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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 23 Oct 2006 05:12 am |
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A woman brought some books in to my shop to sell last week. One of them was "Some Other Rainbow", by Jill Morrell and John McCarthy.
"Did you enjoy it?" I asked.
"Not really," she said. "I thought it was rather self-indulgent."
Self-indulgent.
Yes, I suppose it was. In "Some Other Rainbow", Morrell and McCarthy tell the story of McCarthy's five years as a hostage in Beirut, and Morrell's five-year campaign for his release. (It was filmed in 1993 by ITV, starring Colin Firth as McCarthy, Natasha Richardson as Morrell, and Ciaran Hinds as McCarthy's fellow captive, Brian Keenan, but I've never seen that production.)
McCarthy spent 1943 days blindfolded, shackled and being repeatedly beaten by his captors. His description of this experience is harrowing, but factual. Following his release his enjoyment of the fruits of freedom is uninhibited, and he describes this. So I guess you could say the book is "self-indulgent" in some respects there.
For the years of McCarthy's imprisonment Morrell lived in Hell, from which she was released by the news of his freedom. I guess you could say that her description of her response to that news is "self-indulgent". But not much else.
Self-indulgent.
It just seemed such an odd way in which to describe such an extraordinary story. Given a list of ten adjectives, chosen more or less at random from among the tens of thousands in the English language, I think it likely that this would be the last I'd choose to describe this amazing book (which, of course, you should all read, if you have not already: see trademe auction #76375126 for a review).
And the really odd thing - the strangest thing of all - is how the story ends. It goes like this:
* Boy meets girl
* Girl loses boy
* Boy spends 1943 days as a captive of some of the most unpleasant people in the world
* Girl campaigns for years on end for boy's release, and this campaign is finally successful
* Girl and boy reunite
* Girl and boy separate, and are now just "friends"
It was that last bit that gave the story its real bite. Five years after the break-up McCarthy gave an interview to the Times, part of which read as follows:
There is, of course, another reason why he is so guarded about his private life. His previous relationship, with Jill Morrell, his girlfriend at the time of capture and the nation's sweetheart who campaigned relentlessly for his release, was placed under a global magnifying glass. Everybody wanted John and Jill to get back together after his release. They did. Then they wanted them to get married. They didn't. The relationship was tracked until it ended in a short statement issued by McCarthy in 1995. Friends said that they had been denied the chance to be an ordinary couple because of the pressure of producing a perfect ending.
Thinking about the comment that this was a "self-indulgent" story took me back nearly 40 years to a day when the news broke in Angus & Robertson Ltd, Sydney, that a young married couple we all knew had separated. The prevailing atmosphere was one of shock. The couple had been very popular, and their getting together had been something which everyone who knew them had celebrated.
I remember the young woman concerned coming into the building to collect her effects - she'd decided that it was too uncomfortable to work near her (soon to be ex-) husband.
One of the women in the office went up to her and said:
"But you can't do this! We all love you!"
And they both burst into tears.
It was a very self-indulgent moment. I see that now.
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David Harcourt
Administrator
| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 23 Oct 2006 05:27 am |
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So where is Jill Morrell now?
She works for an organisation in Britain which supports cancer victims. Following the break-up with McCarthy in 1995 she said nothing about her experiences for ten years, until December last year, when she spoke to a Women in Business meeting in Kent. Here's how the meeting was reported:
On 17 April 1986 British television journalist John McCarthy was kidnapped on his way to catch a flight home from Beirut and spent the next five years in captivity. At the time, Jill and John were in their late twenties and had plans to buy a flat together and get married.
"We both worked for an international news agency and when John was sent to Beirut to cover the war, I wasn’t particularly worried as I knew he’d be careful and he was only going for a month. When I got a call to say he’d been kidnapped I went into shock; it was impossible to know what had happened to him and it was some 18 months before I had any idea whether or not he was alive," explained Jill.
The advice from the Foreign Office was to keep a low profile – the theory being that if the kidnappers thought John was valuable it would be much harder to secure his release. After two years of no news Jill realised that John had been forgotten and knew she had to do something about it. She asked his friends and colleagues for help and thanks to their enthusiasm, the Friends of John McCarthy (FOJM) was launched on the second anniversary of his kidnapping.
Jill continued: "At our first campaign meeting, held in the kitchen of a pub, I realised that everyone would take their lead from me. I had never been in that position before so it was extremely daunting but I had visited the families of French hostages and had seen how their campaigns worked. I had a vision of what we could achieve and that’s what we aimed for – to keep John’s name alive.
"Setting up the FOJM was much like setting up any other business, starting with the basics such as creating a logo and headed paper. Our small office and phone line was provided by the NUJ and our plan was to mark every hundred days of John’s captivity with some sort of visual reminder. Although not everyone agreed with the campaign and at times I felt like I was being bullied by the Foreign Office, I thought it was worth it because if John wasn’t forgotten by the public then the Government couldn’t forget him either."
Over the years Jill gave hundreds of media interviews but they were always preceded by a sleepless night. The campaign benefited from the skills of an advertising agency, a firm of lobbyists and a PR company – all free of charge. With the agencies’ help the FOJM managed to change public opinion and the Government’s ‘no deals with hostages’ policy.
The campaign culminated in the distribution of yellow ribbons across the country and a rally in Trafalgar Square with John McCarthy becoming a household name. On 8 August 1991 he was released but it took a long time before John and Jill could live anything resembling a normal life.
"It took me a while to realise that John’s release had as much impact on my life as his kidnapping. Suddenly I no longer had a purpose; the campaign had been my life and it was over. We had some real low points over the years, one of the worst being when John’s mother died without knowing whether or not her son was alive, but we got through it. I had a huge amount of anger and that helped to keep me going," Jill added.
How the story was supposed to end:
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