Jo O'Meara: horse whisperer

It's probably unsurprising to see the first signs of a rehabilitation of Jo O'Meara starting, a year on from Celebrity Big Brother; and where better to start than in the pages of the Daily Mail?

O'Meara - who has spent the last year hanging out with rescue animals and has stepped in to offer support for the horses and donkeys which were discovered at Spindles Farm in Amersham - is now pregnant and keeping out of the spotlight. Sort-of:

Jo is not planning to rush back into showbusiness. She says: "I love singing and that will always be part of my life but I'm taking it slowly and I have the baby to think about."

She is considering an invitation to take part in a charity show next month, organised by celebrity voice coach Zoe Tyler.

The prospect of performing on stage after such a torrid year's absence is daunting, but she is considering an offer to work with housemate Jermaine Jackson.

The Mail, meanwhile, does it bit to help along with the recasting of O'Meara, suggesting the whole nasty, racist screeching match was a lot of fuss about nothing:

The baying crowd had already decided she was a racist and a bully, primarily on the strength of one particularly banal and savage argument over a stock cube.

Jo, meanwhile, insists that she's not racist at all:

The thing that hurts most is that anybody could think I was racist. I honestly don't have a racist bone in my body. I may be a bit daft sometimes but I'm not malicious.

Curiously, O'Meara doesn't bother to mention the bullying problem - that she sat hawking away while Goody verbally battered Shetty and, when Shetty appealed for help, she just laughed; that when the row finally abated, O'Meara said "I needed that" and looked like she'd had an enjoyable time.

Even more curiously, O'Meara doesn't explain how "not having a racist bone in my body" squares with the supressed segement of her sitting around having a laugh about limericks with the word 'paki' in them; the Daily Mail doesn't think to ask.

Instead, O'Meara trots out the line again that it was all created in the editing. Since her worst behaviour was quietly dropped onto the cutting room floor, it seems odd that she should object to people being selective when telling a story.