6 days ago
The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone, review: a portrait of how far shamelessness will get you
Depending on your point of view, The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone (BBC Two) was either delicious schadenfreude or a vicious character assassination. Erica Jenkin's two-part documentary series was clear on where it fell on the lingerie entrepreneur turned Conservative peer – that Baroness Mone of Mayfair is a chancer, a Wonderbra Walter Mitty, a vainglorious cad whose success and morality is like the product that made her famous, all front. Yet Mone's supporters – and following the PPE scandal there can't be too many of those left – would suggest that the programme exaggerates its own assets.
The first episode does a nice job of explaining where Mone came from – the girl from the unforgiving East End of Glasgow, forced to earn money for her family from the age of 10, who dropped out of school at 15 and was written off by her teachers. It is impossible not to be impressed by Mone, in her 20s and heavily pregnant with her third child, turning up at Selfridges in London and demanding that they stock her underwear. She'd convinced her husband to remortgage. 'I was either going to lose my house today or keep my house,' she said at the time. It was a shot at the moon.
Nobody could fail to warm to this plain-speaking young woman from Glasgow, grasping the lads' mag/girl power energy of the 1990s and wedging herself into a male-dominated industry. A knack for PR – learnt from her days as a model and ring girl – helped to supply a steady stream of publicity for her company, Ultimo, and its enhancing bras. Yet the film dropped tantalising breadcrumbs – the brusque way she dealt with employees, the over-eagerness for publicity, the do-anything attitude. Perhaps too much was made of the Erin Brockovich lie – Mone repeatedly and falsely claimed that Julia Roberts's eye-catching cleavage in the Oscar-winning movie was thanks to Ultimo – but it showed Mone's devil's-bargain with the truth. Whatever it took, she'd succeed. Just watching Mone's physical appearance change as she grew more successful is fascinating – with every passing year, she appears more lacquered.
By the second episode and Mone's PPE untruths – along with her husband Doug Barrowman, that she had nothing to do with Medpro PPE Ltd – it's clear the series has her pegged as a rogue. On this evidence, who could argue? Some of the accusations may not be slam-dunks, but they paint an unpleasant picture – the employment tribunals, the aggressive hounding of any journalist who asked questions, the obfuscation around PPE and the 'VIP lanes'. Others, however, feel mean-spirited. So what if she gilded her youthful admiration of Steve Wozniak when the Apple founder joined her cryptocurrency venture? The programme, smirking, points out that her autobiography never mentions Wozniak, but does mention Sylvester Stallone four times.
Most damning, however, is the brouhaha that occurred when David Cameron made Mone a peer. 'She is a small-time businesswoman with a PR exposure far in excess of any actual success,' said businessman Douglas Anderson. Ultimo's accounts around 2011-2012, when Mone was constantly touted in the media as 'Britain's most successful female entrepreneur', back up Anderson's statement. Her success, if not a mirage, was vastly inflated. 'She is completely shameless,' said another contributor, 'and if you have no shame, you can get quite far.'
The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone is available now on BBC iPlayer and airs on BBC Two at 9pm on Wednesday 28 May
