I don’t get it

The basic problem with I Don’t Know How She Does It is that we are meant to sympathise with a rich woman who has an absolutely amazing life and great hair and is nannied to the hilt and I Don’t Know How To Do That. How do you do that? Can you take classes? If so, where? Actually, it’s a shame, and disappointing, and I sort of can’t help taking it personally. I had my son in 1992, when I was working on a national newspaper — stick with me; this anecdote almost has a point — and when I told the managing editor I would be requiring maternity leave, he sighed disappointedly and said, ‘I do wish you girls would keep your legs together.’

This is what it was like, back in the day, and although I had to wait another ten years for journalist Allison Pearson’s sharply humorous novel about working motherhood, on which this film is based, I do remember reading it with total pleasure, much recognition and many laughs-out-loud while keeping my legs most assiduously together (I wasn’t going to make that mistake again!).