In a sense, it was the classic way in which people who teach journalism advise junior hacks to tell a story. "Take an issue," I remember being taught, "and see it through the eyes of one person." This technique is usually used for covering earthquakes, however, not the notion of debt supposedly taking over the middle classes.
I didn't realise I was on the nursery slopes of a mountainous story when I wrote what I hoped was a vaguely funny piece in the Sunday Times about my cashpoint card not working. I dimly began to realise my musings had become something more when the Daily Mail called me at Sunday lunchtime, asking to take photographs of me and the junior Millards, which I declined. They did the story the next day anyway.
Then they rang me up again and offered me rather a lot of cash to tell them some more about the newly discovered phenomenon of being an Impoverished Professional, a title I had invented. I declined that, too, but they did the story again anyway.
Nor was it confined to the tabloid press. By this time, the tale had been given credence thanks to the news pages of the Guardian, attracted GMTV, gained a column in the Indie and led the second section of the Times.
It was clear that my piece, which was firmly in the mode most readers will recognise as the now familiar genre of confessional feature writing, had become a news item. Or rather, what we were seeing was the news turning into confessional feature-fodder. Or both. Or, more prosaically, the reason it was writ so large was that lots of other journos also have problems with their cashpoint cards.
Furthermore, here was a person willing to be open about it. Not only that, but a woman of whom, thanks to her decade working at the BBC, there was a decent pile of pictures in the archives, albeit one illustrating a bewildering array of hairstyles.
The story unfolded in a hilarious way because, without anything new to say, the papers had to move it on themselves. So the Profligate Debtor at the beginning of the week became, by the end of the week, the Millionairess Property Mogul. Whether it was discussing my staggering debts or towering wealth, the tone of sad disapproval did not waver, and neither did the references to "That Dress", out of which I was (incorrectly) supposed to have popped on several occasions during my career as BBC arts correspondent. Poor old Michael Buerk. A distinguished life largely spent reporting from the world's most stressful conflict zones, yet he is currently best known for a comment about decolletage.
"Aha!" you say, "but debt is in the headlines, being an election issue." Is it? My husband has just spent 18 months producing an undercover documentary for BBC1 about sharks who lend money at 500 per cent APR to people on council estates. He was unable to place a single story about it in the national press. Perhaps he didn't have enough personal confession on board; or maybe the wrong type of confessor. It's more fun seeing someone messing up who has aspirations to be smart. People find it hugely funny that I am broke but still hopelessly devoted to decent haircuts and also (decadently) own a flat in Paris. I can see why. Anyway, I loved being a "37-year-old mother of four". Thank you, Daily Mail. That made me feel really foxy.
