Nina Myskow (born Janina Marcela Myskow) is a British journalist and television personality who was a columnist for The Sun and the News of the World , under the byline "The Bitch on the Box", in the 1980s. She appeared on New Faces , and has been a regular contributor on Grumpy Old Women and on many countdown list shows.
Myskow was born in St Andrews in Fife Scotland to a Polish officer father and a Scottish school teacher mother. [1] Her parents moved to South Africa after World War II and she attended Wykeham Collegiate School in Pietermaritzburg, where she learned to speak Afrikaans. [2] She moved back to Scotland with her family at the age of 15 attending Bell Baxter High School in Cupar. [3] She studied English literature at the University of St Andrews, but did not graduate. [4]
Myskow was a writer for Jackie for some years and then became the first female editor of the magazine. [4] She appeared as a panellist on Through the Keyhole and three series of New Faces. She has reviewed the newspapers on This Morning and contributed to discussions on The Alan Titchmarsh Show , Daybreak and The Michael Ball Show , the last of which was cancelled in 2010. Her autobiography was entitled Love, Sex and the Pursuit of Chocolate.
She appeared on the Big Brother spin-off show Big Brother's Bit on the Side a number of times as well as entering the Big Brother House for a media training task in August 2012. In 2015 she appeared on a celebrity edition of game show Pointless with Gyles Brandreth and won a trophy.
The Sunday People and Myskow, by then writing for the News of the World , lost a libel action brought by the actress Charlotte Cornwell in December 1985. A jury at the High Court awarded Cornwell £10,000 in damages. In an article for the People, Myskow had referred to Cornwell as ugly and middle-aged, and written that her "bum is too big". [5] The damages were raised to £11,500 at a retrial after Myskow appealed, but costs were awarded against Cornwell. [6]
Myskow has been criticised for stating that women doing their makeup on the train were "lazy and selfish", and that millennials are "snowflakes". [7]
Myskow is a regular contributor representing the 'left' on GB News