever. Gone are the days when I’d rub my eyes, experiencing that almost porny sensation of relief… only to immediately regret it upon realising I’d scratched my cornea. Now I can’t stop scratching. There is no relief. My eyes are tiny swollen holes in my face. My sinuses are blocked to the point I permanently feel like I’ve been hit in the face with a football. My chest is tight and my throat is on fire. I look and feel like an idiot mole, popping its head above ground to mouth-breathe, “What’s happening? Please help me.”

Things got so bad recently that I visited the doctor. “I think I’ve got pneumonia,” I whispered. “You’ve got a chest infection and really, really bad hay fever,” he replied. “Ha,” I coughed at him. “I know hay fever. We’re well acquainted. This isn’t hay fever. This is a rebuke from God.” He smiled sadly, patted my arm, and said: “I’m afraid you’ve got the chemo-meets-Amsterdam double whammy.”

The chemo effect

Turns out chemotherapy can super-charge hay fever. Who knew? NOT ME. Chemo indiscriminately pow-pows all fast-dividing cells, not just the cancer ones. It’s why it’s such a savage (yet miraculous) treatment, and why you might experience side-effects like hair loss, mouth sores, bleeding gums, and gut issues. Beyond the well-known collateral damage, though, (which for me also included water on the lungs, an enlarged liver, neuropathy, and temporary blindness – fun!) chemo can also flirt with something sneakier.

Deep in your tissues live mast cells: tiny immune grenades that, when sensing a threat (chemo), explode open and flood your body with histamine and inflammatory chemicals. Histamine is your body’s first responder. It’s what triggers the swelling, itching, and sneezing of an allergic reaction. When chemo keeps setting off those mast cell grenades, your allergic responses are in a permanent state of high alert – and that can last for years after treatment.

Couple that with chemo driving up IgE – an antibody that tells your immune system to treat more things as threats – and even someone who’s never had seasonal allergies before can, post-chemo, suddenly find themselves disappearing into a puddle of their own snot and misery just glancing at a flower. For someone like me, though, with a history of hay fever, it has meant REPROBATE HAY FEVER. RATBAG HAY FEVER.

The Amsterdam effect

Amsterdam is beautiful. It’s also, for hay fever (and asthma) dabblers, an allergy hellscape. The Netherlands, being aggressively flat, has no geography to interrupt the wind whipping pollen directly into your face. There are over 150 types of grass here, which seems excessive. The pollen season starts in late February to early March and doesn’t bugger off until autumn.

Amsterdam’s canals are pollen conveyor belts: water doesn’t absorb pollen, it just collects it up into delightful piles on the surface. The pollen bounces along the top like a joyful pond skater, waiting to tunnel directly up your snout. The city’s thousands of street trees – mainly birch, beech, alder, and oak – line those conveyor belts at exactly bike-riding, face-smacking height. Birch (especially European white birch) is the worst offender: the most allergenic tree in the Netherlands and one of the most common. A single birch tree can release billions of pollen grains in one season.

Then there’s what scientists have charmingly termed “botanical sexism”. Yes, kids. EVEN THE TREES ARE SEXIST. Only kidding, it’s just the urban planners. (Kidding! Kind of.)

Trees have sexes: dioecious male and dioecious female, as well as monoecious (containing both male and female flowers). In nature, there is a pretty even split. Yet, for decades, landscape architects have preferred to plant predominantly male trees. This is because female trees drop messy seeds, pods and fruit that block drains and require cleaning up. (HOW DARE THEY.) However, male trees produce pollen in vast quantities, while female trees produce no pollen at all.

This means, in cities across the world, we are often surrounded by majority pollen-producing trees. Ideally, urban planning would mimic nature (because nature knows best) and have a solid gender mix. This would mean less pollen in general due to there being fewer male trees, yes, but also because female trees – and the female side of monoecious trees – trap and absorb pollen. Yet female trees have historically been significantly underplanted because they’re considered a nuisance. The patriarchy jokes write themselves.

The original precedent for this was set in a 1949 USDA agriculture handbook that explicitly recommended planting only male street trees. That recommendation echoed through decades of urban planning across the world. (It’s not just this handbook, obviously, that influenced decisions, but it is a foundational part of the ingrained acceptance that male trees are preferable and that’s that. No questions asked. Lads, lads, lads. Bros before airways.)

Then, the kicker: it’s not just the volume of pollen that’s a problem, it’s what city air does to it. Air pollution attaches to pollen grains and causes them to shatter into far tinier particles. When that happens, the inside of the pollen grain is exposed, and that’s roughly ten times more allergenic than the outside. So, you’re not just getting more pollen in cities than you would in the countryside, you’re getting pollen that has been supercharged by exhaust fumes and carbon dioxide, and made small enough to snuffle deep into your lungs. Add climate change on top – longer seasons, more pollution, and flowers blooming earlier – and we’re all getting way more exposure to feral pollen.

Is anything being done about it?

Hahaha. No.

The first ever regional guide for the allergenic potential of tree pollen was developed for the Netherlands in 2024 – yep, only two years ago. That’s despite 15 to 20% of the Dutch population suffering from allergic symptoms, a figure the RIVM (the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment) acknowledges will get worse. In 2025, another Dutch study flagged how simple changes could make huge differences to both public health, public health costs, and the environment – things like mixing up tree sexes and prioritising insect-pollinating plants over wind-pollinators. However, no new rules have been bought in, with the RIVM proposing only better monitoring systems (“Hmm, de pollen zijn erg, hè?”) and better medication, i.e. treating the symptoms and not one of the major causes.

In the UK, the story is also, well, not great. Take London as an example. London Plane trees – chosen for their tolerance of urban pollution – make up over half of London’s street trees and produce so much pollen and airborne irritants that locals have a name for the resulting symptoms: the Chelsea Cough. (So, London literally named a tree after itself, planted it everywhere, and then named the resulting illness after a posh postcode. God, I bloody miss my city.)

Meanwhile, hay fever cases in the UK have trebled in the last 20 years and now affect more than a quarter of adults. 2025 was described by allergy specialists as one of the worst seasons on record. Yet, there is no national policy regarding anti-allergy planting. The government is looking into better pollen forecasting and grass-cutting regimes, but that sounds suspiciously like the RIVM’s ‘monitoring’ plans, so more “It’s bad out there, pals. Stock up on Claritin” advice.

Some places are doing better. Berlin launched a project in 2024 to become an allergy-friendly capital, with a specific blacklist of trees, including birch, ash, and plane, that can no longer be planted in public spaces. This is part of Germany’s wider push to take the subject more seriously, with national allergy-friendly planting recommendations launched in 2025.

Generally, though, it doesn’t seem to be a legitimate or urgent concern for many governments or governing bodies. I think that probably ties into the “c’est la vie” attitude I mentioned earlier – an acceptance that hay fever just is and you have to put up with it. It affects so many people (400 million globally and rising) that symptoms become normalised, especially when ​​research consistently shows that around half of people with allergic rhinitis (the fancy title for hay fever) never receive a formal diagnosis. It may also explain why global sales of anti-allergy medication could hit $63 billion by 2030. Someone (not me) is making an eye-watering (welcome to the club!) amount of money out of the fact we’re all just snivelling through.

Allergies are complicated. The rapidly changing dynamics of how we live our lives, including how we manage our health and the health of the planet, means there isn’t one simple answer. Yet, there are things that can be done to tackle some of the contributors to the increasing levels and severity of asthma and allergies (say, for example, not plant prolific pollinators alongside miles of canals). But they will, of course, cost time, energy, money and faff to research and implement. It’s good news that the subject is starting to push some buttons. It’s less good that it took UK hospital visits for hay fever to hit twenty times 2002 levels to broaden that conversation.

Meanwhile, you’ll find me blindly riding my bike chewing hardcore antihistamines, while googling turbinoplasty (hay fever-related nose surgery) with one hand and shaking my fist at trees with the other.

Just One More Thing

Some additional fun facts I learned while researching this piece:

If you’re an allergic mole like me and have ever noticed your mouth going tingly when eating apples, peaches, cherries, or carrots, it may be because your immune system mistakes them for birch pollen. It’s called ‘oral allergy syndrome’ and is down to how the protein structure of certain foods mimics that of birch pollen. (Amsterdam, a city that runs on apple cake, has not commented.)

Also, both the Netherlands and UK get annual infestations of ‘oak processionary moths’: caterpillars whose teeny tiny hairs cause skin irritations, eye problems, and breathing difficulties on contact. Their numbers have grown significantly as winters have warmed, messing with asthmatics and hay feverers alike. You’ll be thrilled and relieved to know that both governments are ‘monitoring’ the situation, though (there are even caterpillar hotlines).

So, in summary: the trees are trying to kill you from March to September, and the caterpillars are trying to kill you from June to August. Enjoy your summer, everyone!

My new book, Own Your Calm, is OUT NOW across Europe and the US! I have eight other mental health books currently out in the wild, which have been translated into dozens of languages, as well as a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop. (UK links used here, but please do google for international options.) Oh! And please consider buying me a coffee if you enjoy my work. It means the world.

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As of last week, my new book Own Your Calm has been let loose unto the world. Published by Abrams, it’s an illustrated anti-anxiety journal built around a CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and mindfulness framework. It contains prompts and questions to help you reflect on how anxiety affects your daily life. It’s available across Europe and the US, both online and in your local bookshop. (Hint hint, nudge nudge, please buy it). It’s both useful and beautiful. I would say that, I know. But it legitimately is, with a retro 1970s design I adore.

Some bragging to bolster my credentials: this marks the 10th book I’ve published under my own name. Previously, I co-authored a mental health series – This Book Will Make You… – which has been published all over the world and translated into 12 languages. This Book Will Make You Sleep outsold Obama’s autobiography on Audible UK for two weeks during the pandemic. Yes, that Obama. I KNOW. Ludicrous.

I have also ghostwritten two books, am working on my third, and have edited another. Questions I constantly ask myself: “Why am I not rich? Where is my money? How do I not even have a pension? Where the fuck is my Pulitzer?” These legitimate conundrums would make me anxious if I didn’t have a lush new journal to work through.

All of which should hopefully go some way to proving that I’ve been neck-deep researching mental health and working with experts in the field for around 15 years. All of which should also go some way to explaining why I assumed that writing this particular book would be pretty straightforward. Maybe even a walk in the park. Maybe even the work equivalent of a lazy afternoon lying in a canoe, staring at the clouds, while puffing on a peace pipe.

It wasn’t, though. I found it much more different – and in certain respects, genuinely much more difficult – to write than any of my other books. Here’s why:

This was about asking more than telling

Books, by their very nature, are one-way conversations. The author tells you stuff. Apart from the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ series, they’re monologues with zero reciprocal interaction from readers. (Apart from via reviews, etc., but that’s not within the books themselves). All of my other books are built around a teaching, i.e. a telling, framework: this is what’s happening, this is why, this is what you can do about it. However, this new book is a journal and so structured in such a way that I wasn’t allowed to tell, only to ask.

BUT I LOVE TELLING.

I have built my entire career around telling stories. Yes, I am an interviewer by trade, too, so am trained in how to ask questions – but writing this was essentially like interviewing someone who wasn’t there. I had to build up a conversation with a phantom. An anxious phantom.

If I ask this, what might the next question be that will further the thought in a helpful way? What question might enable the reader (phantom) to assess what’s going on honestly and not judgementally? What might prompt them to work out ‘why’ it’s happening for themselves? Or, maybe better yet, to forget the why entirely right now, and just accept what is?

It made me look at books – and, in so doing, at anxiety – in a different way. In fiction, there’s a rule: show, don’t tell. So, rather than have the narrator tell the reader that the protagonist is a creep, show that they are – maybe subtly through other people’s instinctive reactions to them or by literally having a character say, “Don’t I remember seeing your face on page one of the Epstein files?” In non-fiction the general rule is the opposite: tell people what they need to know. Don’t fanny about. Don’t talk around it. Don’t make them read between the bloody lines; they’ve got enough going on.

This journal didn’t fit into either camp. It involved simply asking. In essence: the book is listening. Which I realise sounds pretty woo-woo and like I’m trying to sell you crystals at a bougie farmers’ market – but it’s true. Because what is a journal if not somewhere you can spill your guts without judgement or censure, and start trying to make sense of jumbled thoughts?

In writing it, I discovered that sometimes just the asking is enough. That, while there is clarity, relief and often solace to be found in understanding why you feel something, there’s proper peace to be found in the act of simply giving yourself enough space to sort through what you’re feeling. I discovered that calm can often be found in stopping after the “What exactly is happening here?” bit, rather than immediately moving onto the “and how do I fix it?” step.

Self-help isn’t always about fixing

In a journal, the “what you can do about it” answers become secondary to working out what “it” is. There are strategies in this book for feeling better – practical tools and techniques for dealing with anxiety and stress. But, I would argue, that’s not the point of the book. The point is reflection. In giving yourself the time, space and grace to take a breath and work out how you actually feel – then stopping there and accepting that sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes it’s not and you really bloody want to fix it, but often simply acknowledging it is.

My favourite example is a double page spread I wrote called ‘Your Tough Day Diary’. First question: ‘What happened?’ Second: ‘How did you feel emotionally at the time?’ (with a scale to mark intensity). Then: ‘What thoughts were most prominent at the time?’ Next: ‘How true were those thoughts?’ Finally: ‘How do you feel about it now that some time has passed?’ (Again, with an intensity scale). At the end is a box (my favourite in the whole book): ‘So, you’ve had a tough day, but at least you didn’t ________’ with space to fill in the blank.

Any deeper analysis comes from the reader or not at all. It’s a space to sort through jumbled thoughts when you’re feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, vulnerable, disappointed, guilty or ashamed. And in working through those thoughts and feelings, you get to know yourself a little better, noticing patterns. The aim is to lessen the sense that stress, worries and anxiety are all-encompassing.

Sometimes the lesson is in the question, not the answer

Own Your Calm was the first job I had after getting the all-clear from cancer. I mention that for several reasons: a) to be dramatic; b) to guilt you into buying it; c) to ensure you don’t tell me you hate it because I’ll view that as consensus that I should have died; and d) because I believe that sometimes the universe gives us what we need.

How remarkable to be approached to write this book after the most anxiety-inducing period of my life – when so much angst absolutely wasn’t ‘fixable’; when there was a clear why and it bloody sucked. When actually just sorting through the emotional shitshow and letting feelings be was all we could do. I have written before about how I struggled more post-cancer with my mental health than when in treatment because then I was only focused on survival. It’s during the aftermath that you go, “Holy tit gibbons, that was a lot.”

Being given the chance to work on a project entirely focused on sorting through swirling thoughts after 18 enforced months off work was incredible. It’s given me much more patience and compassion towards myself, and a secure way of being present, without feeling like I should be always working out what comes next.

I hope that if you do get your hands on a copy of Own Your Calm it’ll help you to feel the same.

Just One More Thing

Book launches are weird. It can feel oddly anti-climactic if you don’t mark them in some way and, as I’ve had Covid (retro), I haven’t done anything. Anything. This post, therefore, is a low-key nod to celebrate the book being published.

I’m really proud of it and deeply moved that so many of you have already bought it and sent such kind notes. It means more than I can say. I won’t ask you to journal what you think of it or mark a ranking on an intensity scale, though. You should just sit with that feeling yourself and let it be.

My new book, Own Your Calm, is published this month across the US and Europe (in English). I’ve included the UK link here but please do check your local bookseller: Own Your Calm UK. I have written eight other mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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When I wrote my last piece on Epstein, oh, about a hundred years ago (two weeks), I included a section called “Fallout? What fallout?” in which I guffawed at the very notion of anything remotely resembling a consequence landing at anyone’s feet. Well, turns out I may have to eat my words. Hurray!

Or do I?

While it’s undeniable that there have been reputational repercussions – and even potential legal ones – for a few, I’m not sure any address the most heinous crimes we know Epstein was up to his neck in. So, is what’s happening justice or merely a pathetic approximation of it? And, if the latter, doesn’t it only serve to underline how helpless and hopeless the law is when it comes to dealing with the power class?

Here’s where things currently stand…

The arrests

Three criminal investigations have been launched directly as a result of the Epstein file release – and one has already resulted in charges. Now, before you set off or sniff any party poppers in celebration, I’m probably not going to start with what or who you think.

In Norway, former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland has been charged with ‘gross corruption’ following disclosures that he stayed at Epstein’s properties in New York and Florida, visited his private island, and had the late sex offender cover his expenses and those of his family. He faces up to a decade in prison if convicted. Norway’s ambassador to Jordan, Mona Juul, resigned after reports that Epstein left $10 million to her children in his will. Her husband, diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen, is also under criminal investigation by Norway’s financial crimes unit. (Shotgun being a fly on the wall at their next big family gathering.) (Although, maybe it will be in jail, amiright?)

So, the bad news: some of Norway’s big-wigs loved a bit of Epstein dabbling. The good news: Norway’s legal system seems to be in robust working order. Sorry about your paedo-adjacents, Norway, but well done on your legal hard-hittery.

Then came the two arrests that made us all high-five ourselves. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – the Andrew formerly known as Prince – was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office on February 19. He was released approximately 11 hours later under investigation, meaning he has neither been charged nor cleared. King Charles released an absolutely savage (in royal terms) public announcement in which he didn’t refer to Andrew as his brother, said the law must take its course, and ended with this zinger: “Meanwhile, my family and I will continue in our duty and service to you all”. (Insinuating that Andrew isn’t family, geddit?)

Less than a week later, Peter Mandelson – former British ambassador to the United States, former Cabinet minister, and former hero of the “fail upwards” brigade – was arrested on suspicion of the same offence. He was released on bail and seems absolutely furious at the imposition.

The resignations and professional implosions

Outside the UK and Norway, legal fallout has been quieter. And by quieter, I mean nonexistent. Reputations, though, are finally being tarnished.

Larry Summers, the former US Treasury Secretary and ex-president of Harvard, announced he’ll be stepping down from his Harvard professorship after months of spiralling revelations. He also resigned from the OpenAI board, lost his New York Times contract, resigned his fellowship at the Center for American Progress, and received a lifetime ban from the American Economic Association. His emails with Epstein far exceeded anything ‘professional’, including discussions on how to pursue a woman he was mentoring without his wife finding out. Stay classy, Summers!

Academia, tech and financial institutions have been having a terrible time of it more broadly. Nobel Prize-winning scientist Richard Axel stepped down as co-director of Columbia University’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. The president of the World Economic Forum, Børge Brende, announced his resignation after the forum launched an independent investigation into his relationship with Epstein. Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska, resigned as chairman of a company called Monolith…

And then there’s Bill Gates.

The Microsoft co-founder apologised to staff at the Gates Foundation for his association with Epstein and for bringing his staff into meetings with him. He also acknowledged that he did have two affairs with Russian women that Epstein later discovered (and that were detailed in released emails). However, he still insists he played no part in Epstein’s crimes. That said, he did fess up to first meeting Epstein in 2011, three years after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for sex. And two weeks ago, he pulled out of a keynote speech at India’s AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, mere hours before he was due on stage because of Epstein-related wobbles.

In the Middle East, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem quit as chairman and CEO of DP World, the Dubai-owned logistics giant, after his name appeared more than 4,700 times in the files (still less than someone we know…). In one email he wrote to Epstein: “where are you? are you ok, I loved the torture video”. Yep. “Wait. What torture video?” I hear you cry. WHO KNOWS? NOT US. That isn’t relevant, campers. Move on. Check out the Dow Jones!

In France, former Culture Minister Jack Lang resigned from his role leading a Paris cultural institution after the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs sought to question him over his contacts with Epstein. In Slovakia, the former president of the UN General Assembly, Miroslav Lajčák (I’m looking forward to destroying that name on the audio), resigned as national security adviser after his correspondence with Epstein was made public. (A 2018 text exchange went: Epstein sends him an image, Lajčák replies: “Why don’t you invite me for these games? I would take the ‘MI’ girl”. Epstein responds: “Who wouldn’t [sic]. You can have them both. I am not possessive. And their sisters.”)

Technically, I now have to say: “Being named in the files is no indication of criminal wrongdoing”. Which is true. Indication of a total lack of moral and ethical judgement, however, is another matter. It’s also worth noting how all of the above were allowed to quit or resign. None were fired. Maybe that’s for pay-out reasons (the companies looking to avoid having to pay them out of their contracts), yet it does smack of being allowed to slink away quietly.

And then there’s Trump

I mentioned in my last piece how Mr “I’ve been exonerated!” Trump is mentioned over 38,000 times in the latest tranche of files, which is considerably more mentions than Jesus gets in the Bible. What I couldn’t have known then was that the most hold-onto-your-hats Trump-related news was just about to break.

An NPR investigation found that the Justice Department may have withheld Epstein files related to allegations that Trump sexually abused a minor. More than 50 pages of FBI interview notes and other records relating to a woman who says she was around 13 years old when Epstein started trafficking her are missing from the public database. Only her first FBI interview (in which Trump is not mentioned) has been made public. Multiple subsequent interview reports, which according to indexes and evidence logs should exist, are nowhere to be found.

One interview with another woman’s mother, in which she recalled hearing that “a prince and Donald Trump visited Epstein’s house”, was removed from the public database and only partially restored after NPR published its findings.

The DoJ responded to these allegations by stating “NOTHING has been deleted” and claiming files were only held back if they were duplicates, privileged, or associated with an ongoing investigation. It also referred back to its previous statement that some files contain “untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump”. These conflicting knee-jerk responses suggest several things. Firstly, that the woman in question was lying. Secondly, to know that she was lying, the case must have been properly investigated at the time. And thirdly, that the files aren’t being released because they’re part of an ongoing investigation.

Not all of these things can be true at once.

If the claims have been proven false, why not release the files? If not, and the case is still part of an ongoing investigation then, by God, that’s surely in the public interest to know!

In a letter, Democrat Robert Garcia, the lead member of the House Oversight Committee, asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to explain where the pages are. He then told NPR: “We are witnessing a White House cover-up of serious allegations against the president by a survivor. We demand Attorney General Pam Bondi come clean about why these documents are being hidden, comply with our legally binding subpoena by sharing all records, and tell the American people if their president is under investigation for allegations of sexual assault.”

Woah.

In response to growing outrage, the DoJ backtracked, announcing it would also start a review into their own actions. Which is where things get really juicy. The Epstein Files Transparency Act (the law passed in November 2025 demanding the release of all the files) explicitly prohibits withholding files or redacting information for reputational or political reasons. So, if the files were withheld and aren’t part of an ongoing investigation there could be legitimate legal consequences for those involved – they will have broken the law. So, the DoJ is between a rock and a hard place: either they admit to withholding the files to protect Trump and so breaking the law. Or they admit that the President of the United States is part of an ongoing investigation into child sex abuse.

I wouldn’t want to be Pam Bondi right now.

My bet is that they’ll either claim mistaken filing or technical errors and have to release the files – but redact them so heavily they’re basically black sheets of paper. Or they’ll set fire to the storage room and say they’ve all burned up. Or they’ll start a war suddenly, without running it past Congress as they’re meant to, in order to distract everyone.

Oh, wait…

So, an almost reckoning?

The Clintons have had their turn in the congressional hot seat. Hillary Clinton sat for a six-hour closed-door deposition on February 26, followed by Bill the next day. Both denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. Hillary said she doesn’t recall ever meeting him and dismissed the inquiry as a political “fishing expedition”. Bill acknowledged he had contact with Epstein years ago but insisted he cut ties before the offences became public and said he would have reported him had he known what was going on. Democrats used the moment to argue that if Congress is hauling in former presidents, then perhaps the current one should also get a summons(!). Transcripts of both testimonies are expected to be released later.

Other signs that Congress may finally be widening the lens: earlier this week, Congress voted to summon Pam Bondi to testify again about her handling of the release of the files. Meanwhile, current US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has volunteered to testify before the House Oversight Committee about his relationship with Epstein. Lutnick has long said he cut ties with the man in 2005, but documents released in the files suggest he visited Epstein’s private island in 2012 (with his family!) and remained in contact well into the following decade. While obviously denying any wrongdoing, the optics of a sitting cabinet member having to explain his relationship with Epstein to Congress aren’t great, leading some lawmakers to call for his resignation.

The quite exciting news: as of this week, requests for testimony have also gone out to Bill Gates, Goldman Sachs’ general counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, and billionaire financier Leon Black. A civil suit has also just been filed against Black by Epstein survivors. It makes for grim reading, as you’d imagine, claiming that the billionaire has “deployed multiple frivolous and malicious lawsuits” against both claimants and their law firms over many years, trying to bully everyone into silence.

So, yes, a fallout of sorts has commenced. Thank God. But it’s still happening mostly to reputations, not to freedom, and survivors are still waiting for justice. Meanwhile, there are growing hums of discomfort and discontent wafting from MAGA corners. Yes, those previously banging the transparency and justice drums the loudest are getting tired, bored, and a bit worried. This hasn’t worked out quite the way they envisaged and The White House’s tactics of stall and deflect might well be working.

However, the last few days have genuinely made me a little more hopeful than when I first started writing this piece. I’ve had to keep adding more and more updates that hint, tentatively, at possible meaningful repercussions. Which is something, right?

Just One More Thing

In civil suits filed both before and after his 2019 arrest, Epstein was accused of relying “on an organised network of underlings: those who trained girls how to sexually pleasure him; office assistants who booked cars and travel; and recruiters who ensured he always had a fresh supply of teenage girls at the ready”.

None of these people have been investigated. Cases were quietly settled or held up in court. Yet, four women were considered such big players they were named “potential co-conspirators” in Epstein’s infamous 2008 plea deal and granted immunity from prosecution. (Paperwork detailing the background of this deal has still not been released.) Manhattan is not bound by that Florida-based deal, though, so where are those arrests?

Epstein’s crimes are still being treated as the work of one deviant little man, his consigliere, and their little black book, when this was obviously an organised criminal enterprise with institutional support. You don’t accidentally build a global paedophile ring using a rolodex and one mate. Dozens, if not hundreds, of people helped him build it. Which leads me back to the question in my last piece: why not re-interview the survivors and ask them who was about? Oh yes, because – “Wait! Look at the Dow Jones and this new war!”

My new book, Own Your Calm, is published this month across the US and Europe (in English). I’ve included the UK link here but please do check your local bookseller: Own Your Calm UK. I have written eight other mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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Hi. Welcome back to the Epstein abyss, where the updates get increasingly disgusting and existential – like a never-ending train journey where the doors are jammed and the announcer just starts screaming. If you haven’t read my parts one, two, and three, please start there. For those already up to date: hold your noses, we’re going in.

What’s just happened?

In a nutshell: the survivors of a global child trafficking operation have been sidelined to protect the reputations of rich and powerful men.

The longer version: on Friday 30 January, three million files relating to the late paedophile and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein were dumped into the digital ether. They were late. Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act – passed by Congress and signed by Trump in November – all documents should have been released by 19 December 2025. The Department of Justice (DOJ) missed the deadline, citing volume, the need to redact “sensitive information”, and technical errors.

Redactions were supposed to be limited to victims’ identities and material that could jeopardise ongoing investigations (of which there are… none?). The Act itself explicitly prohibits withholding documents for reputational or political reasons. Ha!

Redactions for the men, exposure for the girls

Nearly 100 victims’ names, nude photographs, email addresses, and financial details were left unredacted. While men were shielded – names blacked out, statements obscured – survivors had the worst moments of their lives plastered across official government websites.

NICE. WELL DONE, EVERYONE.

This Monday, members of Congress granted access to un-redacted DOJ files said they found evidence that at least six men had their identities protected without any clear legal justification. After outcry, some names were eventually unredacted.

These are not all the files. The DOJ initially said it had over six million pages of material, but Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche explained this away as “over-collection”, saying only half was “responsive” (i.e. relevant). In other words: tough breaks. Go away. Blanche (who is, incidentally, Donald Trump’s former criminal defence lawyer) announced this disclosure marked “the end” of a “comprehensive review”. In other words: please go away. Once a final report goes to Congress and the DOJ publishes its redaction justifications, it will consider its legal obligations complete.

Its ethical obligations remain MIA.

What’s missing and why it matters

The missed deadlines and unreleased files have enraged survivors (and everyone else living with permanent ‘resting WTF face’ right now). We know there is “responsive” stuff in there, not least information on how Epstein secured his unbelievably lenient 2008 plea deal avoiding federal prosecution, let alone stuff on other perpetrators and facilitators.

Amy Wallace, co-author of Virginia Giuffre’s memoir Nobody’s Girl, told The News Agents USA that she knows Giuffre made official reports about another individual, yet those reports have not been released. As Jennifer Plotkin of Merson Law, representing more than 30 Epstein survivors, put it: “The release of the files proves the government failed the victims over and over again.”

What we’ve learned from what we’ve got

The files have whipped the cover off a fetid swamp. A hellhole. A terrifying gilded underworld with bad art (have you seen inside Epstein’s houses?). This is what we know so far:

That many of the world’s most powerful men are casual rapists, sexists, homophobes, racists, and grifters. They don’t think 14-17 year olds are too young to consent. (14 seems to be the cut-off of acceptability in paedo-apologist circles, the number thrown around as “not too young”. Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis, though, recently pulled a 180, having originally been dismissive of efforts to force wider disclosure saying “I don’t care”, she now admits it’s worth investigating, stating: “But nine-year-old victims ... wow”. So, nine is clearly the cut-off for Lummis.)

This turnaround proves something else, too: the importance of transparency. That people are lazy and want an easy life. They’re uninterested until forced to confront the evidence head-on, and even then will look to excuse either the perpetrators or their own previous disinterest.

We’ve also learned that many men believe they are inherently owed sex and that wanting to sleep with girls or vulnerable young women is normal. Acceptable. Desirable.

We know many of them are liars. Just outright liars. We know that despite years of protestations to the contrary, many remained in contact with Epstein after his 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution. Howard Lutnick, current U.S. Secretary of Commerce, previously claimed he was so disgusted by Epstein that he vowed never to see him again. Yet, the files show he visited the island in 2012. With his wife. And his children.

Ex-Prince Andrew told journalist Emily Maitlis that the infamous photograph of him with Virginia Giuffre was “probably” faked. Yet, emails show Ghislaine Maxwell recalling not only the evening in question, but specifically that photo being taken.

We learned that these people prioritised power, access, favours, and being “in the gang” over giving a microscopic shit about women and girls, ethics, morality, or the foundations of basic human decency. One of the more fascinating details from the latest tranche is the bizarre economy of favours Epstein ran like a well-oiled machine: Prada bags, free plane rides, jobs for someone’s kid on a Woody Allen film. He’d get it for them, and in doing so, sleaze his way up the greasy social pole. He knew things. He knew people. He leveraged both until he became too useful and too dangerous to discard. I think that’s how he got away with it for so long: playing on the needs of the greedy.

I just had no idea how greedy people were and how much they were willing to overlook to get what they wanted.

Epstein wasn’t a Svengali. He was just creepy.

I’d assumed he must have had something. Some hypnotic magnetism that at least offered a vague (if still unforgivable) reason for why so many people fell under his spell. A Svengali who somehow convinced people that the young girls in his house were there to —

Nah, I’ve got nothing.

The files prove he wasn’t some dazzling operator hiding a dark side. He wasn’t a Randall Flagg (a Stephen King character) or a Satan from Paradise Lost. He was an awkward, ‘off’ weirdo. The kind of man who makes you want a Ring doorbell and a stronger lock. This proves that riches and power really are all you need to get away with anything.

The only other explanation is blackmail.

The photographs from the files are astonishing. How were they taken? Who took them? Under what guise? If my creepy AF pal leapt into the room while I was chatting to an underage girl in my Y-fronts and pulled out a camera, my first response wouldn’t be “Loooool! Classic Jeffers!”

Did these people not care? Did they think they were invincible – despite Epstein having already been convicted? Did they think it was worth the risk? Or were many images taken with hidden cameras?

My bet is: all of the above.

Where does Trump fit in?

There are no direct communications between Trump and Epstein in this release. The New York Times, however, identified more than 5,300 files containing over 38,000 references to Trump, Melania, Mar-a-Lago, and related terms. That’s considerably more mentions than “Jesus” gets in the Bible, FYI. According to Todd Blanche, none of this warrants further investigation.

Claims about Trump circulating online largely stem from unverified tips to FBI hotlines, which carry no evidentiary weight. Trump is notoriously litigious, so everyone’s watching what they say. Including me. (Kind of.)

Trump, meanwhile, has claimed the files “absolve” him, celebrating that this is “the opposite of what people were hoping, you know, the radical left.” The fact that a sitting U.S. president centres himself when confronted with evidence of industrial-scale child abuse, misogyny and potential insider trading would be funny if it weren’t so dystopian.

The fallout

What fallout? WHAT FALLOUT?

Yes, Peter Mandelson has resigned from the UK House of Lords and faces potential legal trouble over information he may have passed to Epstein. Yes, ex-Prince Andrew has lost titles and his grace-and-favour gaff. But systemic accountability? Nada. Bupkis. Bollocks all. Ghislaine Maxwell – a woman, let’s not forget – is still the only person in jail. She still apparently trafficked underaged girls to nobody but Epstein.

Notably, most visible consequences have landed in the UK – and even there, the focus is on what Keir Starmer did or didn’t know, rather than on the women, what was done to them, or what justice might look like. It’s bizarre, but the person who has so far received the loudest public battering is the UK Prime Minister who isn’t even in the files. In the US, the DOJ has effectively shrugged. The loudest official calls for accountability still circle the Clintons. Bill, fine, makes sense. But Hillary? There’s no evidence she ever even met the man.

Attorney General Pam Bondi was dragged kicking and screaming in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday to answer criticisms about the handling of the release. It was, um, not a fun watch? I have a two-year-old son. When he disappears something I’m looking for, he is decidedly less combative and evasive than Bondi was. She followed the Trump team playbook to the letter: deny, deflect, defend. She blamed the previous administration, refused to apologise to the survivors present in the room, and when flustered, resorted to personal attacks.

At the time of writing, anyone implicated in any possible abuse is getting away with it. There is growing pressure for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to give evidence to Congress, but hahaha to that ever happening. There are also legal rumblings both in the UK and wider Europe about investigating secret trading and financial impropriety, but as for the rape? No go.

Why isn’t the law talking to survivors?

Here’s what I keep tripping over: why aren’t survivors being formally interviewed again? Why aren’t their accounts being re-examined in light of everything we now know?

The official answer is procedural. The DOJ and FBI concluded their investigation into Epstein’s potential co-conspirators in July 2025, having found “insufficient evidence” to charge unindicted third parties. Internal memos insist there was no definitive “client list” and no proof Epstein was running a trafficking network for anyone other than himself. Photos and videos, prosecutors say, do not clearly depict additional perpetrators(!).

“But what about the dozens, if not hundreds, of women all sharing the same stories?” I hear you cry. To which the official answer is: ‘females’ are silly, hysterical, and untrustworthy.

Many survivors were judged unreliable because their accounts shifted over time – a well-documented feature of trauma and of, you know, being human – and because misogyny is baked into the machine. Girls and women, especially young and poor girls and women, are still treated as unreliable narrators of their own lives. That comes as standard, let alone when they’re accusing billionaires and power brokers. Their testimony is labelled “emotional”, “messy”, or “hard to verify”, even when history keeps proving they were telling the truth all along. (Institutions prefer documents to people because paper can’t accuse them back.)

Also, threats and harassment have silenced other survivors. They’ve been intimidated physically, emotionally, and reputationally, and face real risk of being sued. You can’t blame them for distrusting a system that has failed them, repeatedly, for decades.

Investigating their stories creates obligations: following the threads, naming names, confronting how badly institutions failed – and why. It opens the door to liability, lawsuits, and the deeply uncomfortable likelihood that people still in power should have acted, and didn’t, or worse, were directly involved.

Take Virginia Giuffre. She spent her life trying to expose what happened and was vilified, harassed, mocked, stalked, and called a liar – not just by strangers online, but by the most powerful people in the world. In the end, she took her own life. Despite this, people still say: “But she could have left!” “Maybe she wanted to.” “14-17 isn’t that young.”

It’s much easier to frame Epstein as a lone monster than as the centre of an abuse pipeline protected by money, status, and wilful blindness. It’s much easier to dismiss any hint of wider conspiracy as Q Anon-adjacent nutbaggery (even though, let’s be honest, this really isn’t that far off the Pizzagate theory). It is much easier to pretend none of this matters, that it’s all a lot of fuss about nothing, than to acknowledge how monumentally screwed up it is.

All of which is why, despite survivors and their lawyers, members of Congress, MPs, journalists and the general public pushing for more, the systems remain determined to protect themselves.

However, a devastating spotlight has been shone on the everyday behaviour of the power class that cannot be switched off. We now know how those men talk about girls and women, let alone how some treat them in person. We know how the favour system works. And soon we’re going to know if gaslighting on a global scale works, too.

Because sure, they can deny, deflect and defend; they can undermine journalism; they can buy silence; and they can hide behind lawyers, titles, bluster, ‘flooding the zone’, and carefully worded statements. They can commission reviews that go nowhere, invoke privacy when it suits them, and rely on the old boys’ network to close ranks. But they can’t unknow what we all now know. The record exists. The patterns are obvious. And once the public understands how the machinery works – who protects whom, who looks away, who benefits – it becomes much harder to pass it off as coincidence or to blame someone else.

Or so I hope.

Just One More Thing

What would you look away from to get a free plane ride or a Prada bag? Lots of people who answered “the sex trafficking of children” are running the world.

The lid has been lifted on one of the greatest institutional failures of our time and the resulting whitewash. It proves what women have been saying for years: that even when there are emails, photos, videos, witnesses, and corroborating accounts from dozens of other survivors, belief is still conditional and excuses are still plentiful. If the conversation around gender-based violence continues to centre male reputations over female lives, is it any wonder women are so angry and exhausted?

It all feeds the growing sense of hypernormalisation: a deep unease that everything is off and that truly mad shit is being normalised – but that those in power are simply refusing to acknowledge it, leaving us all to question ourselves and our sanity.

We have to keep pushing: sign the petitions, join the marches, write the articles, call people out, repost the facts, make the art, teach the kids in our lives differently. Apathy is how they win. We have to stay mad and disgusted, even though we’re so bloody exhausted.

*My new book, Own Your Calm, is published in March 2026! Available across the US and Europe (in English), I’ve included the UK link here but please do check your local bookseller: Own Your Calm UK. I have written eight other (bestselling) mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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January’s dire, isn’t it? To cheer myself up, I’ve started pulling together our family’s go-bag. You know, the bag that’ll help you survive the first 72 hours of a national shutdown. I guess after three days, the hope is that the government will have stepped in and told everyone what to do. Either that, or those who haven’t carked it from whatever catastrophe was unleashed will be wandering the streets, pushing squeaky shopping trolleys and trying to avoid cannibal farms à la Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. (Great book. Blood Meridian, though? Total dirge.)

I’m on go-bag duty now because, as mentioned in my Just One More Thing sign-off post at the end of last year, the Dutch government recently sent out a booklet to every home titled “Bereid je voor op een noodsituatie” (“Prepare yourself for an emergency”), detailing all of the disasters that might befall The Netherlands at the drop of a pancake and how best to prepare for them.

I, of course, found the whole thing hilarious, particularly as the booklet came with no accompanying letter – no caveat that this was a “just in case” or regular missive being updated. Apparently it had been all over Dutch news, but while I am having lessons, my Dutch language skills currently stretch to asking, “Kan ik alsjeblieft wat minder schuim op mijn kleine biertje krijgen, in godsnaam?” (“Can I please have less foam on my tiny beer, for the love of God?”)

Anyway, “Cheer up, lads!” I shouted out of the window upon receiving my booklet. “Trump’s people can’t even redact the Jeffrey Epstein files properly – Elon Musk and his DOGE bros unsubscribed the government from Adobe Pro so they had to use the highlighter app instead – they won’t be able to touch us!” (The Adobe Pro thing is possibly true, by the way, which is fantastic.)

But then the whole Venezuela thing happened. Iran happened. Minnesota happened. And then I remembered Russia. And Gaza. And how Elon Musk owns the internet and thinks that his AI gremlin creating child and revenge porn is tickety-boo (and how he’s probably watching me through my laptop right now). I had to acknowledge that maybe this wasn’t the same as that time your eccentric uncle leafleted the whole town warning about roundabouts being a force of social control. And so my guffaws petered out, I taped up my laptop camera, made a disappointing G&T (flat tonic), stared at the floor, and decided to buy some disaster supplies.

What I have so far

Torches. Two. Big ones. They have an SOS button on top that either sets off an alarm or activates the Bat-Signal. I don’t know which yet as they haven’t arrived, but obviously I’m hoping for the latter. (Note to self: also buy a Batman-style voice distorter. Just because.)

Batteries. Loads. For…

An FM/AM battery-powered radio. It’s cute. I have no idea how it works, but it reminds me of the radio in my mum’s old red Metro car from when I was a kid, which means it’s already earned its way into both the go-bag and my heart.

A first aid kit. The problem here, though, is that this is the only legitimate medical kit we have in the flat, so we keep nicking things out of it to use. Before this kit, our only supplies consisted of a dusty bottle of six-year-old Night Nurse (top stuff) and some Dioralyte from 2016 (probably not great, but I can’t bring myself to chuck it away. It’s vintage.)

A power bank. We really should have had one of these anyway, but I do enjoy the sense of nihilism that comes with an ever-decreasing battery and no way of charging it. Sitting on a train stuck in the middle of nowhere on 12%? It makes me feel alive.

Candles. I have about 20 scented candles from Ikea. You know the type you throw into your trolley thinking, “One can never have enough scented candles!” and then get home and realise one can definitely have enough.

Hand sanitiser and face masks. Our Covid supplies are still going strong.

Two whistles with neck straps. I now walk around the flat blowing them (yes, both) and bellowing “LAPS!” in my partner’s and son’s faces.

Things I still need to get or do:

Write down all important phone numbers or memorise them. As I said in an Instagram reel about the doomsday booklet, the only phone number I know off by heart is my home number from when I was 12. So I can ring the past for help.

Tinned foods. I do buy them, but then we eat them.

Bottles of water. We don’t have a car, so the thought of lugging fat bottles of water back from the shop never appeals, so we never do.

Walkie talkies. I don’t know how useful these will be, I just want them so I can pretend I’m in The Goonies.

A camping stove. Seeing as the idea of camping fills me with more horror than being a victim of a cannibal farm, I don’t have one of these and am loath to buy one just in case someone mistakes me for a camper and invites me on a trip.

So, that’s our plan for coping with the increasing batshittery of the world right now. What am I forgetting? Do you also have a go-bag? Are we being mad or sensible? See you down the cannibal farm?

Just One More Thing

I find the wink-wink, nudge-nudge, twitch-twitch approach to the state of the world right now (that I myself am very much engaging in) simultaneously reassuring and angst-inducing. No one wants to be the person to panic unnecessarily and look silly. Simultaneously, no one wants to be the person not to panic and look dead.

I’ve written about this strange internal conflict before. In 2023, Koen and I were in New Zealand and a cyclone was forecast to hit the exact spot we were heading for. “At what point during an impending disaster do you panic?” I wondered. “And what determines which ‘authority’ you trust – the news, other people, or your gut – and why? Why are some people acting like it’s the end of the world and some people like it’s a bit of drizzle? Are we wrong to be nervous? Are we not nervous enough?”

I continued: “It’s like we all wait for permission to freak out – with no one wanting to be the first to panic. No one wants to look like a prat. Or a coward. Or be wrong. There is also an innate faith in the ‘rightness’ of the world, that things will simply sort themselves out. What will be will be, etc. Similarly, a “this can’t be happening to me” mindset can lead into more general denial. Then there’s ‘pack mentality’: how we feel better protected in groups even when what we’re facing is fundamentally bigger and more powerful than the group. And never underestimate the reticence to lean into sensationalist headlines or chat (there’s only so much hyperbole we’re willing to swallow).”

After posting my reel about the Dutch disaster booklet, my immediate response was relief to learn that lots of other people had started buying doomsday gear, too. “Hey look, I’m not overreacting!” I thought. “Other people are also scared about things going south! Hurray!” Rationally, I know that’s a ridiculous response – yet it’s still there.

I find the collective reactions to what’s happening in the world right now fascinating and complicated. I’ve landed on the side of better safe than sorry. You’re all welcome at ours when shit gets real. We can get high on my 20 clashing scented candles and prank call our childhood homes together.

*My new book, Own Your Calm, is published in March 2026! Available across the US and Europe (in English), I’ve included the UK link here but please do check your local bookseller: Own Your Calm UK. I have written eight other (bestselling) mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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Phew! What a time to be alive, eh? What a peaceful, chilled out, zen year 2025 was – for everyone. I can’t think of a single person who had something even remotely interesting happen to them. It’s a miracle I found anything to write about. Thank you for sticking with me to read (or listen to) nothing but contentment and mild satisfaction.

ONLY KIDDING! Obviously this year was a total shitshow when it came to global affairs, politics (local and international), and the smashing to pieces of social norms and anything that wasn’t nailed down.

To me, what has set this period apart isn’t only the catalogue of gobsmacking events – from the truly insane (like, say, Elon Musk casually giving a Nazi salute which everyone seems to have forgotten about – NOT ME, ELON) to the downright terrifying (wars! actual global conflicts as well as wars on social progress). No, what really set it apart was the general “it’s the end of days” aura that seems to permeate everything and everyone; the shared sense that we’re all clinging by our fingernails to a cliff-edge made of crumbly cheese.

A couple of weeks ago, my partner and I received a mailout from the Dutch government on how best to prepare for a disaster. I shit you not. Merry fucking Christmas. There’s a double page spread listing what will happen within the first 72 hours of a national shutdown. Spoiler: it’s not great. Basically, if you don’t have a personal bomb-shelter (like everyone in Switzerland apparently does?!), an old-school radio and a paper map, you’re screwed. (And we all used to laugh at the doomsday preppers with their go-bags. Who’s laughing now?)

So, for 2026 I’m wishing everyone a long drawn-out period of nothing much. Of “I’m just ticking along, thanks”. Of “everything’s pretty mundane actually”. I would like everything to be so dull that we receive a pamphlet on what to do when you’re at risk of death from inertia. I want to be so serene that I can finally turn my attention to writing fairy porn and making some proper cash.

Before my pivot into fae smut, though, I want to say thank you. Thank you so much for supporting me this year. Whether you read or listened to one piece or all of them, it means the world to me.

I launched this newsletter in January 2023 because I wanted a no-holds-barred outlet for some of my madder editorial impulses. Things I could only speak about in my own way – and I have absolutely loved letting rip. Little did I know what those three years would bring, either personally or collectively. You’ve kept me company through cancer and conspiracy theories, love and loss, hope and grief.

I don’t believe writing needs to be unnecessarily complicated or fancy. I think simplicity and accessibility can sound beautiful. (Sometimes much more beautiful). And I think humour can be the most underrated literary tool. Fuddy-duddy thinking would have us believe that trying to be funny means dumbing things down. I think the opposite. I always have, but especially now when we need laughs more than ever. The fact that many of you clearly feel the same brings me much hope and joy.

Thank you for subscribing, liking, sharing, commenting, and buying me coffees. I have been blown away by your encouragement. I hope you’ll continue along with me into 2026 (be the posts about inertia, chaos or fairy porn, or hopefully a bit of all three) where I’m aiming to keep posting one article a week or, more likely, one every two weeks.

If you know anyone who may also enjoy my work, please do share Just One More Thing with them? New subscribers, comments, and likes are the only way I know anyone is out there, the only way to beat the internal algorithm, and the only way to appease the data gremlins living in The Machine and also in my head.

Thank you again and happy new year! See you on the flip side. Until then, you’ll find me mocking up my existential dullness warning booklet in preparation. Manifest, manifest.

Some of my personal Just One More Thing faves of 2025

Stoma or death? Ah, one stoma, please

6 reasons why I have resting WTF-face right now

The Jeffrey Epstein trilogy: Part One / Part Two / Part Three

Coming to terms with looking different

One of my most read pieces: Hypernormalisation: why the world feels so ‘off’ right now

Substacks I would like to recommend

The Truth About Everything

Baby Brain

Wendy’s World

A video I think you should watch

I post this video every year because it always makes me cry (in a good way) and is an example of when writing can be both fancy and funny. Have a lovely break, everyone. See you on the other side.

*My new book, Own Your Calm, is published in March 2026! Available across the US and Europe (in English), I’ve included the UK link here but please do check your local bookseller: Own Your Calm UK. I have written eight other (bestselling) mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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Look, I’m going to tell you about my 2026 plans, and they’re tremendous. Absolutely tremendous. Nobody’s ever had plans like these. I talked to someone the other day – very smart person, top person – and they said, “These are the best plans I’ve ever seen.” And you know what? They’re right.

First of all, this Substack. My Substack. It’s massive. Everyone’s reading it. The engagement numbers? Through the roof. I’ve got people telling me, “This is the best writing on the internet.” There’s even rumours they might make a film about it. You believe that? A film! I believe it. Why wouldn’t I believe it? I’m going to keep writing it, obviously, because what else are people going to read?

February, Billy turns two. My son. The most incredible two-year-old in history. Everyone says so. His birthday party is going to be legendary. Bigger than any birthday party ever thrown. We’re talking entertainment, we’re talking spectacular cake, we’re talking memories that will last forever. Although, we haven’t planned anything yet or invited anyone because will he even know what’s happening?

Spring 2026 – this is huge – my anti-anxiety book comes out. I don’t know if I’m allowed to tell you about that yet? *looks off-screen* Anyway, this book, folks, this book is going to change everything. The best anti-anxiety book ever written. Maybe the best book ever written, period. I’m curing anxiety. Me. Nobody else could do it, but I figured it out. Other anxiety books? Trash. (My earlier anxiety books excluded, naturally.) Written by people who don’t understand anxiety, don’t understand people. But I understand people. I understand them better than anyone. This book is going to sell millions – no, tens of millions. They’re already saying it might be bigger than the Bible. No, I’m not saying that, other people are saying that. Very smart people.

Amsterdam. We’re going to buy a house there. A beautiful house. The most beautiful house you’ve ever seen. Everyone who sees it is going to be jealous. They’re going to say, “How did you get that house?” And I’ll say, “Because I’m the best at finding houses.” They’ll know it’s ours because we’ll put our name on the front. In gold, of course. Some people – nasty people – say the Amsterdam housing market is tough. That we might not be able to afford a house there. Not me. I make things happen.

July. July is massive. I’m getting my 24-month cancer all-clear. All clear! Because I destroyed cancer. There is no cancer now, can you believe that? Some people said it couldn’t be done. They said, “Cancer isn’t cured just because you don’t have it” and I said, “Don’t be stupid. Stop with your ANTI-JO DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

My enemies. Oh, we need to talk about my enemies. 2026 is a great year to punish them. Elegantly. Like a cat presenting a dead mouse – with an air of ceremony. I won’t name names (mostly because they all Google themselves obsessively and I don’t want them to feel too important) but they know who they are. Mainly people who reply to emails with “circling back” as if they invented the concept of time. Or who don’t write, “Hope that makes sense!” in a panic at being too assertive like everyone else. I’m going to sue them. I’m going to sue everyone.

So that’s 2026 for me. The best year anyone’s ever going to have. People will look back and say, “That was the year”. And they’ll be right. Nobody will ever have had a year like this. Nobody. Believe me.

Hello? Still there? This thing on?

Just One More Thing

Now, Holland has windmills. I never understood windmills, but I know windmills very much. I’ve studied them better than anybody. And let me tell you – they’re monsters. They kill the birds. Thousands of birds. But in the Netherlands? They’re different. They’re historic. They’re beautiful. Classy. Iconic. I respect them. The other ones? Terrible. But the Dutch ones are tremendous. I plan on spending more time with windmills next year.

*My new book, Own Your Calm, is published in March 2026! Available across the US and Europe (in English), I’ve included the UK link here but please do check your local bookseller: Own Your Calm UK. I have written eight other (bestselling) mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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I have spent way more than 10,000 hours studying true crime. Malcolm Gladwell says that this means I can escape from a locked box slowly filling up with water in a nutter’s secret cabin in the woods, can track said nutter down, get him locked up, and make an award-winning podcast about it. Nutters: COME AT ME, BROS!

(Kidding! I’ve got enough going on. For the love of Christ, let me finish this biscuit in peace.)

I previously wrote an article deep-diving into the psychology behind my obsession with serial killers, promising at the end to publish a round-up of learnings so I can pretend it’s been time well spent. Well, here are five points to start with that’ll ensure you’re the weirdest person at most dinner parties. (Not my dinner parties, obviously, but some.)

So, strap on your pepper spray. Let’s go…

1. Lots of crimes are ignored because of ‘unsympathetic’ victims

Girls/women at parties? Boo! Girls/women wearing short skirts? Boo! Opinionated girls/women? Boo! Sex workers? Boo! People of colour? Boo! LGBTQ+ people? Boo! Working class people? Boo! Unconventional people? Boo! Drunk people? Boo! Backpackers? Always boo!

There is a victim hierarchy that can not only determine how much police attention a crime receives, but also how much press and societal outrage follows. This hierarchy isn’t only determined by background, sex, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and appearance – but also behaviour. Who you are and what you were (assumed to be) doing all affect how much people will give a shit. To be totally brutal about it: it comes down to where you rank on the “were they asking for it?” scale. There is a suspicion of victim culpability attached to many categories of crimes. (One glaring example being, of course, domestic violence).

It’s amazing how often you’ll hear or read the phrase “they didn’t deserve this” when a crime is being discussed, as if someone else would definitely deserve to be fed alive to pigs. Essentially, if you’re not a young, white, beautiful, middle-class “devoted” stay-at-home mum who was offed while churning butter, then good bloody luck.

It raises deeply uncomfortable questions about entrenched societal assumptions around acceptability – and also accountability – when it comes to violence, with some of the worst crimes being viewed as forgivable or excusable depending solely on who the victim was.

And, of course, also on the perpetrator. Leading us neatly onto number two…

2. Law and order assumes male violence is inevitable

In 1977, police put women under a curfew to ‘protect’ them from the Yorkshire Ripper, inspiring the original Reclaim The Night protest. The fact that it didn’t cross police minds to put men under curfew despite it being a man doing the murdering (or it did, but they thought that would be ludicrous) understandably enraged women. But another consequence of the policy was that women leaving their houses became the problem – not the serial killer. A woman who broke curfew and was attacked would have been the one at fault because, “What did she expect?”

This is an extreme example of a common true crime trope: male violence just is. It is the potential victims’ responsibility to work around it. Certain people should expect violence as an inevitability while doing certain things.

What does that say about society’s opinion of men?

The documentary Roll Red Roll is about an infamous rape case that took place in the American college football town of Steubenville in 2012. The victim, a 16-year-old girl, was wholeheartedly blamed by many for having attended a frat party ‘like that’ in the first place (and for being drunk, of course). The insinuation being that when faced with an unconscious intoxicated girl, frat boys shouldn’t be expected not to rape. They couldn’t help themselves.

This is deeply unfair on everyone – including men. Of course #notallmen are violent. OF COURSE. But it’s not just angry feminists (according to the incels online) who act as if this is true – it’s the entire Western legal and justice systems. It’s the “boys will be boys” shtick that leads to the undervaluing and undermining of support within areas such as male mental health and domestic violence (both for men as perpetrators of DV and as victims).

Because, if male violence just is, what’s the point in programmes and therapy? Far easier to warn potential victims to adapt their behaviour.

3. Lots of criminals get away with it through sheer dumb luck

Two San Francisco police officers believed they may have stopped the Zodiac Killer minutes after he murdered cab driver Paul Stine in 1969. They let him go because dispatch mistakenly broadcast that the suspect was a black man, rather than white. By the time the bulletin was corrected, the man they’d been speaking to had disappeared. Police later confirmed that – taking into account appearance, manner, location and timing – he was most likely the killer. (The Zodiac has never been caught.)

Between 1975 and 1981, Peter Sutcliffe (the Yorkshire Ripper) was interviewed nine separate times by police before being arrested. NINE. He had a fully-stamped loyalty card for the station. He was let go due to an overwhelmed and poorly coordinated task force, false alibis that weren’t chased up, and a police fixation on tapes and letters from “Wearside Jack”, a hoaxer, which sent the investigation in the wrong direction for years.

Ted Bundy was pulled over multiple times and let go before being arrested in the 1970s – and he escaped custody twice, going on to murder more women, due to sheer dumb luck. (The second time he escaped, police simply didn’t notice he’d gone until hours later.)

Most successful criminals aren’t masterminds; they’re just lucky. (You’d be amazed how many google, “How to dissolve a body” or “how deep should a grave be?” thinking it won’t turn up in their search history.) Many famous true crime stories are only imprinted into collective consciousness because the universe was on the perp’s side for a while: a neighbour dismissing the weird smell as a dodgy drain; the landlord blaming the flies on “a hot summer”; the officers chalking up a bloodstain to rust; or a patrolman waving the killer on because he was polite...

4. Politeness will get you killed. Trust your gut.

That weird bloke with the dodgy limp staggering under mountains of boxes next to a beige murder van who gives you the ick but you can’t explain why? DON’T HELP HIM. BE RUDE.

So many true crime stories start with, “They let him in because they felt sorry for him” or “they didn’t feel like they could say no”. Fuck politeness. Stay alive.

There is a big fat grey area, of course. It’s the tightrope walk of everyday life: smiling just enough to avoid blowback, calculating exits while making small talk, and choosing self-preservation over social expectations, even when your brain is muttering about how you’re “overreacting”.

The bottom line, though: if your gut says go and you have an opportunity to leave, take it. If you can ask for help, do it. Your safety matters more than someone else’s feelings, every single time.

5. Juries (and me!) are far more convinced by a good story than by facts

My favourite true crime podcast, Casefile, proves this every episode. The first half presents one side of the story – and I’m always completely sold. I’ll be hoovering the flat shrieking, “Well, obviously Kevin did it. He should have covered his tracks better. What a bloody amateur.”

Then, when the second half reveals how Kevin was innocent the whole time, the evidence was flawed, and the investigation corrupt, I’ll be genuinely flabbergasted. I would have sent him to jail no question; no passing GO, no collecting 200 quid.

Tell me a cracking yarn with conviction and I’ll believe you. Yep, that blood looks like rust to me; yes, it sounds like she definitely ran away; no question that those flies are normal for this time of year; and damn right I’ll help put those boxes into your beige murder van. Just point the way!

Just One More Thing

You’re more likely to be crushed by a falling vending machine than targeted by a serial killer. Pop culture loves to convince us they’re lurking down every weird hallway with a flickering bulb, but they’re not. (I’m gutted).

Most true-crime books, documentaries, and dramatisations focus on the wildest cases, not the common ones, for obvious reasons. Most crimes are run-of-the-mill and are thus solved through boring admin and meticulous record-keeping. Snore. This does mean, though, that you’d be forgiven for thinking the truly awful stories are more ubiquitous than they actually are. So, stop worrying – and stop kicking vending machines.

P.S. To any would-be criminals reading: remember, luck runs out and trying to explain away a shallow grave only makes things worse. Then again, I suppose if you’re already at “shallow grave”, you’ve made several poor life choices.

*My new book, Own Your Calm, is published in March 2026! Available across the US and Europe (in English), I’ve included the UK link here but please do check your local bookseller: Own Your Calm UK. I have written eight other (bestselling) mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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While holidaying on the Greek island of Kos this October, I made a video that went what I’m going to call “semi-viral”. Or full-scale viral for me. Across my social platforms it got over 73,000 views, 2,000 likes, 700 shares and 200 comments. I know this is small potatoes for some, but for me, this was uncharted territory. Like my unicycle suddenly veering into the Tour de France.

Here’s the reel. Enjoy!

For those who can’t or don’t want to watch it, here’s what happens: we’re on a beautiful deserted beach with hundreds of free sunbeds disappearing into the horizon – and another family plots up directly in front of us. About a metre away. Not only do they block our view of, and path to, the sea, but they’re so close I had to whisper while making my pass-agg video about them. They might as well have sat on our laps. It was hilarious, bizarre and infuriating. (To confirm: the other fam aren’t identifiable in the vid.)

If you do watch and enjoy it, feel free to hit like and post a nice comment. If you don’t, feel free not to do what some people did and say how you hope I get cancer again.

Because yep, while the vast majority of interactions were lovely – heart-warming, funny, engaging and genuinely joyful – some were deranged.

The good, the bad and the batshit

To confirm: most people were delightful. It was uplifting watching strangers discuss why people do this (safety? herd mentality?) and swap stories about classic space-invasion venues like carparks and buses. I was proud to have started the conversation and relieved I wasn’t alone in finding it annoying (and sometimes kind of sinister?).

The angry online lurkers, though, were incensed by my audacity. At trying to be funny. At saying other people were weird. At flagging up something they didn’t agree with. Comments ranged from “You’re the problem” (yep, can confirm) and “I bet that’s her family and this is a lie” to “There’s bigger problems in the world. Get some perspective”.

Then shit got personal – people searched through my profiles: “She’s had cancer and this worries her”; “No wonder she got cancer up the bum”; “She calls herself a writer. Doesn’t say much if she thinks this is a story”. And downright threatening: “If this is what she’s annoyed about, she’s never had a real problem. Yet”; “Let’s get in touch with the other family and tell them to rob her.”

I obviously returned the favour by digging into their profiles (while perched upon the edge of my sunbed a foot away from the other family who I wholeheartedly blame for starting this mess).

Trolls. Reveal thyself

A troll: someone who leaves intentionally provocative or offensive messages on the internet in order to get attention, cause trouble or upset.

According to Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction at Nottingham Trent University: “Most people troll others for either revenge, for attention seeking, for boredom, and for personal amusement.”

The snarkiest responses I received were from both men and women. They tended to have about 90 followers with bios like: “Lovin my family. Good vibes only. Dance like no one’s watching.”

To me, the more wounding posts were the character assassinations and comments about my life. So, while some trolls went for physical threats (stuff I’ve depressingly become used to as a woman who publishes online under my own name), it was the messages that attacked who I am as a person that made me anxiously grip my throat: “She’s clearly desperate for attention – no wonder her life’s such a mess”.

Now, wait just a minute, PattyPetty83, how do you know my life’s a mess? AND HOW DO I FIX IT?

While receiving physical threats is never fun, there is a baseline of abuse that you expect as a woman putting your head above any kind of parapet. Depressing, awful, and often terrifying, yes, but I have learned not to internalise it. I once had a man stalk every article I published in The Mirror for months, commenting minutes after anything I wrote appeared online: “This is shit” (fair, say how you feel) but also “I know where your office is”. When I promoted my Substack piece about women’s football on Twitter, I got called admirably inventive sexually derogatory names. I’ve even had someone say, “I’ve worked out where you live from this video”. Um, congrats? Do I have to move now?

You try to weigh up what is real and what is intended, and go from there. Essentially, just hope for the best.

Luckily (and I know I am very lucky), I’ve never been in a position where I’ve felt properly at risk from strangers online. It’s always been trolling, not legitimate threats. (Or genuine and fair criticism, which is a totally different thing.) Which may explain why the value- and character-driven attacks feel more personal to me: say you wish I died, sure, and make some half-assed disgusting sexual threat, you revolting coward – but don’t call me unfunny, for God’s sake. That’s just cruel.

Ahh, criticism from strangers. Such sweet nectar

Bearing in mind I’ve been in this business a long time – and have indeed had cancer – you’d be forgiven for assuming I might give far less of a shit what strangers think of me. Unfortunately, not so. I even wrote a piece about how infuriating it is that I still care. Turns out, a lot of our big revelation moments don’t fundamentally change who we are, no matter how much we expect or want them to. At our core, we tend to hold on to the same old insecurities and self-beliefs we always have. All of which is to say: I still care what strangers think – and insults and criticisms hit me right in what’s left of my gut.

In my mental health books, I’ve written extensively about how our brains are wired to hear bad news like a screaming banshee. Insults and criticism hint at danger – emotional, social, physical, or reputational – and so play on a deafening loop. Our brains think that this is helping by providing opportunities to find safety through analysing (and reanalysing) the “threats”. This is why a snarky aside can trigger the same fight, flight or freeze response as an in-person attack. Your body interprets both in the same way.

On top of that, cognitive biases kick in. Negative filtering sieves out any good things to “prove” your fears, leaving you terrified you’re about to be slow-clapped out of society. Who cares if someone thinks you’re ace if someone else thinks you’re “the definition of cringe”? (Actual comment.)

This is why, rather than the lovely comments giving me a warm holiday glow to accompany the sangria buzz, it was the negative few that I started waiting for. That made my chest and throat constrict. That made me wonder if it was worth posting the vid in the first place.

What annoyed, rather than upset me

Firstly, that most of the horrible people talked about me in the third person, using “she” instead of “you”, as if I wasn’t the one who’d posted the video and so wouldn’t read the comments. By calling me “she”, I think it gave people distance to feel better about being vitriolic.

I found this pathetic – and also disconcerting. Almost as if the trolls were having a conversation about me while I was standing right there. Like bullies in school pretending you can’t hear them while they have you in a headlock.

Secondly, the stupidity of some of the comments wound me up no end. “Why make a video, not talk to them?” FOR THE LAUGHS, PATRICK. Also, I’m British. I’m going to be pass-agg about it. (I even say that in the video.) My rage was part of the joke. I was laughing at myself, Patrick! Also, if no one ever flagged up ridiculous human behaviour, the internet would fold in on itself with everyone wondering if they’re alone in thinking something’s weird. Acknowledging this shit makes us feel seen!

Are commenters worse on TikTok than Instagram?

In my experience, yes. I disabled TikTok comments after a few hours, (which is why they’ve all disappeared, thank God). This had the knock-on effect of slamming the brakes on the algorithm, with views stuttering to a stop at about 6,000 and comments at about 400. I’d say a small, but not inconsiderable number of those were either cavalierly rude or intentionally mean.

Instagram, though, tends to be full of mates, not randos. Most people’s profiles are built upon personal contacts. This is true also for trolls – the thought that their aunt might see their comments makes people better behaved. Meanwhile, TikTok’s culture is built on instant takes, which makes people feel entitled to be ruder. Snark and meanness perform well on TikTok as they’re high-energy and get more engagement.

How to manage trolls

Someone I’ve worked with who has over two million Instagram followers (arrrggghhhh) has a simple mantra: “If I don’t know them and they don’t know me, why would I care?” They say it helps to picture the troll angrily typing with one finger in the basement of their nan’s house.

It’s important to reframe what the messages mean: hateful comments don’t equal truth. They say more about the person writing them than you. It’s often about jealousy, insecurity, or frustration – as some colleagues and I discussed at work recently, it’s like the “crabs in the bucket” mentality: constantly pulling down anyone who looks like they’re getting ahead, even if it’s of no benefit or actually works against you.

I’ve been told to screenshot the good comments to look back on when feeling antsy. You can also filter keywords and hide “low-quality comments” from strangers with no followers (so who are most likely to be trolls or bots). Also, remember that desensitisation takes time. If you are going to keep posting, hopefully you’ll learn how to pay less attention to the mad stuff and more to the good. The trolls aren’t your audience. They’re spam.

So after my reel went semi-viral, I was reminded how the internet is kind of like that beach in Kos: vast, mostly empty, beautiful… but there’s always someone ready to plonk themselves right in your eyeline. The trick is remembering that you didn’t come for them.

Just One More Thing

The irony isn’t lost on me that I made a video complaining about someone invading my space, only to feel like angry strangers invaded my digital space. We’re navigating a world where personal space, be it a sunbed or a corner of the internet, feels increasingly hard to protect or to share in healthy ways.

It’s part of my job to be visible, and I really enjoy it. Yet, now it feels almost impossible to say anything even mildly contentious (like pointing out how odd it is for a stranger to sit on top of you on an empty beach) without a swarm of people losing their minds. We used to get angry letters. Now the angry people live in our phones.

The comments got to me more than I expected. I honestly found myself thinking I’d either never make another video or start running every idea through a mental risk assessment: how much backlash might this attract? That makes me sad, because I do love making them. And a lot of my articles are opinionated, so avoiding posts about them would essentially mean not promoting half my work. Or promoting it in a whisper and hoping no one notices, which then begs the question: what’s the point of writing it in the first place if I’m too spooked to let anyone read it?

I haven’t found the answer yet and haven’t grown thick enough skin not to care. I’m just muddling through while staring at screenshots of the good stuff.

*Exceedingly modest reminder that I have written eight bestselling mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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(An audio version of this article, narrated by moi, is available below. If you haven’t read my previous Epstein pieces, you can catch up here for necessary background details.)

Right, this story is moving ridiculously fast. I’ve rewritten this piece so many times I’ve got carpal tunnel. What follows is accurate as of Saturday 1 November. If anything dramatic breaks after that, NOT MY PROBLEM. I DIDN’T KNOW. You can’t blame me. (Just like you can’t blame the hundreds of people who saw underage girls with Epstein and did precisely nothing. THEY OBVS DIDN’T KNOW. YOU CAN’T BLAME THEM.)

Let’s crack on.

Imagine this: I, Jo Usmar, was mates with a man who liked sex multiple times a day with girls under 18 – sometimes as young as 12. He’d send his consigliere to recruit them outside schools, at part-time jobs, on the street, or through ‘recommendations’. They were in his houses, on his planes, at his dinners. I was photographed with them. Then he was convicted of sex trafficking, but I thought “balls to that, he’s a sound bloke” and carried on palling about with him.

Wouldn’t you expect someone – family, friend, barista – to pull me aside and say: “Jo, maybe you should rethink your friendship with an old man who ‘likes’ children?”

That is what I find most surreal about the Andrew-Epstein saga, or, as columnist Marina Hyde calls it: “the endless slow-motion gilded-coach-crash that is the Duke of York”. Everyone clearly knew their relationship was a DEFCON 1-level shitshow, yet it’s only now the shit has spectacularly hit the fan that everyone’s conveniently remembered they have morals. People protected him for decades, yet now we’re meant to be all, “Hurray! Something’s being done!”? Um, no.

For anyone who’s had the pleasure of not knowing who this national shame-stain is, some background: Andrew is a member of the British royal family – second son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, brother to current monarch King Charles III. He held various titles, including the aforementioned Duke of York, and represented the monarchy at official events both in the UK and abroad for many years. He also served in the Royal Navy, where he trained as a helicopter pilot and saw active service during the Falklands War. He also held public roles promoting British trade, industry, and education.

He was a big deal, a recognisable royal doing important work for Britain. And he regularly fraternised with a man who publicly enjoyed the company of exceptionally young girls while semi-privately sexually assaulting and trafficking them to his friends. One of said girls was Virginia Giuffre.

From 2000-2002, sex-trafficking survivor, advocate and all-round legend Giuffre travelled with billionaire financier Epstein everywhere – and she looked her age:

When Prince Andrew arrived at the townhouse that evening, Maxwell was more coquettish than usual. “Guess Jenner’s [Virginia’s] age,” she urged the prince. The Duke of York, who was then forty-one, guessed correctly: seventeen. “My daughters are just a little younger than you,” he told me, explaining his accuracy. As usual, Maxwell was quick with a joke: “I guess we will have to trade her in soon.”

• Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, Virginia Giuffre

You only have to look at the photo of Giuffre at Naomi Campbell’s 31st birthday party in 2001 to realise anyone claiming ignorance about what was going on is lying. That’s a child. What did they think she was doing there? What mental contortions did they perform to convince themselves it was innocent?

I’m halfway through Giuffre’s book (published posthumously after she took her own life aged 41 in April of this year) and she is simply extraordinary. The horrors she endured and the courage she showed are gobsmacking. She took on her own family, billionaires, politicians, governments… and the royal family.

Which brings us back to Andrew, the man who has thrust the crown into a genuine existential crisis – and who doesn’t seem to think he’s done anything wrong.

Andrew, Virginia and Epstein: what you need to know

Virginia Giuffre says she was made to sleep with Andrew three times in 2001: in London (where the infamous photo of her, Andrew and Epstein’s partner Ghislaine Maxwell was taken), in New York, and on Epstein’s island during an orgy with eight other underage girls. She was 17.

Before Epstein’s first arrest in 2006, Andrew was openly pally with Epstein and Maxwell, travelling and socialising with them. Then:

2006: Two months after Epstein’s US arrest warrant was issued, Andrew invites him and Maxwell to his eldest daughter Princess Beatrice’s 18th birthday at Royal Lodge. Harvey Weinstein was there too. Lovely crowd.

Dec 2010: Andrew visits Epstein in New York after his 2008 conviction for “procuring a minor for prostitution”, staying four days at his palatial pad (which, according to Giuffre, had a heated sidewalk outside so it would never ice over. That’s how rich he was: he had underfloor heating installed on a public walkway.)

2011: Andrew steps down as UK trade envoy amid a dodgy-deals backlash and growing concern over his Epstein friendship. An email Andrew sent him at the time reads: “I’m just as concerned for you! ... We’ll play some more soon!!!!” (Exclamation marks all the author’s own.)

Still 2011: Andrew’s ex-wife, Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson emails Epstein calling him a “steadfast, generous and supreme friend” and assuring him she “absolutely did not say the ‘P word’.” This, obviously, despite her disavowing him in public while 100% using the word “paedophile”. Oh, and also asking him if she can borrow more cash.

2015: Giuffre seeks to join a US victims’ rights case over Jeffrey Epstein’s 2008 “sweetheart deal” (please see previous article for details), alleging she had been trafficked to men including Prince Andrew; a judge strikes her claims from the record as legally irrelevant to the specific case – though they draw major public attention.

2019: Epstein is finally arrested and then promptly dies in jail, quickly claiming the crown for the dodgiest death in history. Andrew is once again thrust under the spotlight by association.

November 2019: Yes, it’s that Newsnight interview with personal hero Emily Maitlis, in which Andrew:

• claims he doesn’t remember ever meeting Giuffre (despite photographic evidence and plane logs);

• says he was at Pizza Express in Woking the night she claims they first slept together (weren’t we all?);

• claims he couldn’t sweat at the time because of “an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War” so it couldn’t have been him she remembered being really sweaty;

• says he only stayed with then convicted paedophile Epstein in 2010 to tell him the friendship was over in person as that was “the honourable thing to do.”

Just hours later, Buckingham Palace announces Andrew will be stepping back from royal duties “for the foreseeable future”. (I desperately want to have seen his face when someone broke the news that this interview – which he clearly thought was a triumph – had been a catastrophe of Hindenburg proportions.)

2021–22: Giuffre sues Andrew for sexual assault. He settles out of court for around £12 million (reportedly paid by the Queen from her private stash – thanks, ma!). There’s no admission of guilt, but he does lose his HRH and military titles.

2024: It’s rumoured that big bro King Charles stops paying Andrew’s security bill and annual stipend, adding up to millions. (Andrew still has security though and lives like a, well, Duke, so where’s the money coming from?)

Pre-30 Oct 2025: After Giuffre’s book drops, Andrew announces he’ll stop using his Duke of York title and Order of the Garter honours. No more garters?! Quelle horreur.

What’s happening right now

On Thursday evening, Buckingham Palace released an absolutely excoriating statement confirming Andrew is being stripped of all royal titles and evicted from Royal Lodge. He will soon be moving to a property on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, paid for by the King himself. Andrew’s ex, Fergie, who has lived with Andrew since 2008 despite their 1996 divorce, will have to find her own digs.

The statement:

“Prince Andrew will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.

“His lease on Royal Lodge has, to date, provided him with legal protection to continue in residence. Formal notice has now been served to surrender the lease and he will move to alternative private accommodation. These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him.

“Their majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.”

I mean. There are only two ways to read this:

First: They now think he’s guilty of sexually abusing Virginia Giuffre when she was a minor.

Second: They don’t think he’s guilty of that, but of catastrophically bad judgement in being pals with a paedophile.

If it’s the first option – well, congrats. Thank God. Get on with it. But if it’s the second? They knew he was friends with a convicted child sex offender back in 2010. Everyone did. So why are they only upset about it now? Heaven forbid a publicly-funded institution only acts on knowledge they’ve had for years because it’s become public.

So either they think he’s guilty, in which case shouldn’t there be larger consequences than moving to a cushty pad on a beautiful estate? Or they don’t, and think he’s simply a buffoon with bad taste in friends, in which case isn’t this public shaming a bit harsh, bearing in mind they never cared about Epstein before?

Why he’s being kicked out of his house

Andrew has lived at Royal Lodge in Windsor – which everyone always breathlessly describes as having 30 rooms (30! Not 29, 30!) – since 2003 under a 75-year “peppercorn rent” lease, meaning he pays zilch and has paid zilch for 20 years. He secured the lease after paying around £8.5 million for maintenance and upkeep when he first took the property on.

Attention has turned to his house, titles, and finances because, frankly, there’s nothing else left. As Giuffre writes in her book: “Everything that had happened to me in Epstein’s world had only confirmed that certain privileged men existed in a limited space outside the law, no matter how dastardly their behavior.”

Legal consequences look unlikely. While the US House Oversight Committee continues to investigate and does have subpoena powers, hauling the King’s brother to testify would be an extraordinary diplomatic slap in the face.

More frustratingly, reports confirm Andrew has resisted this censure with every ounce of his being. Sources told The News Agents podcast that it took King Charles asking him if he wanted to single-handedly destroy the royal family for Andrew to consider leaving his house. The man is supremely arrogant. As Giuffre writes: “He was friendly enough, but still entitled – as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright.”

You can’t shame someone who’s never met the emotion. Instead, you take away what they love: their prestige, money and power. Which brings us to everyone’s next focus: where does Andrew’s money come from?

Good question. No one knows. Not even King Charles.

How does someone with a £20k Navy pension afford an £18m Swiss chalet, upkeep on a 30-room estate (30 rooms!), and a live-in ex-wife with notoriously spendy tastes? For decades, no one’s dared or cared to ask. But the mood’s shifting.

Even Westminster’s weighing in: Keir Starmer has said Andrew’s housing should be scrutinised and Tory Robert Jenrick said Andrew should “make his own way in life”. While this may sound like small potatoes to you and me, there’s an unwritten rule that politicians should never criticise the royal family in public, so this is actually a big deal.

Cue Charles acting decisively and fast.

It’s integral the royal family get ahead of this – because it’s probably not over. The drip-drip of information being released from the Epstein files (THE FILES! THE FILES!) by the US House Oversight Committee suggests more Randy Andy revelations may be coming. At least if he’s sequestered away, Charles can say, “I’ve done more than most” – which, to be fair, is true.

What happens next?

My bet: Andrew is hidden away in a Sandringham bunker while the royals distract us with handshakes, photo ops and good time stories. They’ll be on a mission to prove the monarchy’s value and paint Andrew as a rogue bad apple. It might even work if the story dies down.

However, if the US investigation keeps dropping bombs, pressure will continue to mount. There’s no denying the royal family is in a pickle. Even discounting Epstein, there’s a lot for people to be upset with Andrew about – allegedly misusing official resources to investigate Giuffre, fraternising with Chinese spies, and his extraordinarily dodgy trade deals to name just three. He’s also still eighth in line to the throne, meaning a highly-targeted typhoon could make Andrew our Head of State. IMAGINE.

And, while I think it unlikely, he may be summoned to testify before Congress. If he talks, shit will hit the fan like you wouldn’t believe. If he doesn’t, he looks like the worst person on the planet. Either way, the story stays alive and someone, maybe, possibly might be held to account for this whole awful disgusting horror story.

I go back to my first point though: there must be a reason he’s been able to live a life of largess for so long, despite everyone knowing these things for years. What must he have seen at Epstein’s? What must he know? How scared must others be of what he may say if put under increasing pressure? Perhaps that’s the most terrifying question of all. And perhaps that’s exactly why Andrew Mountbatten Windsor – prince or not – will never truly face justice.

Just One More Thing

Giuffre’s book is a tough read, but remarkable and necessary. She explains how abuse traps people. How it intertwines with love, shame, and dependency. It shows why victims struggle to leave. Power, coercion and control are often just as – if not more – destructive than physical abuse.

She writes that, as an adult, she kept hoping someone else would come forward, that it wouldn’t have to be her. Haven’t we all thought that, in smaller ways? She reminds us that change can start when one person stops waiting.

Indeed, her brother Sky Roberts told the BBC: “This normal girl from a normal family has taken down a prince. We are so proud of her.”

Ach, rest in peace, Virginia Giuffre, you legend. You were braver than you should ever have had to be. Thank you.

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An audio version of this article (narrated by me) is available here:

While holidaying on the Greek island of Kos this October, I made a video that went what I’m going to call “semi-viral”. Or full-scale viral for me. Across my social platforms it got over 73,000 views, 2,000 likes, 700 shares and 200 comments. I know this is small potatoes for some, but for me, this was uncharted territory. Like my unicycle suddenly veering into the Tour de France.

Here’s the reel. Enjoy!

For those who can’t or don’t want to watch it, here’s what happens: we’re on a beautiful deserted beach with hundreds of free sunbeds disappearing into the horizon – and another family plots up directly in front of us. About a metre away. Not only do they block our view of, and path to, the sea, but they’re so close I had to whisper while making my pass-agg video about them. They might as well have sat on our laps. It was hilarious, bizarre and infuriating. (To confirm: the other fam aren’t identifiable in the vid.)

If you do watch and enjoy it, feel free to hit like and post a nice comment. If you don’t, feel free not to do what some people did and say how you hope I get cancer again.

Because yep, while the vast majority of interactions were lovely – heart-warming, funny, engaging and genuinely joyful – some were deranged.

The good, the bad and the batshit

To confirm: most people were delightful. It was uplifting watching strangers discuss why people do this (safety? herd mentality?) and swap stories about classic space-invasion venues like carparks and buses. I was proud to have started the conversation and relieved I wasn’t alone in finding it annoying (and sometimes kind of sinister?).

The angry online lurkers, though, were incensed by my audacity. At trying to be funny. At saying other people were weird. At flagging up something they didn’t agree with. Comments ranged from “You’re the problem” (yep, can confirm) and “I bet that’s her family and this is a lie” to “There’s bigger problems in the world. Get some perspective”.

Then shit got personal – people searched through my profiles: “She’s had cancer and this worries her”; “No wonder she got cancer up the bum”; “She calls herself a writer. Doesn’t say much if she thinks this is a story”. And downright threatening: “If this is what she’s annoyed about, she’s never had a real problem. Yet”; “Let’s get in touch with the other family and tell them to rob her.”

I obviously returned the favour by digging into their profiles (while perched upon the edge of my sunbed a foot away from the other family who I wholeheartedly blame for starting this mess).

Trolls. Reveal thyself

A troll: someone who leaves intentionally provocative or offensive messages on the internet in order to get attention, cause trouble or upset.

According to Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction at Nottingham Trent University: “Most people troll others for either revenge, for attention seeking, for boredom, and for personal amusement.”

The snarkiest responses I received were from both men and women. They tended to have about 90 followers with bios like: “Lovin my family. Good vibes only. Dance like no one’s watching.”

To me, the more wounding posts were the character assassinations and comments about my life. So, while some trolls went for physical threats (stuff I’ve depressingly become used to as a woman who publishes online under my own name), it was the messages that attacked who I am as a person that made me anxiously grip my throat: “She’s clearly desperate for attention – no wonder her life’s such a mess”.

Now, wait just a minute, PattyPetty83, how do you know my life’s a mess? AND HOW DO I FIX IT?

While receiving physical threats is never fun, there is a baseline of abuse that you expect as a woman putting your head above any kind of parapet. Depressing, awful, and often terrifying, yes, but I have learned not to internalise it. I once had a man stalk every article I published in The Mirror for months, commenting minutes after anything I wrote appeared online: “This is shit” (fair, say how you feel) but also “I know where your office is”. When I promoted my Substack piece about women’s football on Twitter, I got called admirably inventive sexually derogatory names. I’ve even had someone say, “I’ve worked out where you live from this video”. Um, congrats? Do I have to move now?

You try to weigh up what is real and what is intended, and go from there. Essentially, just hope for the best.

Luckily (and I know I am very lucky), I’ve never been in a position where I’ve felt properly at risk from strangers online. It’s always been trolling, not legitimate threats. (Or genuine and fair criticism, which is a totally different thing.) Which may explain why the value- and character-driven attacks feel more personal to me: say you wish I died, sure, and make some half-assed disgusting sexual threat, you revolting coward – but don’t call me unfunny, for God’s sake. That’s just cruel.

Ahh, criticism from strangers. Such sweet nectar

Bearing in mind I’ve been in this business a long time – and have indeed had cancer – you’d be forgiven for assuming I might give far less of a shit what strangers think of me. Unfortunately, not so. I even wrote a piece about how infuriating it is that I still care. Turns out, a lot of our big revelation moments don’t fundamentally change who we are, no matter how much we expect or want them to. At our core, we tend to hold on to the same old insecurities and self-beliefs we always have. All of which is to say: I still care what strangers think – and insults and criticisms hit me right in what’s left of my gut.

In my mental health books, I’ve written extensively about how our brains are wired to hear bad news like a screaming banshee. Insults and criticism hint at danger – emotional, social, physical, or reputational – and so play on a deafening loop. Our brains think that this is helping by providing opportunities to find safety through analysing (and reanalysing) the “threats”. This is why a snarky aside can trigger the same fight, flight or freeze response as an in-person attack. Your body interprets both in the same way.

On top of that, cognitive biases kick in. Negative filtering sieves out any good things to “prove” your fears, leaving you terrified you’re about to be slow-clapped out of society. Who cares if someone thinks you’re ace if someone else thinks you’re “the definition of cringe”? (Actual comment.)

This is why, rather than the lovely comments giving me a warm holiday glow to accompany the sangria buzz, it was the negative few that I started waiting for. That made my chest and throat constrict. That made me wonder if it was worth posting the vid in the first place.

What annoyed, rather than upset me

Firstly, that most of the horrible people talked about me in the third person, using “she” instead of “you”, as if I wasn’t the one who’d posted the video and so wouldn’t read the comments. By calling me “she”, I think it gave people distance to feel better about being vitriolic.

I found this pathetic – and also disconcerting. Almost as if the trolls were having a conversation about me while I was standing right there. Like bullies in school pretending you can’t hear them while they have you in a headlock.

Secondly, the stupidity of some of the comments wound me up no end. “Why make a video, not talk to them?” FOR THE LAUGHS, PATRICK. Also, I’m British. I’m going to be pass-agg about it. (I even say that in the video.) My rage was part of the joke. I was laughing at myself, Patrick! Also, if no one ever flagged up ridiculous human behaviour, the internet would fold in on itself with everyone wondering if they’re alone in thinking something’s weird. Acknowledging this shit makes us feel seen!

Are commenters worse on TikTok than Instagram?

In my experience, yes. I disabled TikTok comments after a few hours, (which is why they’ve all disappeared, thank God). This had the knock-on effect of slamming the brakes on the algorithm, with views stuttering to a stop at about 6,000 and comments at about 400. I’d say a small, but not inconsiderable number of those were either cavalierly rude or intentionally mean.

Instagram, though, tends to be full of mates, not randos. Most people’s profiles are built upon personal contacts. This is true also for trolls – the thought that their aunt might see their comments makes people better behaved. Meanwhile, TikTok’s culture is built on instant takes, which makes people feel entitled to be ruder. Snark and meanness perform well on TikTok as they’re high-energy and get more engagement.

How to manage trolls

Someone I’ve worked with who has over two million Instagram followers (arrrggghhhh) has a simple mantra: “If I don’t know them and they don’t know me, why would I care?” They say it helps to picture the troll angrily typing with one finger in the basement of their nan’s house.

It’s important to reframe what the messages mean: hateful comments don’t equal truth. They say more about the person writing them than you. It’s often about jealousy, insecurity, or frustration – as some colleagues and I discussed at work recently, it’s like the “crabs in the bucket” mentality: constantly pulling down anyone who looks like they’re getting ahead, even if it’s of no benefit or actually works against you.

I’ve been told to screenshot the good comments to look back on when feeling antsy. You can also filter keywords and hide “low-quality comments” from strangers with no followers (so who are most likely to be trolls or bots). Also, remember that desensitisation takes time. If you are going to keep posting, hopefully you’ll learn how to pay less attention to the mad stuff and more to the good. The trolls aren’t your audience. They’re spam.

So after my reel went semi-viral, I was reminded how the internet is kind of like that beach in Kos: vast, mostly empty, beautiful… but there’s always someone ready to plonk themselves right in your eyeline. The trick is remembering that you didn’t come for them.

Just One More Thing

The irony isn’t lost on me that I made a video complaining about someone invading my space, only to feel like angry strangers invaded my digital space. We’re navigating a world where personal space, be it a sunbed or a corner of the internet, feels increasingly hard to protect or to share in healthy ways.

It’s part of my job to be visible, and I really enjoy it. Yet, now it feels almost impossible to say anything even mildly contentious (like pointing out how odd it is for a stranger to sit on top of you on an empty beach) without a swarm of people losing their minds. We used to get angry letters. Now the angry people live in our phones.

The comments got to me more than I expected. I honestly found myself thinking I’d either never make another video or start running every idea through a mental risk assessment: how much backlash might this attract? That makes me sad, because I do love making them. And a lot of my articles are opinionated, so avoiding posts about them would essentially mean not promoting half my work. Or promoting it in a whisper and hoping no one notices, which then begs the question: what’s the point of writing it in the first place if I’m too spooked to let anyone read it?

I haven’t found the answer yet and haven’t grown thick enough skin not to care. I’m just muddling through while staring at screenshots of the good stuff.

*My new book, Own Your Calm, is published in March 2026! Available across the US and Europe (in English), I’ve included the UK link here but please do check your local bookseller: Own Your Calm UK. I have written eight other (bestselling) mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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Andrew Tate. Just typing his name is enough to make the ghoul-sensors in my gut (already testy thanks to chemotherapy) clench with unease.

I’ve wanted to write about this misogyny mascot for years. Yet, I didn’t want to do a hack job; only shouting “boooooo” and farting with indignation. Then I read a deep-dive study into the manosphere that nailed what’s been niggling me, so here we are.

Side note: there can be an implication that discussing young men’s struggles is in some way betraying or abandoning young women. “Come on,” people think, “after millenia of privilege, can’t men handle a little discomfort for once?” But ignoring boys’ issues or getting stuck in whataboutism is dangerous – not only because empathy should be instinctive, but because angry boys and men can pose real risks to women’s safety (hello, Adolescence!). Besides, since when did caring about boys mean not caring about girls? I reject that binary: two truths can exist at once.

So, if you, like me, are terrified by the weird online worlds sucking young boys in like the Fire Swamp in The Princess Bride (niche millennial reference) here’s a perspective on why they’re so seductive. Plot twist: it’s often nothing to do with women.

What is the ‘manosphere’ – and who is Andrew Tate?

The manosphere is a sprawling online network built on rigid ideas of masculinity, where anger equals strength and insecurity equals empowerment. Its subcultures – including men’s rights activists, incels, and pick-up artists – differ in agendas and grievances, but all share a core belief: men are hard done by and feminism is to blame.

The figurehead of this whole shebang is Andrew Tate: a 38-year-old British-American former kickboxer turned self-style misogynist influencer. He’s famous for posting highly controversial videos online, for making millions selling ‘how to get rich’ courses, and for being charged with human trafficking and rape in Romania and the UK.

Nice bloke.

He matters because he’s everywhere: 77% of British people have heard of him, including 54% of all UK children aged 6-15 and 84% of boys aged 13-15. One in six (17%) of 6-15 year old boys have a positive opinion of him, rising to 23% of 13-15 year old boys.

Why has everyone heard of him?

The non-manosphere fans among us (hopefully you? If not, it’s mad that you’re on my page) will have either heard of him when his most outrageous clips hit the news or when he and his brother were charged with sex crimes. Here’s a snippet of the kinds of things we, the outsiders, know him for (and please be assured – I don’t link to any of his videos. I’m not giving him more clicks):

Being kicked off Big Brother in 2016 after a video surfaced of him attacking a woman. (He denies the video is real.)

Declaring himself “absolutely a misogynist” adding: “I’m a realist and when you’re a realist, you’re sexist. There’s no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist.” In the same interview, he described women as “intrinsically lazy” and said “there’s no such thing as an independent female”.

Being banned from Twitter for saying women should “bear responsibility” for being sexually assaulted. (Obviously, he was reinstated by Elon Musk on what is now X.)

For writing “I love raping you” to a woman in a text seen by BBC Panorama.

Holy shit. So why would anyone follow him?

Here’s where stuff gets interesting because by no means are all fans of Tate raging sexists. And, by no means is his anti-women rhetoric always the main draw.

According to The Guardian’s major manosphere study, the appeal of Tate and his ilk is complicated, indelibly tied to societal shifts and upheavals. While we justifiably recoil at their views on women, we’re missing the bigger point: these guys are filling a void.

Tate sells purpose and community to boys who feel lost, fearful and forgotten. “Men are four times as likely to kill themselves [as women]. Three times as likely to be addicted. Twelve times as likely to be incarcerated. There’s record levels of depression. We’re raising the most obese, anxious and depressed generation in history,” says NYU professor Scott Galloway.

Most boys find manosphere videos after searching “success”, “how to make money”, and “how to date” – not “I hate girls”. What they discover is a simple message: all of your problems will be solved if you get rich.

No mates? Get rich. No women? Get rich. No pride, self-worth, power? Get rich.

Influencers claim the pursuit of wealth is meaningful in its own right, as well as a way to satisfy the inherently male drive to provide. This messaging is smart and resonates: “Do what I did, believe what I believe, and you too could soon be sitting astride an inflatable banana in your own swimming pool wearing a smoking jacket and some tiny silk pants at 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon.”

I mean… sign me up?

It offers a straightforward answer to hugely complicated societal issues that have left boys wondering who or what they’re meant to be.

Why his message resonates now

For the first time in generations, 30 year olds are worse off professionally and personally than their parents. Wages are stagnant, job insecurity is endemic, housing is unattainable, 31% of all UK children are classed as living in poverty, and higher education leaves students tens of thousands in debt, with no job guarantee at the end.

While money obviously isn’t the only issue facing anyone, financial and professional anxiety is the underlying hum energising a lot of angst. Especially for boys still inheriting the traditional provider role expectation – all while growing up alongside girls who are outpacing them educationally and who believe patriarchal gender roles are restrictive, misogynistic and outdated.

As one quote I read somewhere put it: We teach our daughters they can be anything, but raise our sons the same way we always have.

Tough love and tough luck

Tate-style influencers dish out tough love: “Yes, things are difficult, but sitting on your arse won’t solve your problems. You know what will? Buying my ‘monthly millionaire’ course and going to the gym.”

This cuts through what they call the “feminised” culture of accepting and embracing vulnerability. “Has talking about your feelings got you a girlfriend?” they’ll sneer. “No. Has having a Lamborghini got me one? Yes. Wait, not just one – hundreds.”

These influencers are always hench, groomed, and living in luxury with lots of women lurking about. They appear to be the living proof of what they’re selling.

Fans of this style of motivation say it makes them feel empowered, reassuring them that they have agency. Being told to get up, crack on, work hard is a self-improvement message they can get on board with: you can be the best version of you. All you need to do is graft.

It fits the culture of individualism Gen Z and Gen Alpha are familiar with as digital natives where you are the literal star of your own online story. It confirms to them that the only person you can rely on is yourself.

Where misogyny fits in

Tate says: attractive women want real men. And real men are buff and rich. If an attractive woman says she likes you skint and skinny, she is LYING. Or, she is as weak as you are and part of the problem.

To Tate and co., relationships are transactional, built on trade, not tenderness: if you pay for a woman to live a good life, she will pay you back in affection. That is the deal. That has always been the deal. It is only recently that things have skidded off course – because of feminism. Gross.

In wanting equality, women stole men’s roles, their purpose. They disrupted the patriarchal structure that was doing just fine. Empowering women disempowered men. It is feminism’s fault that men can’t fulfil their natural genetic-based roles and are therefore suffering a crisis of confidence and loneliness.

This messaging strikes a chord with boys facing what experts are calling a ‘friendship recession’. Austerity cuts have savaged community spaces where young people used to meet, and Covid shattered social education. Lots of young boys (much more than girls) have no mates. The story is the same in the US, with 30% of young men saying they don’t socialise outside their homes weekly at all, 65% saying “no one knows me well”, and nearly half saying their online lives are more engaging than offline.

Which brings us to another manosphere tactic: telling boys that they’re meant to feel like crap. That pain is part of the manly condition. Channelling that into anger will fuel their ability to GET SHIT DONE. The influencers express and validate the feeling that life is unfair and it’s not their fault. Tate himself acknowledges this is a big part of his appeal: allowing boys to feel afraid and hard done by. A point of view, he argues, that feminism has shut down.

What to say other than “ARRRRGGGHHHHHH”

Simply saying, “Bleugh, Tate is a sexist lunatic and a human trafficker” (allegedly – no one’s getting sued here) isn’t persuasive and can actually push people further into that world. It alienates boys who don’t recognise that description of Tate. Who instead see him as a mentor – a rare source of motivation and belonging. A man who has pushed them to join a gym, look after themselves, to have direction, and to feel a sense of purpose and pride.

For many Tate followers, the misogyny is a symptom of manosphere success, not the cause. It isn’t why they stay in it or even the most important message they take away. (Only one fifth of Tate’s videos mention women at all).

I have been guilty of default-responding to any chat about Tate by throwing up in my mouth. Yet, there is nuance here and in shutting down any further conversation we risk creating a bigger wedge. The challenge is to hold both truths: that Tate’s influence is deeply dangerous and his misogyny toxic – but that he is meeting a need others aren’t. He is helping boys to find community and hope that they’re not finding elsewhere.

Acknowledging this does not denigrate girls or women’s problems. Nor does it undermine the dangers this world poses. Yet, the manosphere anti-feminism stance makes it particularly difficult for women to navigate these waters; to initiate conversations or to call men out on misogyny. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try (when it’s safe to do so), but men definitely need to shoulder responsibility in stepping up, calling out this shit and diving deeper into the roles they can play in counteracting it. There is so much at stake.

So, maybe instead of saying, “How can you possibly like that man?” we can ask instead: “What questions is he answering for you that you’re not finding elsewhere?” and go from there.

Just One More Thing

This topic is one close to my heart as the mother of a young son. I’m terrified Billy will get sucked into this kind of stuff when he’s older. But I’m more frightened that he’ll get to a point where he feels he has to. And that’s the difference – and that’s the space where we can try to bridge the gap.

(On another subject: Yes, I am definitely going to do a Part Three in my Jeffrey Epstein series. Good Lord, things are getting spicy now. I just have to read Virginia Guiffre’s new book first, so please bear with.)

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An audio version of this article (narrated by me) is available here:

While holidaying on the Greek island of Kos this October, I made a video that went what I’m going to call “semi-viral”. Or full-scale viral for me. Across my social platforms it got over 73,000 views, 2,000 likes, 700 shares and 200 comments. I know this is small potatoes for some, but for me, this was uncharted territory. Like my unicycle suddenly veering into the Tour de France.

Here’s the reel. Enjoy!

For those who can’t or don’t want to watch it, here’s what happens: we’re on a beautiful deserted beach with hundreds of free sunbeds disappearing into the horizon – and another family plots up directly in front of us. About a metre away. Not only do they block our view of, and path to, the sea, but they’re so close I had to whisper while making my pass-agg video about them. They might as well have sat on our laps. It was hilarious, bizarre and infuriating. (To confirm: the other fam aren’t identifiable in the vid.)

If you do watch and enjoy it, feel free to hit like and post a nice comment. If you don’t, feel free not to do what some people did and say how you hope I get cancer again.

Because yep, while the vast majority of interactions were lovely – heart-warming, funny, engaging and genuinely joyful – some were deranged.

The good, the bad and the batshit

To confirm: most people were delightful. It was uplifting watching strangers discuss why people do this (safety? herd mentality?) and swap stories about classic space-invasion venues like carparks and buses. I was proud to have started the conversation and relieved I wasn’t alone in finding it annoying (and sometimes kind of sinister?).

The angry online lurkers, though, were incensed by my audacity. At trying to be funny. At saying other people were weird. At flagging up something they didn’t agree with. Comments ranged from “You’re the problem” (yep, can confirm) and “I bet that’s her family and this is a lie” to “There’s bigger problems in the world. Get some perspective”.

Then shit got personal – people searched through my profiles: “She’s had cancer and this worries her”; “No wonder she got cancer up the bum”; “She calls herself a writer. Doesn’t say much if she thinks this is a story”. And downright threatening: “If this is what she’s annoyed about, she’s never had a real problem. Yet”; “Let’s get in touch with the other family and tell them to rob her.”

I obviously returned the favour by digging into their profiles (while perched upon the edge of my sunbed a foot away from the other family who I wholeheartedly blame for starting this mess).

Trolls. Reveal thyself

A troll: someone who leaves intentionally provocative or offensive messages on the internet in order to get attention, cause trouble or upset.

According to Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction at Nottingham Trent University: “Most people troll others for either revenge, for attention seeking, for boredom, and for personal amusement.”

The snarkiest responses I received were from both men and women. They tended to have about 90 followers with bios like: “Lovin my family. Good vibes only. Dance like no one’s watching.”

To me, the more wounding posts were the character assassinations and comments about my life. So, while some trolls went for physical threats (stuff I’ve depressingly become used to as a woman who publishes online under my own name), it was the messages that attacked who I am as a person that made me anxiously grip my throat: “She’s clearly desperate for attention – no wonder her life’s such a mess”.

Now, wait just a minute, PattyPetty83, how do you know my life’s a mess? AND HOW DO I FIX IT?

While receiving physical threats is never fun, there is a baseline of abuse that you expect as a woman putting your head above any kind of parapet. Depressing, awful, and often terrifying, yes, but I have learned not to internalise it. I once had a man stalk every article I published in The Mirror for months, commenting minutes after anything I wrote appeared online: “This is shit” (fair, say how you feel) but also “I know where your office is”. When I promoted my Substack piece about women’s football on Twitter, I got called admirably inventive sexually derogatory names. I’ve even had someone say, “I’ve worked out where you live from this video”. Um, congrats? Do I have to move now?

You try to weigh up what is real and what is intended, and go from there. Essentially, just hope for the best.

Luckily (and I know I am very lucky), I’ve never been in a position where I’ve felt properly at risk from strangers online. It’s always been trolling, not legitimate threats. (Or genuine and fair criticism, which is a totally different thing.) Which may explain why the value- and character-driven attacks feel more personal to me: say you wish I died, sure, and make some half-assed disgusting sexual threat, you revolting coward – but don’t call me unfunny, for God’s sake. That’s just cruel.

Ahh, criticism from strangers. Such sweet nectar

Bearing in mind I’ve been in this business a long time – and have indeed had cancer – you’d be forgiven for assuming I might give far less of a shit what strangers think of me. Unfortunately, not so. I even wrote a piece about how infuriating it is that I still care. Turns out, a lot of our big revelation moments don’t fundamentally change who we are, no matter how much we expect or want them to. At our core, we tend to hold on to the same old insecurities and self-beliefs we always have. All of which is to say: I still care what strangers think – and insults and criticisms hit me right in what’s left of my gut.

In my mental health books, I’ve written extensively about how our brains are wired to hear bad news like a screaming banshee. Insults and criticism hint at danger – emotional, social, physical, or reputational – and so play on a deafening loop. Our brains think that this is helping by providing opportunities to find safety through analysing (and reanalysing) the “threats”. This is why a snarky aside can trigger the same fight, flight or freeze response as an in-person attack. Your body interprets both in the same way.

On top of that, cognitive biases kick in. Negative filtering sieves out any good things to “prove” your fears, leaving you terrified you’re about to be slow-clapped out of society. Who cares if someone thinks you’re ace if someone else thinks you’re “the definition of cringe”? (Actual comment.)

This is why, rather than the lovely comments giving me a warm holiday glow to accompany the sangria buzz, it was the negative few that I started waiting for. That made my chest and throat constrict. That made me wonder if it was worth posting the vid in the first place.

What annoyed, rather than upset me

Firstly, that most of the horrible people talked about me in the third person, using “she” instead of “you”, as if I wasn’t the one who’d posted the video and so wouldn’t read the comments. By calling me “she”, I think it gave people distance to feel better about being vitriolic.

I found this pathetic – and also disconcerting. Almost as if the trolls were having a conversation about me while I was standing right there. Like bullies in school pretending you can’t hear them while they have you in a headlock.

Secondly, the stupidity of some of the comments wound me up no end. “Why make a video, not talk to them?” FOR THE LAUGHS, PATRICK. Also, I’m British. I’m going to be pass-agg about it. (I even say that in the video.) My rage was part of the joke. I was laughing at myself, Patrick! Also, if no one ever flagged up ridiculous human behaviour, the internet would fold in on itself with everyone wondering if they’re alone in thinking something’s weird. Acknowledging this shit makes us feel seen!

Are commenters worse on TikTok than Instagram?

In my experience, yes. I disabled TikTok comments after a few hours, (which is why they’ve all disappeared, thank God). This had the knock-on effect of slamming the brakes on the algorithm, with views stuttering to a stop at about 6,000 and comments at about 400. I’d say a small, but not inconsiderable number of those were either cavalierly rude or intentionally mean.

Instagram, though, tends to be full of mates, not randos. Most people’s profiles are built upon personal contacts. This is true also for trolls – the thought that their aunt might see their comments makes people better behaved. Meanwhile, TikTok’s culture is built on instant takes, which makes people feel entitled to be ruder. Snark and meanness perform well on TikTok as they’re high-energy and get more engagement.

How to manage trolls

Someone I’ve worked with who has over two million Instagram followers (arrrggghhhh) has a simple mantra: “If I don’t know them and they don’t know me, why would I care?” They say it helps to picture the troll angrily typing with one finger in the basement of their nan’s house.

It’s important to reframe what the messages mean: hateful comments don’t equal truth. They say more about the person writing them than you. It’s often about jealousy, insecurity, or frustration – as some colleagues and I discussed at work recently, it’s like the “crabs in the bucket” mentality: constantly pulling down anyone who looks like they’re getting ahead, even if it’s of no benefit or actually works against you.

I’ve been told to screenshot the good comments to look back on when feeling antsy. You can also filter keywords and hide “low-quality comments” from strangers with no followers (so who are most likely to be trolls or bots). Also, remember that desensitisation takes time. If you are going to keep posting, hopefully you’ll learn how to pay less attention to the mad stuff and more to the good. The trolls aren’t your audience. They’re spam.

So after my reel went semi-viral, I was reminded how the internet is kind of like that beach in Kos: vast, mostly empty, beautiful… but there’s always someone ready to plonk themselves right in your eyeline. The trick is remembering that you didn’t come for them.

Just One More Thing

The irony isn’t lost on me that I made a video complaining about someone invading my space, only to feel like angry strangers invaded my digital space. We’re navigating a world where personal space, be it a sunbed or a corner of the internet, feels increasingly hard to protect or to share in healthy ways.

It’s part of my job to be visible, and I really enjoy it. Yet, now it feels almost impossible to say anything even mildly contentious (like pointing out how odd it is for a stranger to sit on top of you on an empty beach) without a swarm of people losing their minds. We used to get angry letters. Now the angry people live in our phones.

The comments got to me more than I expected. I honestly found myself thinking I’d either never make another video or start running every idea through a mental risk assessment: how much backlash might this attract? That makes me sad, because I do love making them. And a lot of my articles are opinionated, so avoiding posts about them would essentially mean not promoting half my work. Or promoting it in a whisper and hoping no one notices, which then begs the question: what’s the point of writing it in the first place if I’m too spooked to let anyone read it?

I haven’t found the answer yet and haven’t grown thick enough skin not to care. I’m just muddling through while staring at screenshots of the good stuff.

*My new book, Own Your Calm, is published in March 2026! Available across the US and Europe (in English), I’ve included the UK link here but please do check your local bookseller: Own Your Calm UK. I have written eight other (bestselling) mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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An audio version of this article (narrated by me) is available here:

Preface and content warning: I struggled writing this piece. I found it deeply challenging in ways that will become obvious as you read. Yet, I think it’s important I share what happened, in the hope that it may help others. To that end: please pass it along to anyone you think it may resonate with. Fair warning: there are graphic medical and biological descriptions ahead that may be hard to read. If that’s not your bag (stoma joke), maybe skip this piece and wait for the next. If you’re up for it though, let’s crack on.

“Before starting chemotherapy, you’ll need a reversible stoma,” the oncologist said.
“No, thanks,” I replied.
“The tumour is blocking your bowel. It could rupture. If that happens, you’ll have far worse problems.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Listen,” he said gently, “we can’t force you, but we strongly recommend it. And it’s now an emergency. You’ll need surgery in two days.”

It was March 2024. I’d only given birth a few weeks earlier, and we’d just been told I had Stage 3 colon cancer. I’d had cancer all through my pregnancy (and probably long before that), but hadn’t been diagnosed. Instead I was told to cut out gluten or try swimming to help with any discomfort. Guess what? Neither of those things helped.

After the stoma chat, my partner and I went home and googled ‘stoma’. We had no idea what it was. Halfway through our horrified googling – during which I yelled “NO FUCKING WAY!” more than once – the phone rang. My iron levels were too low for surgery, so I had to be admitted immediately for blood transfusions. Classic.

That night and the next day were spent hooked up to a blood-filled IV, wondering what exactly a stoma was, how it worked, and how the hell I’d ended up here. A nurse tried to explain, but I cried through the entire conversation until she gave up. I was supposed to be at home looking after my newborn baby son.

At one point, my cannula slipped out and blood started pumping under my skin triggering pain like I’d never felt before (and my pain threshold is skyhigh, ta). They couldn’t get a new needle in – it took eight tries with one nurse holding my hand chanting, “just one more!” like we were at the end of a rave, and another, sweat dripping into her eyes, prodding me valiantly with the needle. I was living through my very worst nightmare… and weirdly, it was kind of funny?

The transfusions worked, so the next morning I was wheeled in for surgery. I woke up high as a kite. “How did it go?” I grinned at the nurse.
“Good!” she said. “I just need to see some other patients, but I’ll be back.”
“Fuck ’em!” I roared with glee.

When the drugs wore off, I gingerly touched my abdomen. A bag hung from it. It hadn’t been a bad dream. I really did now have a stoma.

The facts and the faff

There are three types of stoma and they can either be permanent or reversible. Mine was a reversible ileostomy: a part of my small intestine was pulled through my abdomen so the waste could bypass the colon (large intestine) and instead be collected in a bag that hung from my belly. The surgery was designed so my intestines could be reattached when possible.

The output from an ileostomy is incredibly corrosive because it’s leaving the body before going through the whole ‘poo making’ bit, so the skin around where the intestine is pulled out can get very sore. Mine did. I started chemotherapy a week after surgery and chemo famously impairs wound healing so the skin didn’t heal for four whole months.

STILL HERE, ARE YOU?

People get stomas for all sorts of reasons: bowel cancer (hi!), bladder cancer, Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, blockages, etc. Whatever the reason, they are a faff. You have to empty the bag, clean the site, deflate the bag if it “balloons” with air, monitor the skin, and change it all regularly. Clothes are another issue as waistbands can be tricky. Thankfully, I still had all of my maternity clothes, which were perfect – hugging the stoma without squashing it. (I later found out that maternity clothes are regularly recommended for stoma-wearers for exactly this reason.)

So yes, a faff, and yet stomas are magic. This weird little bag saved my life.

Stomas and stigmas

Initially, I was more upset about having a stoma than I was about having cancer. There is a stigma around toilet habits that can make the thought of wearing a bag of waste almost too much to bear, while there’s almost a cultural nobility around cancer. Telling people you have cancer makes you a battle-hardy soldier on the life-fuckery front lines. It’s also horribly common meaning people know what to say and how to feel about cancer. They decidedly do not know what to say or how to feel when you tell them you have a stoma. People don’t understand it or want to understand it. It’s icky. There’s a reason why lots of UK swearwords revolve around excrement: it’s taboo, awkward and embarrassing. A stoma, therefore, can feel like bringing a closeted subject out into the open. Literally.

At first, I only told family and a few close friends. Then I had a word with myself: I’d been offered a life-saving option – something many people never get. Why was I ashamed?

After telling people, far from being grossed out, I discovered most wanted all the details: how it worked (there are lots of different systems, but essentially you just stick a bag over the opening); what the wound itself looked like (a pulsing coral poking out of my stomach); if I could feel waste leaving my body (no); if it smelled (no, the filters are incredible); and if it made noises (occasionally, like a stomach gurgle).

Getting a stoma is a graphic and physical procedure. I could see my small intestine hanging out of my abdomen. (STILL HERE, ARE YOU?) And yet, it worked. I, as a person, still worked. I kept the good bits from food, expelled waste, and could do things I’d always done, just with more care and consideration. It was absolutely extraordinary.

Having cancer or a stoma makes you aware of your body, and how it works, in an immediate and visceral way. It can be crude and confronting, but also magic. We are muscles and water and cells and blood and weird squishy bits, all working together to create beauty, filth, mess, and character.

What was just as extraordinary was the care I received. In the Netherlands, there’s a stoma-care programme where specialised nurses visit your home every day or every other day to help. These people are truly the best of us. They supported me at the lowest point of my life: when I couldn’t get out of bed, let alone face changing a stoma (either physically or mentally). I’m not sure if similar programmes exist elsewhere (I hope so), but if you’re ever offered this kind of help, please take it. It makes you feel so much more human and so much less alone.

If you enjoy my work and would like to buy me a coffee as a nod of appreciation, that would be lovely, thanks.

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Reversals and reflections

My stoma was reversed after chemotherapy in June 2024, during the operation to remove 30cm of my bowel and Dennis, my tumour. (Dennis: such a dick.) During the time I had it, I was very sick so wasn’t living a normal life. I therefore don’t feel qualified to talk about managing it in everyday scenarios. I do feel qualified to say the following, though:

• Disabilities aren’t always visible.

• Our bodies are remarkable.

• You can get used to anything.

It did make me very self-conscious at first, but soon I became fiercely proud. It was a physical representation of something I was going through, something important and huge and difficult and terrifying. It was a symbol that I was surviving – something that wasn’t guaranteed long-term at that point. My stoma told me and others: “I’m going through some shit (literally) that you can’t even fucking imagine.” I found that weirdly reassuring. I was still here. I was still alive. I was trying my absolute best to keep it that way.

Koen, my partner, was amazing. He cared for me, while also looking after a newborn baby (our little Billy). Once, as I struggled to pull a pair of shorts over the bag, he told me to leave it part-exposed, saying it looked badass. What incredible support. What a beautiful way to make me feel less insecure and desperate. It’s a moment I treasure.

Sure, no one wants a stoma, but if I need another at some point, I can say with absolute sincerity that it’s not the end of the world. That, while I may get exhausted and frustrated, I won’t be ashamed or embarrassed. That it’s a symbol of strength. That you’re dealing with something other people don’t even have to think about. That is brave. That is worthy. If other people are embarrassed for me, that’s on them. I’ll just be chuffed to be alive.

Just One More Thing

As mentioned, a stoma can, very rarely, make stomach-rumble noises. When it was first fitted, though, these were MUCH louder. It sounded like a tiny horn player was trapped in the bag honking for help. “Will it be like that all the time?” I tearfully asked the nurse. She said, “Don’t worry about it. Why don’t you just announce, ‘Excuse me, I have a stoma!’ whenever you walk into a new situation?” GREAT IDEA, RITA. THANKS. There’s pride and then there’s obnoxiousness. There’s also making something define you that is simply a fact of your biology – real, yes, but not the whole story of who you are. I was not my stoma. There was no need for it to be the calling card of my personality. It was just part of my physicality, not me as a person.

(I can confirm that any noises were very rare. Once my body settled into its new situation, it hardly ever happened.)

Getting cancer and having to get a stoma were both proper, “It will never happen to me” moments – yet, they happened to me. I guess what I’m trying to say is: be kind. You really don’t know what someone is going through or what they’ve been through. We are not our illnesses or our disabilities – we are how we carry them, how we live alongside them, and how we keep going anyway.

*My new book, Own Your Calm, is published in March 2026! Available across the US and Europe (in English), I’ve included the UK link here but please do check your local bookseller: Own Your Calm UK. I have written eight other (bestselling) mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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I keep throwing myself down helter-skelters of what-the-fuckery lately. Doomscrolling. Reel raging. TikTok tumbling. Increasingly, I find myself tiptoeing along the panic line. My stomach suddenly dips, and I think, “This can’t actually be real?” So much madness is happening all the time that my thoughts scatter, and I end up questioning myself. It’s like being gaslit by the entire planet.

So, I decided to write some overarching summaries of how I feel, partly to organise my thoughts and partly to see if they strike a chord with anyone else. Some of these might sound simplistic, but God bless a bit of simplicity right now, amiright? Also, there are gifs, which improve everything by at least 30% I find.

I thought we all generally shared a moral baseline

For society to tick along, most of us need to adhere to a moral baseline. Not just what we think we can get away with, but what we truly believe to be right. Sure, laws keep us in check, but I’m talking about the unwritten rules that stop us from treating others like crap. For example: fraternising with convicted paedophiles. While not illegal, I assumed it would generally be considered uncool. Not so, apparently.

Back in 2023 (such innocent days), I wrote about shame, looking at what happens when those at the top exhibit no sense of remorse. Research suggests that shame – the feeling that you have violated social norms and your own moral code – plays a big role in regulating social systems and hierarchies. It keeps everyone in check by making us fear rejection, isolation and self-hatred.

So, when the shame-bar is lowered – when there appears to be a collective reassessing of what counts as shameful – it affects everything: how we act, how we feel, and how we treat each other.

Much of what’s happening now gives me resting WTF face because, while I do still believe that, overall, the general majority share the same baseline of decency, it seems that the majority of those in power don’t. Their baselines are spelunking in the Marina Trench.

Politicians were meant to be better than the rest of us

Being a public servant should demand a sense of civic duty. It’s a mission-oriented role with the aim of making things better for the many, not the few. I therefore assumed that you’d have to be a certain type of person to want to do the job – basically, a better person than I am. (I know I don’t give a shit about the potholes in your road, but I assumed others did.)

I’ve found it depressing to watch politicians’ reputations sink so low. At first, I told myself it was just a few bad apples. It’s always just a few bad apples, right? But lately, I’ve seen too many people I once respected making morally dubious moves. Not necessarily illegal, but clearly self-serving. Things I wouldn’t do and my job description doesn’t specifically spell out that I shouldn’t. There’s also a relentless trend of individuals making huge decisions that affect everyone else (in some instances, that affect the entire world) based purely upon what’s favourable to their own careers, personal lives and reputations.

Call me naïve, but I find this shocking. A few people doing this, sure. But all of these people, across every side of the political spectrum? They can’t all have sought power to polish their egos? What happened to the big picture, Sally?

International systems meant to keep countries in check do zilch

Turns out that the most important-sounding institutions, laws, and agreements can mean sod all. There really is a global hierarchy of accountability. Some people and places are granted blanket immunity. Sure, everyone may have signed the same treaties and shaken the same hands, but the reality is that some are expected to follow the rules while others can steamroll over them – and over any naysayers – as if they’re Sylvester the Cat in Looney Tunes. It makes a mockery of what most of us thought was sacrosanct: that there are certain lines you cannot cross and that those agreements are what kept us all safe.

So individual dudes can just wreck everything pretty easily?

I know, I know. Anyone who has studied a modicum of history should not be surprised by this, but, like, really? Even in 2025, one guy can start building an authoritarian regime in the largest Western democracy in eight months – and the systems designed to prevent exactly that collapse like that rickety old table you bring down from the attic once a year? And, like, billionaire tech bros are given free reign to upend the global order with zero oversight?

(Also, why are these guys always so cringe?)

I always assumed there was a shadowy committee somewhere making sure this sort of chaos couldn’t happen. Maybe no one ever really believed it could happen, so never bothered to put real protections in place. Or, maybe the safeguards exist, but everyone keeps postponing pulling the levers because admitting what’s happening would make the whole thing too real. (Which ties back to that moral baseline – people need to believe it’s there or the fallout is too catastrophic to face. This is what fuels hypernormalisation, something I wrote about recently: no one wants to admit the status quo is rotten, so keeps pretending it’s fine. Lalalala, nothing to see here.)

It’s like with serial killers (my speciality): even when Keith is dragging a body out of his gaff in broad daylight, his neighbours are all: “Nah, can’t be Keith. Good bloke that.”

Hypocrisy and irony are on life support

Trump promised to wipe out ‘cancel culture’ in his second term, stating during his inauguration speech that he’d “stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America”. Yesterday, he said that TV broadcasters should lose their licenses if they criticise him and three days ago he sued the New York Times for $15 billion for “being a mouthpiece of the Democrat party”. He also celebrated Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show being taken off air after pressure was put on Disney (which owns Kimmel’s broadcaster ABC) by Trump’s licensing official to fire him. Government censorship? Not on MAGA’s watch!

Nigel Farage recently flew to the US to rail against Britain's hostility to free speech, simultaneously banning certain journalists from Reform's conference.

US county clerk Kim Davis is fighting to "preserve the sanctity of heterosexual marriage" in America despite being married four times to three different men.

The UK’s ex-Minister for Homelessness evicted her tenants and increased the rent just before introducing the Renters’ Rights Bill.

In Arkansas, two men – one of whom live-streamed sex acts and another who was arrested for attempted murder in Ecuador – are building a "straight whites-only homestead", with Mein Kampf in the library, to keep out those they find ‘unsuitable’.

Lol. (But really not lol.)

We accept different levels of behaviour from different people

If your always-late mate is late, you shrug. If your always-punctual pal is late, you get worried or annoyed. T'is the way of life. Yet, the different levels of expectation we have for different people is filtering into public discourse.

While Michelle Obama's famous line “When they go low, we go high” has moral clout, at some point it stops working. If the bottom-scrapers control government, banks, business, and media, sitting atop your high horse in the middle of a wasteland doesn't help.

I’m absolutely not saying we should all turn into criminals, hypocrites, liars, or irony-free zones. I’m saying we should hold everyone to the same moral baseline. We should enforce consequences when anyone crosses lines and always call out bad-faith behaviour. Expecting basic decency, empathy, consideration and logic from everyone isn’t elitist or superior. It’s normal, necessary and fair. The tricky thing is there isn't a clear playbook here. The normal responses – shame, institutional consequences, public pressure – don't seem to be working the way we thought they would. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying, though.

Just One More Thing

As much as the above sounds a bit despairing, I do think things will get better. I believe many of these people will overplay their hands. At some point, those with power who do adhere to a normal moral baseline will realise that the loudest people don’t often represent the majority. They’ll realise they have more standing than they think because the rest of us – those with the resting WTF faces – have their backs.

I won’t write about politics next week, I promise.

*Exceedingly modest reminder that I have written eight bestselling mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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Thanks for waiting an extra week for Part Two. Everything Epstein-related started moving at breakneck speed, so I figured it was wiser to hold off rather than hit 'go' and have the piece be outdated immediately.

Having said that, I'm finishing this on Friday morning and there's a strong chance dramatic developments will explode between now and when I publish tonight – in which case, apologies. I AM ONLY ONE WOMAN. There's only so much I can do while constantly screaming into the abyss.

Let’s get cracking.

(Please read part one first, if you haven’t already, for background on what comes next.)

Why the sudden renewed interest in Epstein this summer?

Bearing in mind Epstein died in 2019, you’d be forgiven for wondering why his crimes and grim face have been plastered everywhere this year. There are two main reasons:

• MAGA rode a wave of anti-Epstein, anti-cover-up, full-blown conspiracy theory sentiment during Trump’s election campaign last year.

• On 5 June 2025, Elon Musk (remember him?) posted on Twitter: “Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”

Musk’s tweet was the social media equivalent of lobbing a grenade into a field of unexploded bombs. Having previously granted himself and his DOGE bros access to swathes of classified data, people figured that if anyone might know what was in the Epstein files, it was this dude.

Fires were lit. Pitchforks were polished.

What do people mean by 'the files' and 'the list'?

'The Epstein files' refers to disputed documents from the 2008 and 2019 federal criminal cases against Jeffrey Epstein. People believe they contain details of a cover-up reaching the tippy tops of government, law enforcement, and society.

'The list' or ‘client list’ refers to a supposed list of co-conspirators who had sex with trafficked girls and women at Epstein's properties, i.e. the names of very high-profile, powerful paedophiles and sexual abusers. A little black book of bastards, if you will. For years, people have spoken of this list as though its existence were a certainty, yet there’s never been any proof that Epstein or Maxwell kept such a record. Still, the hunt for this phantom document has taken on an almost mythical, urban-legend quality – when surely the most crucial list is the one held in the survivors’ memories? Perhaps start by asking them?

The timeline: ‘How NOT to deal with a crisis you yourself started’

On 21 February 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that Epstein's client list was "sitting on my desk right now to review".

On 27 Feb, The White House released the 'first phase' of declassified files with great fanfare, even providing snazzy binders packed with info to right-wing influencers. Look at the government standing up for the small people! Looking at them fulfilling their promises!

Oh, wait – it turned out that much of the info shared in those binders was already publicly available, so the big ‘reveal’ landed like a wet fart.

Things turned from disappointing to downright shifty when, on 7 July, the DOJ released a memo claiming an “exhaustive review” had revealed “no incriminating ‘client list’...and did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties”.

In other words: MOVE ALONG, PAEDO-OBSESSIVES. WHY ARE YOU BEING SO WEIRD ABOUT THIS?

The DOJ also released footage of the video from outside Epstein’s prison cell – with a minute missing from around the time he died (please see part one for background info on this). Public outrage and scepticism prompted Pam Bondi to explain that the cameras reset nightly and that “every night should have the same missing minute.”

Still in July (big month), news broke that back in May, Trump had been briefed that his name appeared in the files. According to Senator Richard Durbin, FBI agents were instructed to “flag” any documents mentioning Trump – and there were a lot.

Rather than say, “Sure I’m in the files. I knew the guy. Doesn’t mean I did anything wrong” – which would have been totally legitimate and taken the wind out of many an outraged sail – Trump went on the offensive. He railed against anyone still harping on about “a guy that never dies, Jeffrey Epstein” who “nobody cares about”, calling the entire furore a “scam” and a “Democrat hoax”.

That’ll quiet them down, Donald. Solid tactic.

How did all this land with the MAGA faithful?

Not well. See, the people now braying “nothing to see here” were the exact same who’d previously leaned full-bore into governmental cover-up conspiracy theories while on the 2024 election trail. (Not only about Epstein, but also JFK and Martin Luther King.)

One of the loudest shouters had been Kash Patel, who in 2023 had claimed names were being kept secret only “because of who's on that list” and who said multiple times how he would release the files himself once enshrined as FBI Director: “Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are” he ordered the Biden government. How do those big boy pants fit now, eh Patel?

Having played the anti-establishment conspiracy banjo for all it was worth, the MAGA squad are now wishing they'd been less gung-ho. It's one thing shouting "screw The Man!" standing outside the halls of privilege; it’s quite another dealing with those shouts while striding down the halls wearing The Man's suit.

The only thing for it? Distraction and mass fact-fudging.

In July, desperate to appear as though they were doing something, the DOJ filed motions to unseal grand jury testimony from both the Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell cases, while the Deputy Attorney General met with Ghislaine Maxwell in jail. (Where she’s currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking). Meanwhile, The House of Representatives called for an early summer recess to avoid a vote on releasing the files – a vote which had gained bipartisan support.

In August, two separate federal judges denied the requests to unseal any grand jury materials, one judge noting how an observer “might conclude that the Government's motion for their unsealing was aimed not at 'transparency' but at diversion – aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such.” Ouch.

Sick of this back-and-forthing, The House Oversight Committee (the internal investigative branch of government whose job is to ensure federal departments are behaving legitimately) finally clunked into action and started chucking out subpoenas – including to the Department of Justice itself for “all” records related to Epstein and Maxwell, as well as the Epstein estate.

The juicy stuff being released now comes from those subpoenas. And it is incredible. One highlight (or lowlight) worth mentioning is the release of the full prison video mentioned earlier, now complete with the “missing minute”. It shows absolutely nothing of note happening, but the fact it’s been proven to exist after Bondi expressly said it didn’t has made the whole saga even more ludicrous. She’s been caught out in a lie about a lie.

What's this about a birthday book?

Brace yourselves. Fair warning: this section gets gross and upsetting.

On Monday, The House Oversight Committee released details of a 238-page leather-bound album given to Epstein on his 50th birthday containing notes from around 50 friends and associates. An article published by The Wall Street Journal in July had described details of this book, saying there was a weird letter from Trump in it. The President quickly sued the paper for $10 billion over the ‘fake’ story, not only denying that he’d written the letter (which wasn’t pictured in the article), but claiming it didn’t even exist.

Reader, it does exist.

On Monday, an image of the letter was published: a doodle of a woman's body with a creepy imaginary conversation detailed between Trump and Epstein that includes the lines: “Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?” and “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump's alleged signature is where the figure's pubic hair would be.

The White House is contorting itself into every conceivable shape to deny this was written by Trump, even claiming it's a Democrat fix-up. (How anyone, Democrat or otherwise, could have either travelled back in time to insert a fake letter into a 22-year-old bound book OR have predicted back in 2003 that faking a letter by Trump would really screw him over in 2025 is anyone's guess.)

The truly awful thing about this revolting book? There are lots of entries suggesting Epstein's predilection for young girls was an open secret. People make actual jokes about it in their messages – and not in a disgusted way, but affectionately. As if it’s a funny character quirk.

There’s a photo of a novelty cheque apparently made out to Epstein by Trump with a comment suggesting Trump was “buying a girl whose value has depreciated” (this entry isn’t from Trump, it must be noted). There’s a hand-drawn sketch of Epstein giving balloons to young girls in 1983, with apparently the same girls then drawn sexually massaging him in 2003 – a hilarious nod to grooming. Other anecdotes detail threesomes, telling girls to get undressed at knifepoint, forcibly touching them, as well as weird photos of animals with erections or having sex.

Notably, there’s a 10-page message in the book by British Ambassador to the US, Lord Peter Mandelson, calling Epstein his "best friend" and noting how Epstein would often disappear, “Leaving you with some 'interesting' friends to entertain instead”. While there is no suggestion Mandelson was ever involved in sexual wrongdoing, further correspondence between the two has since come to light in which he says Epstein’s 2008 conviction for child prostitution “was wrong and should be challenged”. Bear in mind that Epstein pleaded guilty to the charge and that he infamously got off extremely lightly. It is due to these emails that Mandelson was fired yesterday.

What happens next?

Nobody knows for certain. What we do know, though, is staggering: how so many people have got away with so much for so long.

I can’t stop thinking about that tweet I saw: "So Ghislaine Maxwell trafficked girls to… nobody?" It captures one of the things so deeply troubling about this entire horror story. We have hundreds of well-respected, influential people who knew about Epstein's behaviour – some even making jokes about his “preferences” in that grotesque birthday book – yet who continued associating with him regardless. In my view that makes them just as guilty as the actual perpetrators and reveals something heinously dark about how power and wealth insulates people from basic moral accountability.

The institutional enablement runs even deeper. The New York Times' reporting on JPMorgan's facilitation of Epstein's operations, despite numerous red flags, shows how entire systems looked the other way when it was profitable to do so.

Now, however, there are potential new avenues for accountability. The birthday book contains what appear to be first-hand accounts of sexual assault. More significantly, survivors have courageously said they’ll compile their own list of co-conspirators – a move that will undoubtedly expose them to further legal threats and public scrutiny. Remarkably, Marjorie Taylor Greene of all people has pledged to read any survivor testimony in Congress, shielding them from direct retaliation which is a big deal.

Three outcomes seem possible. First: distraction, obfuscation, and eventual memory-holing until the news cycle moves on. Second: selective accountability where a few peripheral figures face consequences while the most powerful shrug it off. Or third: real institutional reckoning that finally prioritises justice.

The fact that public pressure has forced this level of governmental response at all is cause for hope. We’re seeing first-hand how sustained public attention can compel action from institutions that would prefer to handle these matters quietly or not at all. Whether that pressure can hold long enough to get these bastards is another question.

What's certain is that the survivors deserve better than the decades of institutional failure that brought us to this point. The least we owe them is to not look away now.

Just One More Thing

My hands hurt from typing while also having to carry all this disgust, so I'll wrap up with one terrifying thought I can't shake so I'm passing it onto you (you're welcome).

I can’t help but wonder if the individuals with the most to lose may end up feeling that their only option is to begin trying to contextualise, or even justify, sex crimes against children. As more information comes to light and they realise they have nowhere else to turn, it’s not a huge leap to imagine them starting to say things like, “Well, they weren't that young”, “in some countries, 14 is the age of consent”, “those girls acted older”, “we were helping them”. And so on.

If they do become directly implicated, I can’t see any other way for them to try to normalise or shrug off the horror, the way they have other abominations. We now live in a world where what would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago has become everyday. I'm scared that might be where this is heading.

On the flip side – and so we can end on a tentatively positive note – I don’t think people will let this just be brushed aside now or buried under other news. Let’s hope.

*Exceedingly modest reminder that I have written eight bestselling mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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The files! The files! What – or, more importantly, who – is in the Jeffrey Epstein files, why aren’t they being released, and how much hypocrisy does it take to gild the Oval Office? Sure, we all have a few ideas, but the story currently hogging headlines is so much bigger and darker than just that.

Epstein’s crimes spanned decades and involved countless enablers and participants – yet, apart from his girlfriend-come-consigliere Ghislaine Maxwell, no one has been held accountable. No one else has faced charges. Victims have received no justice. That is extraordinary. That is the story. And that’s why I’m writing this: because I think we’re watching, in real time, one of the biggest whitewashes in modern political and criminal history – not over humdrum corruption, but over the trafficking of children. And the rot appears to go all the way to the top.

So here’s what you need to know, in two parts, because it’s big. Ready? Deep breaths. Let’s get into it.

Who was this guy?

​​Jeffrey Epstein was an American financier and convicted sex offender who managed money for incredibly wealthy and powerful people. Despite running a private investment firm, his methods and track record are opaque. Why these eye-wateringly rich people entrusted him with their cash, (and we’re talking billions), and what exactly he then did with it, isn’t glaringly obvious – a lack of clarity that has fuelled blackmail conspiracy theories no end.

Epstein’s money dealings were actually the least curious thing about him – which is saying something. What made him singular, even in la-di-da power circles, was his social life: who he and Ghislaine Maxwell had on speed dial.

His many properties – including his infamous private Caribbean island – hosted some of the biggest wheelers and dealers, politicians, royals, artists, scientists, crooks, and media moguls to walk the planet. His legendary shindigs were akin to 17th-19th century literary salons, with lauded names getting weird while holding forth on the ills of us lesser mortals.

What we know he did

Turns out Epstein wasn’t just schmoozing the big cheeses at his gaffs – he was trafficking children through them, too. Yes, through his houses. The same houses where his many distinguished guests drank expensive plonk and marvelled at his bizarre art. Yet, somehow none of these visitors knew. Even though they all knew. There was more than a whiff of Jimmy Savile about the whole, “Epstein likes ’em young!” jokes.

A 2024 lawsuit filed by 12 Epstein victims against the FBI – for failing to protect them – details “direct reports, claims and tips concerning the illegal sex trafficking of women and underage minors, sex abuse and human rights violations committed by Jeffrey Epstein and associates” dating all the way back to 1996 – most of which, the case alleges, were ignored by authorities. (Proceedings in that case are ongoing.)

These reports told how Epstein and Maxwell would identify vulnerable girls from disadvantaged backgrounds and groom them, offering money, gifts, and opportunities. The jobs, such as being Epstein’s masseuse, were actually cover for sexual abuse and exploitation – by Epstein and reportedly lots of other powerful individuals. He and Ghislaine forced many girls to recruit others, creating a trafficking network. The girls were all isolated, blackmailed, coerced and manipulated to ensure secrecy and compliance.

These were big and important people telling young and vulnerable people to put up and shut up.

The first convictions

Epstein first faced legal trouble in 2005, when he was investigated for sexually abusing underage girls at his Palm Beach mansion. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute. This was the bare minimum he could cop to bearing in mind the extent of the investigation (which included finding photos of multiple underage girls at his property).

“This was not a 'he said, she said' situation,” Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter told the Miami Herald at the time. “This was 50-something 'shes' and one 'he' – and the 'shes' all basically told the same story.”

Epstein got away with this by signing a massively controversial ‘non-prosecution agreement’ (NPA) organised by Alexander Acosta, the then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. The NPA meant Epstein was sentenced to a pitiful 18 months in county jail, of which he only served 13, and much of that on work-release which meant he was allowed to work in his office for 12 hours a day, six days a week.

SOUNDS LEGIT. I’m sure Paedo Phil from Nowheres Ville was offered exactly the same deal.

The NPA meant Epstein and any “potential co-conspirators” avoided federal sex trafficking charges that could have carried decades in prison. Acosta, the overseer, would go on to become Trump’s U.S. Secretary of Labor in 2017 – a role in which he oversaw workplace and trafficking issues. Classic.

Multiple reports suggest Epstein continued trafficking minors after his release. And why wouldn’t he when he’s literally been handed a get-out-of-jail-free card? High-profile people continued associating with him – most famously Prince Andrew. This bastion of good sense and national pride stayed with Epstein in December 2010 and even allegedly emailed him in Feb 2011: “Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!”

WE’LL PLAY SOME MORE SOON.

(Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre filed a lawsuit against Prince Andrew saying she was forced to have sex with him when she was 17, in the early 2000s. Prince Andrew has always denied this, claiming he can’t even remember the famous photo of the pair with Ghislaine ever being taken. Oh, and he also can’t sweat and was in a Pizza Express in Woking when all of this was going on. Nevertheless, he still paid Virginia Giuffre millions to settle the case in 2022.)

The second convictions

Shit finally got real after journalists, lawyers and – most importantly – victims like Virginia Guiffre – spent years fighting for some form of reckoning. Major props to journalist Julie K Brown whose 2018 exposé Perversion of Justice published in the Miami Herald not only revealed the true scandalous extent of the NPA ‘sweetheart deal’ Epstein was gifted, but gave voice to over 60 of Epstein’s victims. Her work is widely credited with spurring the public and political outrage that directly led to what followed.

​​On 21 February 2019, a judge ruled that the NPA that had protected Epstein for a decade by that point was actually illegal. Acosta had violated the federal Crime Victims' Rights Act by not informing Epstein's victims it was happening. (He didn't even tell them about the deal!)

On 6 July 2019, New York federal prosecutors charged Epstein with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. They alleged he operated a network that recruited and abused dozens of underage girls between 2002 and 2005, many transported via what became known as the 'Lolita Express' – Epstein's private Boeing 727 jet.

Prosecutors circumnavigated the Florida-based NPA – which, despite being ruled illegal hadn’t yet been overturned – by bringing the case in New York with new evidence and witnesses. (After Epstein's arrest, pressure on Alexander Acosta, the author of the deal, rocketed – especially when Epstein's lawyers argued that the deal should still shield him and any accomplices from prosecution, proving beyond doubt the enormous level of behind-the-scenes shithousery that the NPA involved. A couple of days later, Acosta resigned as Secretary of Labor. Since then, he’s kept a very low profile, but, don’t worry, this fine figure of law and order will be making a barnstorming return to the story in Part Two.)

Epstein’s death

On 10 August 2019, Epstein was found dead in his cell, one day after documents were unsealed implicating high-profile people. The New York City medical examiner ruled his death a suicide by hanging. However, the circumstances were, not to put too fine a point on it, shifty as hell. Murky as muck. Weird as Waldo. It is decidedly not just the tin-foil hat brigade who suspect there’s more to this story. Here’s why:

• His suicide-watch status was rescinded only days before his death.

• His cellmate was transferred out leaving Epstein alone, against protocols.

• He was allowed extra bed linens (prohibited to high-risk inmates) that were then used in his suicide.

• Guards allegedly fell asleep or didn’t perform their checks (and later falsified log records).

• Security cameras malfunctioned outside his cell.

While officially blamed on prison system strain, the convergence of these factors doesn't pass the sniff test for many, especially considering the high-stakes nature of the case. (If you’re wondering where Ghislaine was during all of this, she was living under an assumed name at a secluded property in Britain, because of course she was.)

What this means

This is a bonafide horror story that goes all the way to the top. It shines a light on how wealth and connections influence justice systems in ways that are just staggering. It proves not only that victims regularly aren’t believed – especially women, minorities, and the economically disadvantaged – but that the systems meant to protect them can be easily manipulated by privilege, turning blind eyes, and a reticence to disrupt the status quo.

It teaches us that accountability often depends on public scrutiny and persistent advocacy – most often enforced by survivors and investigative journalists at great personal risk. (Which is one of the reasons why the dismantling of press freedoms and the undervaluing and undermining of journalism happening everywhere right now is so worrying.)

Finally, it’s a stark reminder that power without oversight can create environments where abuse thrives – bringing us neatly to Part Two, dropping soon about how all of this relates to what’s happening now.

Just One More Thing

As one recent social post put it: "So Ghislaine Maxwell trafficked underage girls to… nobody?" The background to this story is integral to understanding what is happening now – powerful men are getting away with the most unbelievable shit (and now perhaps even Ghislaine Maxwell will, too…) and they’re all still acting like none of this matters. It does matter.

*Exceedingly modest reminder that I have written eight bestselling mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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That’s weird. I don’t know why I’ve woken up. Was I dreaming about something scary? No idea.

What’s the time? Oh, shit – it’s 3am. ‘Truth hour’. Why is it always 3am?

And here they come. All the thoughts. Right on cue.

Nope, I won’t engage. Not tonight. No, siree. I’ll just lie here, peacefully staring at the ceiling until I drift off again.

I don’t have a pension.

What kind of 41-year-old doesn’t have a pension?

This kind! Me! Right here, buddy.

How embarrassing.

Wait, though, it’s not just embarrassing, is it? It’s dangerous. What am I going to live on when I’m older? Love? Good vibes? Lols?

What did I think I was going to live on?

It’s probably too late to get a pension now, anyway, so why bother? What am I saying – I can’t afford to pay into a pension whether it’s too late or not! Everything is so expensive! Life is so expensive.

Chances are I’ll probably die before I retire anyway. From the recurring cancer I’ll inevitably get. Or from World War III. Or from climate change. So, wasting my money on a pension of all things would be insane.

In fact, maybe I’m the sensible person not having a pension.

Ha! Sucks to be you, pension-paying losers!

It would be nice to have some security, though, seeing as I have no sickness insurance either. While not exactly the same, they’re closely related.

Yeah, remember when I had cancer? That was weird.

Thinking about it, my arms do keep going numb when I’m asleep. Could that be cancer? I think I read somewhere that numb arms mean you’re having a heart attack. Shit! Am I having a heart attack?

No. Phew! Close call.

I’m being ridiculous. Such a Negative Nancy!

I should definitely plan for the future! For my beautiful boys, Billy and Koen. For our lovely lives together.

My flat in Margate was meant to be my pension. “A sound investment,” I told myself. And now I can’t sell it. “The bottom’s possibly maybe fallen out of the seaside market. No one knows, blah blah blah.”

I wonder if Koen has a pension. Why have I never asked? A fiscally responsible person would have asked.

We’re going to end up living on the streets. All three of us, as Billy will obviously still live at home until he’s in his thirties because of the cost-of-living crisis.

Woah! Is that a spider in the corner over there or just a stain? Okay, just a stain. Just a stain.

God, I wish I could sleep, but my heart feels like its trying to escape my chest.

This is like hangxiety, just without any of the boozy fun. When I’m convinced I’ve done something awful on the sesh.

Something heinous. Disgusting. Mortifying.

Because I have before, haven’t I? I am that person. First to arrive. Last to leave. Like that time I ended up in a dance-off with some dude at a party and my flipflops flew off and then I headbutted him during a particularly adventurous move.

Lalalalalala.

Why do I always hum when I want to block out cringe thoughts? That in itself is cringe.

God, I’m just a walking, talking, dancing, headbutting, cancery, pension-less cringe-machine.

Hmm… I wonder how X is doing. I wonder if their lodger really does have a secret person living under the bed? What if X tries to kick the lodger out and the person under the bed attacks them?

I mean, that sounds mad even at 3am, even during truth hour, but stranger things have happened…

Right, I’m going to try to get some more sleep.

Or… I could scroll on my phone to distract myself for a minute.

Just a minute.

Just a teensy tiny minute of lovely funny videos to swipe away these pesky thoughts.

Behold! The entirety of human knowledge – condensed into this glowing rectangle of sleep destruction – is now being beamed straight into my eyes! Straight into my brain! Sleepy times guaranteed!

Oh, and now it’s 5am.

Just One More Thing

Everything seems BIGGER at 3am. Darker. Scarier. Sharper. More real. I’m talking about that weird shape in the corner, yes, but especially your thoughts. Your worst-case scenario, inner critic, catastrophising, ruminating, ‘what if’ thoughts. Your ‘I’m a fraud/bad person/rubbish human/sick bug/failure/blagger thoughts.

If this rings true to you, I’ll pass on the advice someone gave to me when we spoke about this 3am phenomenon:

Wait until morning. Wait until light. Wait until the edges soften, the breeze filters in, and the colours warm up. Wait until you can hear the birds, the bin truck, the first commuters. The fear will subside and the worst thoughts will retreat, scuttling back under the bed in the basement of your mind (like my friend’s lodger’s secret guest). You’ll wonder what all the fuss had been about.

Maybe.

Either that, or you’ll quickly look into getting yourself a pension, like I’m doing right now.

(Also, please buy my flat.)

*Exceedingly modest reminder that I have written eight bestselling mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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An audio version (by me) is available below:

On 6th August, it will be exactly one year since I was given the all-clear from Stage 3 colon cancer. My 12 month tests have been quite heavy and I still have an ultrasound to go. Yet, the main ones – the CT scan and blood tests – are clear. So we’re feeling positive. We’re feeling tentatively hopeful. We’re looking to the future without automatically caveating every plan with, “If I’m well”. It feels like a big deal.

The trouble is, see, (isn’t there always trouble?), that we’re scared to feel too hopeful. What if the cancer hears us making plans and comes back, just for a laugh? What if it thinks we’re getting a bit too cocky for our own good and elbows its way back into my colon for shits (literally) and giggles (less so)? This is what researcher Brené Brown calls ‘foreboding joy’: when something good happens, you start bracing yourself for something bad.

It’s one of the reasons I sigh deeply whenever told to look on the bright side or to feel grateful for the good things. I do feel grateful. All the time. My default mode is positive, happy, thankful, and finding the funny in everything – even when that gets me into a lot of trouble. So, to be told to do that feels like telling me to breathe. I’m on it, thanks. Yet sometimes it’s important to acknowledge when things are complicated. That isn’t a rejection of positivity, it’s a rejection of the oversimplification of what it means to live with hope when you've faced a life or death threat – or any threat really. In my current situation, I worry that if I feel too grateful, too okay with stuff, life will kick me in the colon anyway. Because it did before.

I have written about magical thinking many times in my books. It’s when you believe that your thoughts can influence external events. It’s a common category of NAT (negative automatic thoughts) spouted by our inner critics and, because us humans are sensitive creatures, we tend to only truly believe the negative magical-thinking scenarios, never the positive. For example, we’ll really lend weight to thoughts such as, “If I think I’ll get cancer again, I definitely will” rather than, “If I think I’ll win the lottery, I’ll snatch that jackpot next week”.

I’m in a magical thinking vortex right now, ricocheting from believing that feeling hopeful will kill me to believing that not feeling hopeful will kill me. Nowhere in this equation am I winning the lottery.

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I know a lot of this is because I’m not yet out of the woods. I'm slated as high-risk for recurrence within the first two years. After two years, medium risk. After five, low risk. So, I have another year to go before we can breathe a bit easier and four to go before we can throw the mother of all “fuck cancer” parties. My cancer therapist told me that the regular testing gets easier the more you do. I haven’t found that. Sometimes I feel like I’m skating further and further out onto a lake of ice and it’ll take me five years to reach safety on the other side. Meanwhile, the ice is getting thinner and thinner and thinner as I reach the middle. I know, rationally, this isn’t how illness works. I know, rationally, that my body is slowly healing and that every time I have my tests I’m actually skating further away from cancer, not further towards a hole in the ice. Yet, try telling that to my fear. Try telling that to my hope.

Hope takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of faith. It takes a lot of risk. To hope is to expose yourself to vulnerability, disappointment, shame, guilt, and fear, if things don’t work out as you’d, well, hoped. It is easier, sometimes, to be pessimistic. To expect the worst. We kid ourselves that that means we’ll be better prepared if shit does hit the fan, but that’s always untrue. You will still feel like crap. You will still be shocked. You will still be disappointed. All you’ve done is ensure you’ll feel all of those things for longer. That’s why I do tend to play the glad game in general. I do enjoy life.

So, for my 12-month all-clear anniversary, I will dabble in hope. I will let the feelings in that say this is just the first of many more anniversaries to come. I will let them marinate. I will trust them. I will start making plans for the future, believing that I will be around to see them play out. Things like booking holidays or starting to read a big book (ha!). Because I will be here to watch them play out.

I hope.

Just One More Thing

Fuck you, cancer. My God, seriously, fuck you. What an awful little turd you are. I hate you.

*Exceedingly modest reminder that I have written eight bestselling mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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I read somewhere recently how people have stopped listening to moving, sad or challenging music. The uproar of modern life has made them scared of dipping a toe into those waters in case they get swept away. The concept of avoiding BIG FEELINGS is one I understand well. For me, listening to music is always active, never passive, so I know it may trigger emotions I won’t have the bandwidth to deal with. Even if those feelings are great! Some days I don’t want to be motivated or inspired, thanks, I want to listen to murder podcasts and zone the hell out.

When I was ill (cancer, don’t you know – I never mention it, so you’ll be forgiven if you didn’t), everything became very simple. Life was purely about survival. We were all laser-focused on getting through each day. Our worlds became very small. In that mode, it’s much easier to let yourself really feel. To let the fear, love, awe, gratitude, and grief wash over you. I told people I loved them all the time. I told people I was scared all the time. Everyone cried all the time. It was freeing and beautiful and moving and everything everywhere all at once. It made me realise how rare that is, though. How, when you do have to deal with daily life – when you do have to work, go to the shops, stay on hold to the electricity company for 40 minutes – you can’t always be bathed in love, hugging everyone, weeping, wailing or thumping your chest. Which is why the state of the world right now is so hard to deal with.

THINGS ARE COMPLETELY BATSHIT. EVERYONE HAS LOST THEIR MINDS.

The world is being gaslit on a global scale. We’re watching savagery, corruption, denial and what-about-ism unfold in real time and nothing is being done about it. The supposedly steady, stable and inevitable world order has been proven time and time again to be absolute trash, founded on bullshit, bluster and the whims of megalomaniac, narcissistic, nutbag authoritarians and billionaires.

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I wrote about hypernormalisation a while back: a state of being where all normal plebs like you and me (no offence) can see that shit is broken, but those in charge simply deny it or act like it’s fine. They repeatedly tell us that what we’re seeing or hearing is not really what we’re seeing or hearing but something entirely different. Don’t worry, it’s not your fault, though – the reason you were mistaken is because of them over there! Life becomes streamlined into simplistic narratives of good versus evil, which only need simple solutions and wouldn’t you know it, how handy, this strongman can fix it all! Hurray!

What’s happened since I wrote that piece beggars belief. I thought stuff was insane then – how naive! Here are just two examples: Israeli officials continue to insist that their military campaign in Gaza is above board and proportional despite thousands of civilian deaths, shattered infrastructure (including most hospitals), deliberate starvation, and atrocities played out daily. Allies continue to either agree outwardly with this official line or tip-toe carefully around it, despite over 100 international aid agencies collectively saying the situation is untenable. (That’s just this week.) Then there’s Trump’s insistence that Epstein was simply a ‘creep’, that they were never mates, and he would never have contributed a wildly incriminating birthday message to him. This despite reams of evidence, including photos and videos (allegedly) proving otherwise. Move along, move along, there’s nothing to see here.

The madness lies in how those in power insist the rule of law and democracy are sacred while simultaneously tolerating (or excusing) their erosion. The bar for acceptability has been lowered to a point incomprehensible to the human eye – yet, we’re being asked to continue our daily lives as if it hasn’t. As if everything’s tickety boo. We watch TV, scratch our bums, look after our kids, wash ourselves, and continue – not only because that is something we’ve also been taught to do, but because it helps to keep us sane.

Which is the other thing about hypernormalisation. There comes a point where it is easier to just accept what we’re told and get on with it. Because to do anything else is too big, too frustrating, too frightening. When everyday worries are overshadowed and made pathetic, and a feeling of helplessness becomes collective, we can shut down. Distract and numb ourselves. Stop listening to music, reading books or watching shows that make us feel conflicted, curious or uneasy. Stop speaking to people who prod those bruises. Stop engaging. It is easier to block it all out – and sometimes it is no doubt healthier. You have to look after yourself and do what you can to get through.

Yet, we must allow ourselves to feel sometimes. To suffer. Fight. Wail. Weep. Hug. Love. Create. Make. Grieve. Fear. To be intentionally quiet. This is why art scares those who weave false tales and who care only for themselves – because it’s where outrage lives. So, I’m going to continue to numb myself when I have to and to go about my days as best I can. I’m gonna chat nonsense and have a laugh. But I am also going to let myself feel, because if we don’t, we lose what makes us human – and we become just like them.

Just One More Thing

I’m going to write another piece soon about how MAGA is bastardising language and the impact that is having on accountability and truth. If you feel like you’re going mad hearing how everyday people are ‘evil’ or ‘treasonous’, yet the purveyor of young girls to an elite paedophile ring is the victim of a ‘witch hunt’ (Trump’s new line on Ghislaine Maxwell), you’re not going mad. It’s a deliberate propaganda tool. The use of language by those in power right now is playing a key role in the rest of us feeling as though the world has lost its mind.

*Exceedingly modest reminder that I have written eight bestselling mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.

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