Bankers, accountants, lawyers, who should have known better. In Memoirs of an Unfit Mother in 2001, Robinson criticised Maxwell's fraudulent misappropriation of the Mirror pension fund (which fully came to light after his death), in which she said: "we failed to monitor what was happening on our doorstep", adding: "cowards had made his behaviour possible. Her closeness to Maxwell was mocked by Ian Hislop in 1999 as a panellist on Have I Got News for You, as well when she became the first guest presenter of the show in 2002. Robinson wrote obituaries to Maxwell following his death in 1991, saying: "He left me reeling from his charm, his amazing panache and the sheer speed at which his brain worked. Following the departure of her husband, Robinson demanded that Maxwell make up the difference in their joint income, which he did.
In discussing a rise with Mirror boss Robert Maxwell, she asked for a doubling of her salary and a brand-new Mercedes to be written in her contract. During her career as a newspaper journalist, she developed a flair for writing tabloid headlines. She also wrote a column under the pseudonym of the "Wednesday Witch", in which she developed her vitriolic style. Robinson returned to Fleet Street in 1980, working as columnist and assistant editor of the Daily Mirror. She then began working for the Liverpool Echo. In 1977, her inability to hand in her copy due to an alcohol-related incident led to her being terminated by The Sunday Times. Her work became more uncomfortable for her when she met and fell in love with the deputy news editor, Charles Wilson the couple married in 1968, but he subsequently had to terminate her employment because of the marriage. Robinson secured a permanent position as a result of scooping the details of the story of Brian Epstein's death from being a family friend of the Liverpool solicitor handling the legalities, offering him a ride to Euston railway station when he could not find an available taxi. Robinson's mother's going-away present to her daughter was an MG sports car and a fur coat. After working in a news agency, she arrived in London in 1967 as the first young female trainee on the Daily Mail. On leaving school, Robinson chose journalism over training for the theatre. The family spent their summers on holiday in France, often at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes. She was hired as a chicken gutter and saleswoman during the holidays in the family business, before taking office jobs at a law firm. She inherited the family market stall in Liverpool and transformed it into one of the largest wholesale poultry dealing businesses in the north of England.īrought up initially at the family home in Crosby, Robinson attended a private Roman Catholic convent boarding school in Hampshire, Farnborough Hill Convent, now known as Farnborough Hill. When she came to England, she married into her husband's family of wholesale chicken dealers, and sold rationed rabbit following the Second World War.
Her mother, Anne Josephine ( née Wilson), who was an alcoholic, was an agricultural businesswoman from Northern Ireland, where she was the manager of a market stall. Robinson was born in Crosby, Lancashire, on 26 September 1944 and is of Irish descent.