Molly Parkin: Is she an outsider or an insider-outsider or an aparter?

Molly Parkin
Photo by Anthony Lycett

My darling Molly Parkin is featured in the Guardian today in a series called The Outsiders. I'm not quite sure what an outsider is really. Certainly this tribe does not include marginal sociopaths who've done little with their lives, or "loners" whose existential lonesomeness is frequently cited as reason in itself for demonisation or witch-hunts or criminal suspicion or posthumous besmirchment. So perhaps the series title should be: Insider Outsiders. It surely celebrates the people who belong but who somehow stand apart. The Aparters could be a much better series title. Madame Arcati only seeks greater precision beyond the slack-brained come-ons of newspapers.

That said it's an entertaining encounter between legend and young fan (Clive Martin). As I write there are four reader comments, two of which have been excluded on the grounds of breaching "community standards"; and the third sends up the community standards message. So, 75% of the current reaction is blighted by over-eager censors. Which reminds me. A little while ago I attempted to post a comment beneath an item in the Guardian on the Telegraph's editor-in-chief  Jason Seiken. I simply pointed out that Mr S's birth details are unknown; and would someone supply because I wished to cast his horoscope. Oh dear! Some underpaid hireling imagined I had breached community standards and in consequence cast my innocent message out.

It is an irony that a piece about a wild spirited bohemian outsider is managed by corporate disciplinarians. Yes, my love affair with the Guardian ended some time ago, I'm afraid. Alas, the Guardian is no more a guardian of free speech than Pravda or the Sun. 

In other news, Clive's interview with Moll appears on the day we learn that pink-haired Zandra Rhodes is made a dame in the Queen's Birthday Honours. This is certainly a lot more deserving than the honorary damehood awarded to Angelina Jolie - has she been successful in her laudable campaigns against sexual war violence? Yes, if judged by the mass of media photo ops of a statuesque beauty in battle war zones standing by the side of William Hague. Perhaps we can agree that "Dame Molly Parkin" certainly has a very definite ring to it, now that we know that HMQ has the most excellent taste in fashion and style. That would be most deserving.

Finally, it is Clive's youth (or conformity) that must cause him to express a degree of embarrassment in drawing attention to Moll's "outrageous" sex life, because she's 82. In this day and age I don't think advanced years is reason not to reflect on past or even current amatory activity. I wholly encourage young writers to put aside their Mumsnet attitudes and accept that while there's breath in the body there's probably a hormone or two as well. Let's leave the measuring-speak to undertakers.

You can read Moll's interview - and all about her current projects - here.