Mil Millington is known for various things; arguing with his girlfriend, having pink hair and having his website plagiarised by the Mail on Sunday then winning £1,600 from them after complaining about it. So what makes him so special? Many people (even people with pink hair) argue with their girlfriends and don't get plagiarised by the Mail on Sunday. However, unlike most, he has exceptionally funny write-ups of the arguments he and his girlfriend have on a website, which has spun off a newspaper column and book.
He's been with his girlfriend Margret (not Margaret) for fifteen years. He can't remember when they fell in love - "I didn't fancy her at all when I met her." - but he has that kind of contented glow about him whenever he mentions her. "She's just really fab." They had their first child two years after they got together and a second child four years later. It's clearly a very happy and stable relationship but fortunately, they argue. A lot. And he writes up the arguments for other people's amusement. Now before this makes him sound like a total git, it's worth mentioning that he is incredibly self-deprecating and Margret always wins the arguments. Well, almost. And to reiterate, he's clearly madly in love with her.
"Arguments are about intimacy. I have people write to me saying that they've had the same argument with their sister or their mother. At first that freaked me out but then I realised it's because you argue most with people you care about."He started his website, Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About in 1993 "To learn html". Unbeknownst to him, it soon attracted a cult following, which is hardly surprising with posts like this:"It's just after Christmas and Margret's going on about her present, which was, you'll recall, a necklace of a single diamond suspended on a delicate chain of white gold and sapphires. And this is what I hear come out of her mouth 'Why didn't you get me a wormery, I dropped enough hints?' You what?However, it wasn't until 1997 when he looked at the server stats that he realised he was attracting 10,000 hits each week. He started updating the site more regularly "Out of a feeling of guilt." People who stumbled across the site frequently emailed their friends about it "So I'd notice a surge in traffic from, say, nurses because it was going round people in a hospital. Eventually, someone forwarded it to a friend in publishing and it started going round that environment."Within two weeks of people in publishing seeing the site, Mil had an offer of a book deal. At about this time, The Mail on Sunday emailed him asking if they could use copy from his website in the paper, offering £800.
"I was very pleased and flattered that they liked the page, but - because of Stuff Happening [the book deal] just a couple of weeks previously - I had to reply, with agonising regret, that 'No, they couldn't use it'."
That week, they used it anyway, making only minor changes, without any credit. Various legal things ensued and eventually, Mil won. (See the full story in Mil's inimitable style here.) This had the fringe benefit of pretty much every other newspaper covering the story and helping promote what Mil was doing. Soon, he had a column in the Guardian, in addition to the book deal, and his fan base had grown further, the site attracting between 15,000 and 50,000 hits each week.Mil never planned to be a writer. "I've always written but I had that working class thing of never assuming I'd be a writer. My eldest son doesn't really understand why I'm a writer, given that I used to work in IT. I gave up my IT job within a month of getting the book deal because I knew it would take me years to finish otherwise. As far as he sees it, I was playing with computers, and why would I give up playing with computers all day?"
He goes on to explain his writing process:
"In all sorts of areas of life, anal is a word that could apply to me. I just focussed on it. I started the book in February and by September it was finished."Being Cliterati, shagging had to crop up at some stage. When asked about whether he and Margret have great make-up sex, Mil smiles. "This is going to make me sound really bad. We can argue during sex. Margret and I will be having sex and she'll start talking about whether we should have a loft conversion." An offer to provide him with some sex toys to distract her further is met with a wry grin.
"Margret already thinks British women are dirty. German women will go out wearing jeans and birkenstocks in the evening, and she sees British women with their short skirts and bare legs and thinks they're dirty."One of Mil's pet hates is people assuming that he and Margret have a bad relationship because of the amount of arguments that they have.
"I just think that couples argue. I'm not attracted to simpering women. If you want to have a relationship without arguing, have a sub-dom thing, with one of you saying 'here's what we'll do' and the other one agreeing The closer you get to equality, the more men and women will argue.""A lot of people want a relationship with someone who's the same as them. I think it's a positive thing if you don't agree on everything. The perfect argument is when you've been rowing for 45 minutes and can't remember what it is you're arguing about any more but you know you're really, really angry."
He continues "If you really want to annoy a woman, just get calmer and calmer when they're angry. With Margret, as she's German, I have the advantage of being able to correct her grammar in arguments. 'No, you mean with whom...' That works."Mil's new book A Certain Chemistry is out on 13th October. It's "An unflinching account of the nature of love, presented through infidelity as that covers all the highs and lows of love."
He explains one of the scenes in the book, in which the protaganist ends up on the phone, having a conversation while masturbating, the woman at the end of the phone unaware of what he's doing.
"My editor is a rather 'straight' woman but after she'd read that scene, every time I'd answer the phone, after running to get it, she'd say 'Oh Mil, wanking again?'"
And was he?
"No - although statistically to phone my house and not find me wanking is impressive."Given that the new book is about infidelity, there's one question that had to be asked. Has he ever been unfaithful to Margret?
"She asked that too. No, but I've been unfaithful to previous girlfriends - I think everyone over the age of 25 has had an affair at some stage."
However there is one rival for her affections.
"I fell in love with the agent in my book - not my real life agent. I wanted to shag her and kept on trying to make the scenes with her in longer and trying to get her naked."
But Margret has nothing to worry about.
"I'd feel guilty after I wrote the infidelity scenes, as if I really had been doing it."So is there anything that Mil and Margret wouldn't argue about?
"We don't argue about anything serious because we agree on fundamental things. But if you stop arguing, you stop caring."
If that's the case, it's pretty obvious that Mil and Margret will be arguing for eternity.Things my girlfriend and I have argued about is available from Hodder priced £6.99.
Mil is currently working on the film script of the same working title.
Visit the Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About website and fill in Mil's sex survey.
