When I got my job as an announcer at Anglia back in 1979 I was thrilled.
After years of trying to make a living in theatre, I finally had a contract with my name on it.
Before that I’d worked in pubs and restaurants to pay for the endless auditions, and to put something towards the rent to my very kind cousin who put me up in London.
I shared a room with her baby.
It wasn’t ideal, but I was grateful for a roof and for family who looked out for me.
That baby is in his fifties now and doesn’t remember me being there.
Probably just as well.
I spent a lot of that time telling him to shut up.
I was about 18.
Sharing a room with a baby teaches you, very quickly, the reality of what looking after a baby means.
The broken nights, the noise, the constant need.
It gave me a lot of respect for parents, and for my cousin who did it with no fuss.
Eventually I was lucky enough to get the job at Anglia TV and life changed for the better.
A regular wage.
A job I loved.
A reason to get up in the morning that wasn’t “another audition”.
In those days, fortunately, there was no social media.
There were letters though.
And phone calls to the switchboard.
I’ve never forgotten one letter, very mean, from a man accusing me of “taking a man’s job” when I should be at home in the kitchen.
I wrote back.
I suggested that if he would like to pay my rent from now on, I’d happily give up the job which was clearly meant for a man.
I never heard from him again.
All that was a very long time ago, and I am grateful it was only letters and phone calls then.
You could put the letter in the bin.
You could put the phone down.
Now anyone can be cruel with the press of a button on a phone or computer, and do it in front of hundreds, thousands, of other people.
I don’t know all the ins and outs of what’s happened at Radio Broadland, but I was saddened to read about Georgie Jamieson receiving abusive online messages simply because she has taken on a job on the radio.
I haven’t seen the messages, thankfully.
But as a woman, I can imagine them.
Personal, hateful, and aimed at her simply because she is a woman doing a job in public.
Commenting on her right to even be there.
I had hoped that after all these years this kind of abuse would have stopped.
It seems some people still think women are “taking men’s jobs”.
Why is this still happening in 2026?
We’ve had decades of women in newsrooms, in sport, in broadcasting.
Yet the same tired line comes out.
I don’t engage in social media myself.
When I have written articles over the years I was advised not to read the comments, because more often than not there would be some form of abuse.
“Don’t feed the trolls,” they said.
When I did a stint on TV in later years, someone thought they were doing me a favour by showing me a comment.
It asked why I was on screen as “an old woman” when he would have preferred a good-looking weather presenter.
We’re told to ignore it.
The people who showed it to me thought it was amusing.
A laugh.
I thought it was cruel.
Because it isn’t about weather presenters.
It’s about telling a woman she’s only allowed on screen if she’s young and decorative.
The moment you’re not, you’re told to go.
There has been some movement on this recently.
There have been new rulings and big fines for social media companies, including payments ordered from Meta, run by Mark Zuckerberg, for failing to tackle harmful content.
The idea is that platforms can no longer just say “it’s not our problem”.
They have a duty to take abuse down faster, to act on reports, and to make it harder for anonymous accounts to pile on.
That’s encouraging.
If companies face real financial consequences, they might invest in proper moderation instead of leaving it to the person being abused to block and report and block again.
But a ruling doesn’t change people overnight.
The culture of thinking it’s fine to say anything, because there’s a screen between you and the person, that’s what has to change.
In the meantime, I wish Georgy Jamieson well.
As she says, she’s just trying to do a job the best she can.
Turning up, doing the hours, speaking to listeners, being professional.
That’s all any of us ever did.
Leave her alone.
Please have a thought before you type.
About the person on the other end.
About how your nasty and thoughtless comments land.
They don’t just disappear.
People read them.
People remember them.
Just stop it.
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