After 25 years, Guardian columnist Marina Hyde has written her final column, signing off with a reflection on her career, her editors, and the readers who have engaged with her work.
A Career of Unforgettable Moments
Hyde's time at the Guardian began in lively fashion, working on the Diary column. Shortly after starting, she was dispatched to get a one-off Osama bin Laden puppet, created by the Spitting Image team, photographed on the steps of the French embassy in London. The latex puppet was carrying a toy AK-47, and when Hyde propped him against the embassy door for the picture, it swung open and she was pulled inside by French security. The incident escalated, with 10 police squad cars and five police motorcycles attending, and Knightsbridge brought to a standstill.
Reflecting on the stunt, Hyde admits the reasons for it are lost in the mists of time, noting that it made sense in the context of the news cycle then but makes no sense now. She thanked the various police forces on the scene—French, Met, and diplomatic—for deciding not to press charges.
Lessons Learned and Unlearned
In her final column, Hyde shares some of the lessons she has learned, and failed to learn, over her career. She recalls writing that "Arguing on the internet is like playing real tennis: even if you win, you're still a twat," which prompted a letter from a member of the Cambridge University real tennis club, published under the headline "Real tennis has been served badly by this unfair slur." At a book tour event, a young woman came up to her for a book dedication to her father, Jeremy, who turned out to be the letter writer. Hyde notes, "we all know the real twats are rackets players."
She also mentions her repeated interventions with the Opinion desk, including "So what if it's in bad taste?" and "It's not offensive – what you've done is confuse the subject of the joke with the object of the joke," along with a third, timeworn complaint about headlines that make her look like a "–", using a word only allowed in reported speech.
Rob Lowe and Social Media Mysteries
Hyde recalls the advent of social media and the bizarre experience of seeing famous people repost her columns. Her favourite was when Rob Lowe reposted a column about a new ITV show where he played a police chief in Brexit Britain. In the column, she digressed to 1988, when Lowe was campaigning for Michael Dukakis and ended up making a sex tape with two girls, one of whom was 16. She mentioned that at her school, the story meant Lowe was "definitely open to sex with 16-year-old girls." Hyde wondered whether Lowe's repost indicated he still had "a bit of the animal left in him" or had not read through to the relevant bit, a mystery she says she enjoyed.
Thanks and Farewell
Hyde extends lengthy thanks to the Guardian's legal department, sharing a compliment she received: "really the best person at legalling Marina's column is Marina." She calls it "the greatest compliment I ever got," and thanks them for "incredibly nutritious masterclasses." She hopes there is no complaint on this final column, noting Rob Lowe as the most obvious vulnerability, but her Guardian email address will no longer work.
Finally, she thanks her readers, with whom she has been in constant dialogue for 25 years, having never had a private email address. She received daily emails with subject headlines like "thank you," "screw you," and "shame on you," running the full gauntlet from adoring to skin-flaying. She says she would not have had it any other way, and signs off: "Thank you so much, dear readers – and I hope to see you down the trail. In the meantime, my very best wishes to you and yours. It has, I promise you, been an absolute honour."
