The Prostitution Of Jan Moir

Ever since her infamous hatchet job on the memory of Boyzone singer Stephen Gately, the name of Jan Moir, one of the Daily Mail’s resident Glendas, has been a by-word for intolerant bigotry. It has also been clear to anyone interested that Moir was, and is, merely another on the cab-rank of hacks doing the bidding of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre.

Who says my f***ing Glendas are f***ing bigots?

In other words, Moir just happened to be at the front of the rank when Dacre ordered the hatchet job on Gately. When the time came more recently to trash the name of Amanda Knox, it was Amanda Platell’s turn. These hacks could of course leave the Mail, but generous remuneration and spineless cowardice combine to keep them in the service of the Vagina Monologue.

So one should view Moir’s latest drivelfest as a direction from Dacre, and in this case a characteristically moral one: “Since when did women’s lib mean dressing like a porn star?” whines the headline, as Moir bemoans the tendency of young women to dress in a manner of which her editor does not approve when off on a night out with their friends.

Photo you won't see above her articles

It’s hard at times to keep a straight face as Moir – who is in her mid-50s, although the strangely creepy masthead photo tries to suggest otherwise – deploys dated dialogue and a disconnect from reality. Telling that she was at London’s Paddington station at 0600 last Saturday (off to visit Liz Jones, perchance?) and saw a group of young women wearing shorts, she concluded “Members of a school hockey team”.

Er, what? Seriously: this caused Moir to spend “a few happy moments jogging off down memory lane”. But then comes the stern moralising: they were wearing fake tan! They were “refugees from the night before”! Her mother would not have approved! The sniffy tone is straight out of Rebecca Evans’ supposed “revelation” of how folks behave at the races, which I covered last June.

It’s as if no woman had ever worn a short dress or shorts before. Where was Jan Moir in the early 70s? Whining about Rihanna and Christina Aguilera as if nobody ever did that sort of thing before only sounds credible until you bring up a Pan’s People video from 40 years ago. What is “pornographic” about that? Who is Moir channelling, Mary Whitehouse?

But this is whingeing to order, so Moir the trouper keeps on churning, telling of “women as cheap commodities with nary a cheep of complaint from anyone”. “Nary a cheep”? Was that how they talked in the Dacre dream world that was supposed to exist sometime in the 1950s? There’s only one person prostituting themselves here, and it’s not one of the young women in the photos.

It’s Jan Moir herself, and she really ought to get a life.