Konnie Huq Has A Book Out But All Anyone Wants To Ask About Is Her Marriage

Konnie Huq has written a book. It's apparently a very good book. It's called Cookie And The Most Annoying Boy In The World. and erstwhile Children's Laureate Jacqueline Wilson says it's 'fresh and funny', and let's face it, she would know.

So why is it that the majority of the interviews that Huq has given to promote her new book, have focussed on her marriage to Black Mirror Charlie Brooker?

What is it like living with Charlie Brooker? How do Konnie Huq and Charlie Brooker balance their family life? Do they talk about Black Mirror plots over the dinner table?

Honestly, I'm surprised that the extremely good natured Konnie didn't start beating interviewers about the head with a copy of the book she slaved over.

There are so many questions they could have asked her, about her career, about Blue Peter, about feminism, about being a British-Muslim woman in 2019, or simply about writing a book. But in many of her interviews it seems that those questions weren't asked. Or if they were, they didn't make the interview cut afterwards.

There's nothing wrong with being nosy about people's marriages. If I sat down with any married celeb I'd want to know a bit about their life together, especially if they're an incongruous combination like Blue Peter presenter and loveable misanthrope turned writer of the darkest TV show in the world.

But when you make an interview with someone like Konnie Huq entirely about her domestic life, rather than a couple of questions about it mixed in with plenty of others which focus on her, you send a message. The message is that her marriage is the most interesting thing about her. Something which women have been putting up with for generations.

Writing a book apparently pales in significance when placed next to having married Charlie Brooker.

Frustratingly it doesn't seem to happen the other way around. A considerably fewer interviews with Brooker mention his marriage to Huq, and when they do they still focus far more on the work that he's putting out. Apparently marriage might be the most interesting thing about Konnie, but not about Charlie.

I've seen it happen on a micro level, too, to people who aren't celebrities. When I got engaged, people stopped asking me about my job, or anything else in my life. The weddingwas the only thing anyone asked me about. Then, once I was married, the question became 'how's married life?' rather than 'how's work?' or anything specific to me.

Of course, they asked my then fiance, now husband, about his career, not what flowers we'd chosen.

These questions aren't intended to be hurtful or unkind, they're well meant. But it still reinforces the message that marriage is the ultimate purpose for any woman's life and that once she achieves it it's the most interesting thing about her. I'm told it only gets worse when you have children, and people at parties ask exclusively about their nursery school/SATS results/A Level choices, like you no longer exist as a singular entity.

Unfortunately, the media focus on the Brooker-Huq marriage stems from a preexisting obsession with women's marriages. The headlines on the articles about Konnie focus on her marriage because that's what society values the most in a woman - creating a vicious circle. We write about women's marriages because they're the most tantalising way to invite readers, who then want to read about women's marriages. And on and on it goes.

Your marriage is an interesting, valid part of who you are. It's part of your make-up, but it shouldn't be your defining characteristic and it certainly shouldn't be the most interesting thing about you. So let's start asking women about their jobs, their hobbies and their opinions - if not instead of about their marriages than at least as well as.