Jane Green worked for Richard and Judy before The Richard and Judy Book Club

Did I Ever Join The Richard And Judy Book Club?

I did not, but long before the Richard and Judy Book Club was a thing, long before I even became Jane Green, I worked for Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan. I was a young publicist who was burnt out from working in entertainment PR in London, when I got a call from a man I adored, offering me a job as the publicist for the television read This Morning, presented by Richard and Judy . I jumped at the opportunity, even though I didn ’ triiodothyronine actually know anything about the show, nor, in fact, about Richard and Judy. But I couldn ’ metric ton think of anything better than a fresh depart in a fresh city, and my boss would be person I got on fabulously well with. Within two weeks I was packed up and on my way. I found a large, moth-eaten chic flat in Didsbury, and spent most days driving from Manchester to Liverpool in my little Renault 5, which died so often, the men from the AA and I became friends. I finally replaced that Renault with a Volkswagen Golf, which turned out to be two cars welded together ( a “ cut-n ’ exclude ” as it ’ s known in the chancy car industry ), which was in fact the most authentic car I have ever had. I loved my job. I loved the people I worked with, many of whom are still close friends, twenty dollar bill five years on. I loved the chumminess we had, and the joke we shared. I loved that we were able to sit at one goal of the open-plan function fume ourselves into an early grave accent, and if anyone complained, we all ignored them.

We were a glad bunch, apart from the fact that my boss, the homo who had employed me, turned out to be something of a Jekyll and Hyde. I had thought he was fantastic, but within weeks of me starting I would watch as he routinely picked on one of my colleagues, bullying and abusing them to the point where grown men were about in tears. I remember being shocked at this demeanor from a man I had adored, and – oh how naïve I was – intelligent that because we were already friends, it would never happen to me.

The day it happened was the sidereal day I stopped loving my job. One day he decided it was clock to put me in his fire trace, and my life was miserable from thereonin. He stole my ideas and presented them as his own in meetings where I sat there mute, disbelieving. He would regularly call me in the early hours of the dawn, screaming at me for some newspaper narrative about Richard and Judy that had appeared, that I knew nothing about. He diminished me, mocked me, screamed at me and bullied me, to the point where I would have a pavlovian reaction every time the telephone would ring, terrified it would be him, screaming on the early end. When “ me excessively ” was flying round the internet, I kept silence. I did not write about the times I have been scared or uncomfortable, the times I have been the victim of inappropriate behavior, intimate or differently. But I haven ’ thyroxine been able to stop thinking about the time I was bullied mercilessly at the hands of a man who held all the power. I hope things change. I have no theme what happened to that man, but I hope Karma has done its job, and that wherever he is, he may have changed. I wouldn ’ thymine write me besides, because – and I in full support all the women who did – but because it makes me feel like a victim, and I don ’ t ever want to feel like a victim again. But to all the women out there who have always experienced anything like this, I know what it ’ s like. And I hope that if it always happened again, I would have the fortitude to walk away .