Before I start this, I am aware that of all the people I could choose to write about, Caroline Flack probably isn’t the most expected. I’m a gig going, music video watching, autobiography-reading gal. Love Island? Never seen it.
However, Caroline Flack was someone that I grew up with. I first discovered her through watching the CBBC show TMI, which Caroline presented along with the duo Sam & Mark. In a similar style to ‘Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow’, TMI was a children’s entertainment show, with celebrity guests, skits, cartoons and groups of kids entering competitions. The show first aired in 2006 when I was nine years old and it quickly became a firm favourite of mine. It was fun, clever, and snappy, and I loved it, especially when the celebrity guests were musicians. The way the three presenters interacted throughout the show was heart-warmingly funny. They all seemed like they were having a genuinely good time and I’m sure that they were. Sam & Mark have both separately paid tribute to Caroline, calling TMI, ‘the most fun show ever’.
Between the ages of 14 to 16, I told anyone and everyone that I wanted to be a presenter. And that was because of Caroline. I really thought she had the life, getting to hang out with celebrities, wear amazing clothes, and appear on TV night after night. However, something I didn’t realise at the time was the darker side of her career.
People take anyone who chooses to put themselves in the public eye as a ‘free-for-all’. This person has decided they want a life in front of the camera, which gives us the right to say want we want, correct? One little tweet or comment on an Instagram post isn’t actually going to have an effect on a celebrity – they won’t see what I’ve written.
And of course, then there’s the media. Sites such as The Sun and The Daily Star writing article after article, for our entertainment, to give us the inside scoop. It’s just a bit of gossip, it’s not going to harm anyone right?
Of course, as we sadly know now, this just isn’t true. It’s such a shame that it takes a tragedy like this for people to realise. Those same people who were once sending hate to Caroline Flack are now tweeting their condolences. Those newspapers that tore her to shreds, spreading toxic lies have now deleted all their previous articles, replacing them with tributes to the star. Why did it take a death for them to realise the impact of their actions?