Gráinne Maguire

Why Ed Milliband is screwed.

2012-02-08T08:49:00.000-08:00

This week Daniel Radcliffe has announced he’s ditched the Lib Dems and put his lot in with Labour. It’s some much needed good news for a party in a very dark place. At the moment Labour are a bit like a lonely, abandoned family that’s been through a very bitter divorce. After a long, turbulent, some whisper abusive marriage, Tony and Gordon finally split. The removal van arrived, the boxes were packed, the kids, puffy faced and swollen eyed were told that although they still loved them very much Daddy Gordon needed some “quiet time” and Mummy Tony had a lot of money to make.

Unfortunately for those left behind, when Mummy and Daddy absconded, they took not just all their belongings, heirlooms and valuables but their policies and ideas too. The party is now left in an empty house, with no furniture, cupboards bare and constant threats of the electricity being cut off. It didn’t help that, instead of the golden, older brother, in a surprise reading of the will everything was left to the nervous, well intentioned, younger sibling who now is struggling to keep it all together.

No one hears from Tony anymore. While his children gnaw on stale bread, there are only occasional postcards from dodgy sunspots that reek of sun tan oil and tales of late night karaoke sessions with Silvio Berlosconi. He travels the world in borrowed jets, reeking of strong cologne, like a dead eyed Flying Dutchman. Everybody keeps meaning to check in on poor Gordon. Like an elderly relative they plan to call around for a cup of tea, maybe take him for a spin down to the shops, if only to make sure milk bottles aren’t gathering around his door, but they never quite get round to it.

It’s not just the heroes of the nineties they miss, it’s the dreams and certainties they took with them. After years in opposition Labour were so desperate to get elected, to be considered credible enough for government that they abandoned pretty much everything the party traditionally stood for. Labour is to the unions, what the Tories are to big business, but while at least the Conservatives have the swagger to be honest about the interests they represent, ever since the D-Ream days there is a distinct nervous shiftiness about who their home base is. Like a first generation immigrant family, mortified by their ethnic family at home, they started refusing to speak the language and avoided bringing their new friends around.

The “New Labour” idea was borrowed from the policies Bill Clinton used to win the US Presidency. You mix left wing policies; public spending, certain liberal social policies such a supporting gay marriage and mix it with tough right wing policies that will out conservative your opposition. So New Labour combined investing billions in the NHS and building schools with increasingly right wing policies on immigration, crime and social freedom.
Then it all began to unravel. Tony fell in with a bad crowd, got drunk on the dream of liberal intervention and woke up to discover he had invaded Iraq. Then after years of bullying Tony, Gordon finally took over and discovered that like a circuit comedian after too many years playing the clubs, he just didn’t have an Edinburgh hour show in him after all. He finally had power he coveted for so long but no long term plan for the party or vision to go with it.

Then the big bust happened. After years on no proper regulation, people discovered to their shock that left to their own devices bankers will exaggerate and lie about how much their shares are worth if they can make millions from doing so. The entire banking sector collapsed like a house of marked cards. With the country days away from ATMs running out of cash, Gordon rallied European heads of states and saved the Europeans banks from collapse. But it was too late; Gordon was considered an incompetent mess. He was out and after years of internal Dynasty style plotting, self obsession and back stabbing, they had no next generation to take over, no new ideas, no clue what to do next.

While Labour’s attention was distracted electing a new leader, the Coalition began rewriting recent history. The country is broke because Labour overspent, not the billions we needed to safe the banks. We definitely don’t need more financial regulation what we need to do is cut back the state. It needs to be replaced by the private sector, by the big businesses that coincidently donate millions to our party. Yes, in opposition we didn’t complain, notice or even mention Labour’s “over spending” in fact we promised to match it, but that’s not the point. This whole mess is like a family that spent too much. Yes, I know it involves complicated things like government bonds, quantative easing, the vagaries of international money lending and interest rates but that is too confusing and no on really understands how that works, least of all the experts themselves. Let’s compare the most complex international meltdown in modern times with a maxed out credit card because it’s an image that suits our message and the public can get their heads around. Meanwhile, Labour, stuck with a new leader they didn’t really like looked on dumbstruck.

Now what should Ed do? The voters are now convinced they’re in this mess because of the overspending, should he go along with the new narrative to try to get people to trust him again or tell the truth that no one believes. He has a right wing parliamentary labour party longing for the swaggering confidence of the old days when they were in power. Why can’t you be like Tony they cry, they liked us then, appeal to the middle class swing vote, just stand slightly right of the Tories and that will be enough. He also has depressed voters desperate for an opposition, crying out for someone to sensibly oppose the cuts, but with a guilty feeling that maybe they’ve got what they deserve.

Add to that the whispering voices in his own party, that the true leader, the older brother, hasn’t gone away, he is just waiting to regroup. He who shall not be named, is gathering force, writing articles for “The New Statesman” and is coming back. Its good news that Harry Potter has joined the party, if Ed Milliband is to be the boy that lived, he’ll need all the help he can get.

PIP Implants- the future of the NHS?

2012-01-26T06:30:00.000-08:00

Women who get boob jobs are a demographic it is hard to sympathise with. They are the vacuous, orange airheads the media encourages us to mock; why should they deserve our concern? When reports about faulty breast implants rupturing and leaking first made the news there was a feeling that since they’d already put themselves through one unnecessary operation, why should we feel bad they had to go through at least one more? Why should the taxpayer be concerned about a mess up in a private industry? It serves them right, the vain silly fools.

If you’re a woman and you don’t feel good enough, if you don’t like how you look; it is your responsibility do something about it. Luckily if you’re not sure where your body stands on the spectrum, just check any magazine cover, newspaper, television programme or Hollywood movie. If you are vain enough to take the entire western media at its word, believe the message it screams in the face of anyone glancing in its direction; that a better body will make you happier, then help is at hand. After all, the only people less deserving of our respect than vain women who get plastic surgery are fat women who let themselves go.

The cosmetic surgery industry makes £900 million in the UK every year and 90% of its customers are women. Last year 25,000 women had breast implants confident in the belief that they were empowering their lives and boosting their confidence. That is three times as many as ten years ago. And why not? You go girls!

We’ve been trained not to take breast implants very seriously. They’re advertised on the tube, you can get two for one offers, there are even ‘Yummy Mummy Deals’. Even if it is illegal to advertise prescription medicine, like say a strong cough medicine, a two hour operation which requires a general anaesthetic, serious painkillers to cope with pain and a lifetime of follow up surgery every ten years, is fine. Unlike medicine, implants do not have to go through rigorous testing. All they need are a CE mark of quality, the same rigorous testing applied to yoyos.

Do we honestly believe that the risks involved are explained? Who can the women rely on to give them the best advice? The private health care company which exist to make a profit and view the women as customers rather than patients? Will they get the truth from the media that trivialises the procedure and make millions advertising them? Or the government that washes it hands? Unlike most bodies there is very little regulation in this private healthcare success story. In the US there are 6 authorised skin fillers, in the UK there are 140. There is no registered qualification for a cosmetic surgeon. Many surgeons work in the private industry because they have not risen in the NHS and are attracted to a field with remarkably lower standards. They aren’t on the General Medical Council's specialist register, which means they are not good enough to perform surgeries independently in the NHS but are accepted there. If they so wanted, a vet with no other qualifications could set up their own Botox beauty clinic, injecting poison into people’s faces.

It is guessed that between forty to fifty thousand women in the UK have had pip implants breast implants, it’s hard to get a definite figure, because very few companies kept track. What is sure is the reason why they used PIPs implants: price. Medical grade silicone costs 35 euros a litre, the industrial silicone used in PIPs, also used in furniture, cost €5.

When reports of PIPs implants rupturing made the news and worried women tried to contact their surgeons, some discovered the companies no longer existed, others that they the companies had no record of what they had injected into them . The three biggest companies announced they will only remove the implants when they had actually ruptured, forcing the women to walk around with the knowledge cancer causing carcinogens might be slowing leaking into their body unless they are willing to pay another two thousand pound to have them removed.

Women who choose to have breast implants might well experience some regrets. They might feel a bit silly or unhappy with the job, but should they have to worry that the implants they paid surgeons to put in their body might rupture and kill them? – Or is that just part of the deal?

In 2000, after a similar problem with PIPS, 2,000 women successfully sued the company. They have still not received their money and the company were able to begin business again. The Health Minister stated that private health companies refusing to remove and replace the implants are "not stepping up to their responsibilities". Strong words, but then that is all the Health Minister of the United Kingdom can use; words. It is a private company so the Government has very little authority to intervene. With the Coalition recently promising that private health companies in the NHS will provide choice, transparency and competition, it’s beginning to feel like it’s the entire country the government is treating as silly fools.

Rihanna put some clothes on

2011-10-17T13:59:00.000-07:00

Rihanna; the gorgeous R and B star with a voice like a fog horn on the pull, is in trouble for gifting an audience member with a lap dance as part of her life London show. This comes after her X Factor performance only just squeaked by Press Complains Commission and a Northern Irish farmer chased her off his land for wandering around his acres half dressed and presumably scaring the cattle.

I know, as a feminist I should be defending her right to dress like a trafficked street walker, but, I just don’t buy it. Why does empowerment for young women so often involve being half naked in public? I can’t image her male equals having to wander about in a thong to keep themselves relevant. Kanye West, P Diddy, Jay Z present themselves as media moguls, head of corporations while their female equivalent seem to have to act like the sort of women they’d hire for a dodgy staff party.

When evidence of the horrific domestic violence she experienced at the hands of Chris Brown emerged, within months her record company responded with a sexier look and a record “S&M” that played up the frisson of sex and violence. The last pop singer who had her personal demons exploited for public success was Britney Spears, and we all saw how happily that ended. In the words of Destiny’s Child, a band that would never have been caught dead rambling round any field in the nud- “Child, put some clothes on”

R.I.P. Amy Whinehouse

2011-07-24T10:56:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when life is not going well, when you know at the pit of your stomach that things just aren’t going to sort themselves out, that everything is not going to be ok, the only thing that gets you through it all is music.

The best music, like all art, comes from honesty and while there are plenty of songs about heartbreak, loss and disappointment, very few have the bravery and rawness of Amy Winehouse. In “Back to Black” she wrote about her mind unravelling, she sang in the midst of her life collapsing with the urgency and bewilderment of someone who doesn’t know if they’re going to make it out the other end. Through the patronising drivel of most pop, all the empty clichés and bland rhymes that never solved or made anyone feel anything; her records had the spine tingling honesty of the real thing.

Her early death now means that she’ll be lazily labelled as doomed and weak, the opposite of everything her swaggering vocals celebrated. Amy the Cat was alive; she was messed up but was hanging on as best she could. In a world of overproduced, airbrushed perfection, she was as truthful and ugly as the tattoos on her scraggly body, as messy and earnest as her raggedy beehive. She knew that she was destroying herself but couldn’t seem to stop and refused to hide or apologise for it. The stomping sexy brass of “Rehab” announced a woman that dared you to patronise or feel sorry for her. Yes, her life was a mess but she took full responsibility for it and would rather tear herself apart than play the victim. She didn’t blame anyone, especially any man or relationship. What was the point when she was, in all likelihood, as messed up and culpable as anyone?

Unlike most albums about romantic loss, there was very little about the actual person she was mourning. It was about her; her confusion with what she has doing to her life, her desperate struggle to gain back control and make sense of it all. With a knowing sneer, she let you into her world of rejection, despair, crying on the kitchen floor and in doing so gave dignity and the exhilarating relief of recognition to anyone who experienced anything similar. Worried you were cracking up? Tell her about it. Felt unwanted? Who didn’t? Worried you were mentally incapable of happiness for any length of time? Pass the voddy, she knew all about it. She was the unexpectedly sympathetic voice in the pub toilets, who saw you in all your raw eyed swollen face mess and nodded in understanding. Who was she to pass judgment on whatever mess you were in? All she expected was the same in return.

I really wanted her to make it, to prove the jaded journalists without a whisper of her talent wrong. I wanted more records, for her to sing more songs about other things in life, to have the time to grow up and define herself as more than the messed up girl. Most of us go through that self destructive phase, where we confuse masochism with love and pain with being alive, but there are so many other songs to sing, happier ones; more interesting ones. The aching sadness of it all is that Amy will never get the chance to know that.

Was all the pain she experienced worth the albums she turned it into? Would it have been better if she hadn’t felt so deeply, had been able to move on that bit quicker from whatever demons she couldn’t quite shake off, whatever emptiness she couldn’t fill? Was her talent a result of her troubles or a casualty of them? Isn’t it patronising and insulting to suggest that she needed the damage to make such amazing music; that all you need is a broken heart and a drug problem to produce era defining music?

Before the madness of fame, in her early interviews she came across as someone who just truly loved music. She described hearing soul records for the first time with the innocence and excitement most of us describe out first love. Her tragedy was that anything was ever allowed to come between it. Hopefully now, instead of the drugs, the messy relationships, the bloody ballet slippers dragged through grubby Camden Town, Amy will in death finally be known again for her soaring talent. Nobody who sang with such passion; wrote lyrics as wise and simple as “Love is a Losing Game” could ever be accused of having had a wasted life. Her devastated family can now finally have their beloved daughter back, reclaiming her from the tabloids caricatures and insanity of addiction. As for the public, those of us who never knew her, I doubt she'd want us to feel sorry for her. How could we? She left behind such music, such beauty and for a heartbreakingly short amount of time, she was after all, Amy fucking Winehouse.

Defending Bridesmaids

2011-07-08T01:06:00.000-07:00

As feminist, I managed to enjoy “Bridemaids” still feeling I could look Emily Pankhurst in the eye afterwards. It was refreshing to see women on screen I could recognize. Instead of the usual shrill relationship fixated twiglets, these hot messes mismanaged their finances, fell out with their friends, got drunk and slept in bath tubs. These were ladies I could work with.

Do all films about female friends have to be po- faced documents of female struggle? Do they have to end with the message that ultimately we all die alone? Hasn’t Samuel Beckett already beaten her to that premise? Why begrudge Annie, our heroine a nice boyfriend at the end? Rather than being desperate to get wed, she has to overcome her cynicism and grow up before she can get together with the nice Irish cop. Rather than being her goal, he and the rewarding relationship he represents is the prize she earns at the end.

As for Kate Moss, I don’t think anybody considers getting married the supermodels greatest achievement. I think most were pleasantly surprised at how relaxed and incandescently happy she looked in her wedding pictures. The self made millionaire has married a man that obviously adores her, in a killer dress, surrounded by her family at a dream wedding, she probably paid for. Remember, this is that same woman who got her heart broken by Pete Doherty- give the girl a break. In the same week her ex stumbled out of yet another prison sentence for drugs, couldn’t anybody, of any gender, wronged in love not feel a shiver of vicarious glee at her happiness?

The Queen's Visit

2011-05-31T07:10:00.000-07:00

When Obama visited Ireland last week and spoke movingly about the impact the Irish immigrant community had made in America, he knew how to get the crowd onside. Irish people get emotional about their diaspora in a way the British don’t. Historically, whenever the British moved abroad they were either inspired by the spirit of opportunity and adventure or off to expand the Empire. When The Irish left their homeland it was usually because something depressing was happening.

Even now, Irish people still feel a twinge of guilt and responsibility for those forced to make their home aboard. That’s nothing compared to the guilt felt by the people who actually emigrated. If Ireland could somehow channel this guilt into a form of fuel, George Bush would have invaded us years ago.

I had an auntie and uncle that moved to America during the last big recession in the 80s. The heartbreak of their leaving was matched only by the awkwardness and stress of their visits home. Every two years or so, they’d return with suitcases full of strange sweets, accents warped like old records and speech studded with strange Americanisms like “soda” that we’d all sneer at behind their back. For the length of the visit they tried to slip back into the family roles they abandoned years ago, with siblings they didn’t really know anymore, before returning exhausted back to their real life.

My family never asked questions about their new home; it was as if for those two weeks everyone wanted to forget they were ever away. America was the other woman they wouldn’t speak of. The day they flew back was always the worst. Like a wake the family reunited to say goodbye, bottles of whiskey were gruffly given, neighbours called and hands were shaken. We were ordered to kiss our departing uncle and aunt goodbye, a strange intimacy we treated with giddy embarrassment. Nanny always cried and there was always confusion over she whether going to the airport would be too much for her. Years later, when it was my turn to move abroad, out of choice rather than necessity and only as far away as London, she sobbed as keenly as if I were off to deepest darkest Alaska. Don’t forget me she’d whisper as I hugged her goodbye and guilt sagged like a wet leaden raincoat.

It’s not helped by the fact most of the Londoners I met had gaps in their knowledge of Ireland whole conversations could fall into. I didn’t want to be the clichéd Irish person trotting out Famine statistics and sobbing to Christy Moore, so I didn’t know whether to explain that “southern Ireland” wasn’t a country that Britain isn’t “the mainland” and the Irish language isn’t just pronouncing film as “filum”. Britain seemed clueless about Ireland; it was like discovering your best friend has no idea how old you were and the countries seemed separated by much more than the Irish Sea.

Even now, every trip home, I dread the car journey with my dad back from the airport, where I always get paranoid I’m getting an English accent. As I talk I can feel the strange London vowels in my mouth and my voice sounds awkward and clumsy like listening to a message I left on an answering machine. Now I’m the one bringing home sweets for my nephews and flinching when I accidently say “cupboard” instead of “press”.

Even something as innocuous as watching the Royal Wedding in Trafalgar Square brought a rush of guilt no other European Royal event would bring. Had my head been turned by London with its fancy Palladium architecture and transport system. The Queen wasn’t just the head of a crazy family; she was the head of the British State. What was I doing waving her flag?

So watching the Queens visit to Ireland I wasn’t expecting much. I certainly wasn’t expecting, all the way in Archway London, to feel a lump in my throat and a flush of relief, when she bowed her head before the memorial to the men who had died for Irish independence. The Queen of England, the head of the British army wasn’t just publically acknowledging my past, my history, my version of events she was honouring everything that mattered to my family, my Dad, my Nanny. Britain and Ireland were finally on the same page: London and home feel slightly nearer and I felt slightly less far away.

Oi! You SLAG!

2011-05-13T09:33:00.000-07:00

In London next month women will be march to reclaim the word “slut”. I’m shocked by this; I thought we lost that word to the gays years ago. I assumed that like a battered wife determined on a new start, it had moved to Brighton, got a makeover and was now happily describing the shenanigans of gay sexual culture with a jauntiness straight women never quite managed.

But apparently not, a Canadian cop was censured for suggesting women could prevent sexual attacks if they stopped dressing like one. Who knew rapists were so picky? I‘ve never heard of a woman on the brink of being assaulted before her assailant realised skinny jeans were doing nothing for her.

Sluts like the poor have always been with us. Ever since there was property to be passed down the family line, patriarchal society needed to ensure that their male heirs were all Wills and not Harrys. Whenever women have enjoyed any level of sexual freedom, and only the rich of course, it was usually followed by a period of balancing repression. The relative independence of 18th century women was in hindsight blamed as a progressive imbalance that led to the French revolution and resulted in an even stricter Victorian attitude. Ideas such as the medical theory that STDs were spread by the female orgasm made female sexual innocence more important than ever. Since the idea of female sexual independence is barely fifty years old, it’s not surprising a cultural myth as potent as the wanton woman has survived into the modern age.

I’ve only ever heard the word used by a male friend once, a vinegary wash of anger, frustration and spitefulness spreading across his face like lights going up at the end of a night club. It always reveals much more about the man than the woman he’s describing. They are usually describing a woman they’re sure is having lots of sex just not with them. Or if they have slept with them, this proves in their wonderland of self hatred, that they’re soiled nasty goods.

For women, the word “slut” has nothing to do with clothes. Yes we don’t, in general, really appreciate it when other women dress excessively provocatively but that’s more to do with the sober reality that, no matter how sharp your banter is, a flash of flesh will distract the most thoughtful of men. It’s irritating at worst; easy, obvious and equivalent to undercutting in business or crossing a picket line, but it’s not a hate crime.

Slut is a word not really used against women who sleep around a lot either. Most women feel a mixture of concern and rueful recognition for any sister going through that period of her life. Just as the scary witches were often lonely herbalists, the tear stained reality of the woman who will gladly have sex with strangers is usually less glamorous than men’s magazines suggest. They are, by and large, vulnerable, insecure and clumsily working through dormant issues with sole aid of their genitals and vodka. The rule of thumb being, if you don’t really like, respect, or even know the majority of the people you’re sleeping with, then maybe you’re not as happy as you think are. It’s a sentiment equally true for men too.

Women only bring out the S bomb to describe someone who has messed around with someone they care about. The women that steal boyfriends, cheat on their mates or sleep with someone to get an opportunity they didn’t deserve. These women never lose control, self respect and never ever sleep around.

So if, in reality, these larky sex mad “sluts” of the popular imagination don’t really exist how on earth did that Canadian cop feel confident that he could not only recognise one but practically knew where she shopped?

It’s because she is everywhere. You only have to log onto the internet, turn on a music channel or walk into a news agents to see this mystical slag, this chimera of fear and loathing, She Who Must be Laid, staring downing at you, watching your every move, like a humourless sexually available Big Brother. She has no personality, no sense of humour and no clothes on. Her sexiness taken rather than shared, her own pleasure irrelevant, completely defined by her yearning, panting, unquenchable desire for casual sex, especially with the fifteen year old boys the magazines advertisers are targeting. The bitter irony that most women are at their flirtiest, filthiest and most experimental with men they trust, like and respect tragically lost on them for the next twenty years at least.

Call me crazy, call me naïve but wouldn’t it be lovely if the term “slut” gradually fell out of use? If it could quietly slip unnoticed out of modern parlance and join “spinster” “crone” and “witch” as an outdated silly cartoon from the past. Maybe then, if we are very lucky, and fight really hard, many years from now, women would feel free to dress up as one every year for Hallowe’en. I know, I can’t imagine it either…

I'm sorry if this is horribly sentimental but we all know how I feel about the subject

2011-05-06T06:44:00.000-07:00

With the death of the last surviving WWI soldier, memory of the first military conflict of modern times fades from the horror of personal experience to the safe sepia of historical fact. For those who fought in it, it was an experience so harrowing that, out of respect for those that died and to protect those spared the experience, they simply refused to speak about it. Now as that generation leaves us, their silence finally becomes complete, a permanent memorial their lost friends.

Although it seems a long time ago, to have experienced the Great War, you only need to have been born about one hundred and ten years ago, which is barely three generations ago. It's only the soldiers todays great grandparents. They’re the same people that bobbed their hair, drove the first cars and wore the clothes still hanging in forgotten wardrobes. They went to cinemas, cheered the present Queen, they were around for The Beatles, it’s not ancient history; their scent still lingers in the air. And yet, psychologically, their generation’s world view had more in common with the ancient past than our own.

Politics was then still the preserve of the aristocracy, women didn’t have the vote and Europe was a family firm run by Queen Victoria’s grand children. In the early days of recruitment before the horrors of the trenches became widely reported the war was sold as an invigorating noble crusade and death at worst an awfully big adventure. If they were to die, it would be as Wendy had insisted in J.M. Barrie’s popular play of the time – as brave Englishmen. Training still involved bayonets and horseback riding. Men were recruited from villages that barely had electricity and fought in battles against automatic weaponry, armoured tanks, gas attacks and mortar attacks. Instead of heroically riding into battle most soldiers waited for nerve shredding weeks in trenches slowly losing their mind. The condition of “shell shock” was coined for the first times and sufferers treated with suspicion bordering on out right aggression. The most common symptoms were either severe stuttering or selective mutism, the English language unable to catch up with what they had experienced.

In the Crimean war, the last major military conflict before The Great War, the most controversial battle of the conflict at Balaclava resulted in the death of 110 men. 19,240 died on the first day of the Somme on the British side alone. There were only sixty years between those two events, less than between now and the dropping of the nuclear bombs in Japan. It’s comparable to our children finding it quant and old fashioned that we find the idea of millions killed in single second strange hard to understand.

At home there was a hysterical craze for mysticism, bereaved families flocked to mediums, scientists attempted to use the newly mastered electricity to try to proof the existence of the soul, serious newspapers reported angels on the battle fields and the latest in photographic equipment captured fairies at the bottom of gardens. Communities that had lost their sons to the industrial weaponry of the 20th century were trying to use dying ancient myths to reclaim them.

Literature imploded; either into the escapism of Tolkien’s “Lord of The Rings” fantasises where homesick confused hobbits battled against faceless industrial death or fragmented into the emptiness of Elliot’s “Wasteland” and Joyce’s streams of consciousness. The safety of Victorian plots abandoned, that A would follow B, the reassurance that everything could be resolved no longer seemed possible. It wasn’t just the demise of literary happy endings; it was the death in the belief of proper endings at all.

The soldiers fighting today have one hundred years worth of vocabulary to make sense of their experiences. Phrases like Pre emptive strikes, collateral damage and Post traumatic stress help to numb the horror, normalise the bloodshed and legitimise the casualties. They have the language but they don’t have the narrative anymore. The reassurance that there is point to it, that order will be restored ,that it will all eventually be worth it. Humans haven’t evolved beyond needing and yearning for those stories but they’re now as ancient and archaic as Edwardian uniforms. With the passing of the last First World War veteran we’ve lost the last person who remembered a world that looked like that.

Now with the old battalions finally reunited, the regiments at last complete, I wonder what the lost boys of the trenches will make of the final aged Tommy returned. If they ask him how the rest of the century worked out, what their war solved and what we learnt from and did with their sacrifice; I hope he’ s able to keep his silence.

What I learnt at school

2011-04-17T04:08:00.000-07:00

The only thought that got me through school assemblies as our head mistress droned about the importance of representing St. Michaels Loreto Convent Navan in a respectable lady like manner was the certainty, curled like an angry fist in my teenage dirt bag heart, that as soon as school was finally out, I would escape this stuffy white bread sandwich town, move to the big city and hang out exclusively with gays, freaks and drag queens.

This week I was a bridesmaid at a Pirate themed civil partnership where my dates were a gay comic and a lesbian cabaret singer. I felt about this the way, I assume, some people feel about finally owning their first house.

I didn’t have the best start at Secondary school. First years were assigned final year “buddies” whose job it was help new girls settle into the new school. In my first week I managed to lose my school bag; along with all my books for the year, twice. The second time it happened I was so worried about telling my Mam, I ran away on my bike and tried to persuade my granny to let me move in with her instead. When I sheepishly returned to school I found out my “buddy” had asked to be swapped to a less high maintenance student.

The other girls in my class didn’t seem to have a problem keeping hold of basic belongings. They were popular, had rugby boyfriends, played hockey and could see the teachers point. They smelled of Body Shop vanilla musk, had sensible career plans and lives as organised as their red pen and ruler lined exercise books. I hated them almost as much as I wanted to be them. I actually took pleasure in annoying and irritating them. I pretended to be hungover in class, bragged about how messed up my real friends outside school were and had eating disorders that lasted until lunchtime or until I forgot, like a creepy teenage Geri Halliwell.

On the day before our Junior Cert exams, and our last before the class was split up into new groups for our final years, a well intentioned teacher decided to pass pages around with each student’s name at the top and asked everyone to write their favourite memories of that person anonymously underneath. I was the only one to have a page of pretty much unanimous negative sarcastic comments. In front of everyone I coolly read them, smirked, crumbled up the page and sashayed out giving everyone what I hoped was my best “Later losers, you’ve just made me feel even more like Madonna” expression. I then went home and memorised every single line.

Surprisingly, fame didn’t beckon, my drama teacher hadn’t contacted Steven Spielberg about me, as in my secret heart I genuinely thought he would. I didn’t get to take year off to work in Hollywood and become friends with Danny Devito, so come September I was back in my maroon school uniform. But to my unexpected delight, something magical called streaming had twinkled its magic wand over the summer holidays, skimmed the smug girls away and poured me into as fresh new class.

I was still with the clever ones, but just not the ones that necessarily did their home work every day.
These were a different group entirely. One’s that understood the importance of throwing school bags out a second floor window, that you should interrupt the geography teacher every time she described any large landmass, be it iceberg, volcano or ox bow lake to earnestly ask if it was as big as the ship Titanic. That instead of doing carols it was just funnier in our final year to do a nativity play so I could finally play Mary. Yes we were all seventeen, yes it quickly descended into “Carry on Bethlehem” and yes we got into massive trouble, but no one ever questioned our choice. That rather than maturely seeing her side, the only way of responding to your homophobic religion teacher as she lectured a roomful of teenage girls on the inherent evilness of abortions was by making a frog noise throughout her class, even if it meant having to write out “ I will not say ribbit in class” one hundred times. That we were probably never ever going to use a quote from “To Kill a Mockingbird” in our adult life.

I’m friends with some of those perfect, popular, punch myself in the face out of boredom girls on Facebook now, but they don’t annoy me anymore; I find them fascinating. I press my nose up against their lives, and skip through the pictures; the sensible nights out, the houses bought, husbands wed and it’s like speeding in a train through a place that looks OK but you know you never have to worry about living there anymore.

Like the astronauts that flew to the moon thinking that they were making important scientific breakthroughs when what turned out to be most important were those images of playing golf and skipping on the lunar surface I don’t really remember anything that I learnt academically at school. French verbs, periodic tables or features of coastal erosion haven’t really come up in my life since. It’s the other stuff that’s important and beautiful. In an adult world of deadening days, bored tired people going through the motions and life trying to get you old, what is really useful to know? That jokes matter; they last longer than facts, erupt in your memory like a firework, singing egos and soldering true friendships.There's more honesty, integrity and compassion in one shared office in joke that a lifetime of following the rules. They won’t get you mortgages but they will get you through the day and invites to Pirate weddings.

As we swung back on our chairs, ignoring the teacher and drawing moustaches on each other’s faces, I thought I would finally get grown but maybe there wasn't much else left for me to learn, except possibly algebra.

“Darrin Stephens; Bewitched Nights”.

2011-03-29T10:14:00.001-07:00

With “Mad Men” off air till 2012, broadcasters have announced they may fill the gap left by the smash hit sixties series by showing the little seen “Bewitched” spin off series “Darrin Stephens; Bewitched Nights”.

While the popular 1960s sitcom focussed on the adventures of a beautiful young witch living in an upstate New York suburb with her handsome young Madison Avenue advertising executive husband, the spin off series had a darker tone.

Instead of magical high jinks, it focused on Darrin’s life at a Manhattan advertising firm. He is presented as a conflicted troubled man, torn between life at a cut throat Madison Avenue ad agency and his idyllic existance in the suburbs married to a witch. Viewers were however surprised and turned off by chain smoking Darrin’s affairs with secretaries, use of prostitutes and battles with booze.

Attempts to retain some of the parent shows lighter whimsical feel were unsuccessful. Episodes included a hilarious trip to a New York strip club where Darrin, unaware his mother in law has accidently turned him into a unicorn, fails to impress clients, the controversial mermaid forced abortion story arch and the clients dinner almost ruined by Darrin’s secret brother from his past life reappearing.

Audiences also rejected the new focus put on wife Samantha’s soulless existence in suburban America, her inability to reconcile inner demons with the barrenness of the American dream; all while being a witch. Memorably, her famous twitch was used to suggest substance abuse. The couple’s daughter Tabitha also became a more rebellious character, memorably rebelling against her mother’s coldness by masturbating on a couch during a during a goblin sleepover. There were also complaints that Darrin’s long suffering best friend Larry’s descent into heroin addiction in Greenwich village was sensationalistic. The series was axed after one season, with actor Dick York resigning in protest

Movie Pitch: Morrissey and Me.

2011-03-29T08:04:00.000-07:00

hey guys! I don't really know a lot about the film industry but I have an amazing pitch for a romantic comedy. Is there anybody who can get it seen by the relevant people?! Grrrr!! LOL!!

Movie Pitch: Morrissey and Me.

Gráinne (Gráinne Maguire/Ann Hathaway?), a cocksure young comic decides that in order to write her musical “Girlfriend in Coma” A retelling of the African American feminist movement using songs of The Smiths she must go to extraordinary efforts to insure that notoriously recalcitrant musician grants permission to use his back catalogue. Determined to see her dream come true, she disguises herself as a young gay man and faints in front of his abandoned reclusive manor.

Next scene we see her awakening in a gargantuan living room to find Morrissey (Morrissey/Gordon Brown/Colin Firth?), awkwardly soothing her brow with a damp towel. She claims to have no memory of anything at all apart from being a gay man and a vegetarian. Morrissey, who lives alone with only a loyal retinue of browbeaten servants, agrees to look after his new guest until his (her!) health returns and the two begin a tentative friendship.

MONTAGE: (music-Someone Like You- Van Morrison/Leona Lewis cover?) Gráinne discovers his library- sees different side to him? Eating at long formal table; changing to informal snacks in kitchen; changing to food fights? Gráinne stands up to him/ argues back? Gráinne shows Morrissey how to feed birds? The two play fighting? Wide shot of the two sitting by open fire. Close up of Morrissey looking tentatively happy/ Gráinne looking guilty.

Eventually, haven fallen in love in a paternal way with his house guest, he arranges a surprise slumber party where he plans to officially sign over his fortune, including back catalogue to his young ward. Unfortunately as he excitedly prepares the guestroom with popcorn and a Clueless DVD, his accidentally knocks open her diary and discovers Gráinne’s secret plot in numbered bullet points. He also comes across earlier diary entries where she’s written that she actually thinks Oscar Wilde is over rated. Heartbroken, angry and distraught, in an emotional scene outside in the rain Morrissey reveals he knows her secret. Gráinne tries to explain that her earlier mendacity has blossomed into real friendship but, with a tear stained face; the former Smiths front man banishes her from his life. Shot of Gráinne falling in mud. (Coldplay/ Keane music?)

Gráinne stumbles through abandoned streets. More Rain/ Possible wind machine? There she bumps into Sebastian (Owen Wilson/Jack Whitehall?) her identical twin brother whom she always thought was dead.

INTR: cafe: Gráinne is amazed to discover that Sebastian has also been working on his own Smiths based musical “You’re the One for Me Fatty” A retelling Margaret Thatcher’s dealing with IRA hunger strikers also using the songs of the Smiths. He had disguised himself as an amnesiac young woman and had been staying at Johnny Marr’s (Ian Hart/Hugh Grant?) house. He had also been rumbled, but thanks to an unlogged out gmail account rather than diary. Both shake their heads, ruefully wishing that their mother was alive to see her twins finally reunited. Shot of waitress clearing table- hint that she is actually ghost of their mother?

INTR: West End Theatre. Following the advice of an eccentric old lady, who had both a degree in performers law and also, sadly, terminal cancer, the twins have discovered a loophole allowing them to perform their Smiths musical re-titled “Everyday is like a Sunday” about a young man’s struggle with long term memory loss. At the end of the final number as the smoke clears and the canons slowly roll off stage, we reveal Morrissey and Johnny sitting at opposite ends of the packed auditorium. They both spontaneously give a standing ovation, in doing so become aware of each other’s presence for the first time. A hush falls over the packed theatre and after a heart breaking pause, they embrace weeping. Gráinne and Sebastian (matching outfits?) look at each other, roll eyes and laugh (Lily Allen track?)

Final scene: Morrissey; Johnny, Gráinne and Sebastian all in Morrissey’s living room. His house is no longer cold and menacing; his loyal butler (Antony Hopkins/Miranda Hart?) looks on approvingly as they all happily watch a DVD of Clueless. Johnny suggests that they go out somewhere afterwards; Morrissey says he’d love to but he hasn’t got a stitch to wear. Johnny, Gráinne and Sebastian start to laugh and throw popcorn at the former Smiths front man, who frowns and then begins to laugh himself. Cut to bird flying out of window into the night sky (symbolic?)

END

Possible Sequel Opportunities: The gang discover a baby abandoned on their door step? Morrissey opens a Private detective Agency?

wooh! It's behind you.....

2011-03-28T02:36:00.000-07:00

Do you think ghosts find Hallowe’en patronising? Do they roll their eyes and complain that actually there’s a lot more to their culture than that, it’s just patronising.

They must also get very fed up with how their community is portrayed in the media. They’re either predatory, aggressive ghouls moving into a home and dragging down the property value or bland, sexless Uncle Toms, Casper the sell out ghost, happy to be the living person’s token dead best friend. Whatever their personality or ability, always steroptypically defined by their lack of mortality. How they must yearn for the day that a TV series or mainstream movie is brave enough to cast a ghost in lead role or indeed any part where being dead isn’t their entire storyline and personality point; where they just happen to be not living but also have other stuff going on in their lives as well.

Ghosts don’t do themselves any favours though. Whenever you bump into them they prattle on and on about the same things, repeating the same actions, retracing the same steps. “I was a Victorian ladies maid, oohhh!” Yes, but you’ve been dead for over one hundred and fifty years, what have you been doing in the mean time? Why are you defining yourself by the ten or so years that you happened to be alive when by now that must be a diminishing fraction of your time on this planet? They are the ultimate child stars who have never moved on from their first burst of fame, touring the highways and byways of Britain with their one and only hit. They should say, yes, I was married to Henry the VIII for a few years but to be honest, that was a long time ago, now I’d much rather be known for my oil painting.

In their defence, it must be disappointing to discover that once dead, the only human beings interested in contacting you are drunk students, clingy relatives and Living TV. Imagine; you’re the ghost of a Norman soldier, think of all action, the excitement, the sex you could have had in your day and now the only one showing any interest in you is Yvette Fielding, and you’re supposed to be grateful for the attention? That has got to hurt.

I feel I can comment on this because I once nearly accidentally had sex with a ghost. I was furious. I have always made it very clear that the only dead person I would consider doing the deed with is a WWI soldier and only if I bore a striking resemblance to his long dead sweetheart, whose tragically unconsummated relationship helped him through his final weeks in the trenches and only if having sex with me helped him finally pass over to that great no man’s land in the sky and only if he looked like Jonny Lee Miller in “Regeneration”. Yet there I was, having a nap and minding my own business and there was the universe was setting me up on some sort of cosmic blind date with a spectral chancer. Luckily I woke up before things got out of control otherwise I could have literally had a phantom pregnancy on my hands. How could I have explained that to my parents? I could just see my mother rolling her eyes and sighing “Oh Gráinne, you have to be different don’t you?” I mean having a ghost baby would make me stand out from all the other young mums but what about schools?

My friends weren’t sympathetic either, when I groggily told them on the phone about nearly getting bumped in the night, there was just a nervous laugh, followed by a long pause and a swift change in the conversation. Later three of them independently emailed me links to Guardian Soul Mates; no pun, I hope intended.

I’m non-plussed my the supernatural, even as a child ghosts, banshees, the devil himself were as familiar to me as second cousins my parents got Christmas cards from every year. Satan and his constant attempts to steal my soul were just another problem to be faced and I developed the habit of saying out loud , whenever I saw something I really liked “I wouldn’t give my soul for it” just in case I accidently, subconsciously, made a barter I would later regret. It was like a form on insurance policy should I unwittingly promise my entire afterlife in hell in exchange for a chemistry set. I could just see myself, in my sweaty subterranean cell, stuck for all eternity with Hitler, the shark from Jaws and all the English soldiers my granny told me about, explaining that I was doing time for getting carried away before Christmas in Toys R Us.

At Secondary school, out of sheer boredom, my friends and I did the Ouija board at lunchtime for an entire week and I became convinced that I was communicating with the ghosts of three dead former students who had all died mysteriously in a locked storage room at the back of the lunch hall. The story unravelled itself in my mind’s eye, three girls killed one after the other after dabbling in the occult, a haunted room covered in crucifixes by the nuns in a vain attempt to exorcise the evil history that dripped from its walls, trapped souls only I could release.
It took our religion teacher arranging a special class to formerly deny that any students had ever died from falling downstairs, been run over by a driverless car or been found dead staring into a mirror, for my visions to end. The doomed cupboard of death was later found to contain old geography books.

Ghosts are everywhere after all, even if it’s just our hopes and expectations that though long dead, still stumble about with us, tapping us on our shoulder when we least expect it and rattling our graves. The ancient mistakes that send shivers down our spine, the bad choices that chatter our teeth and the lingering habits that lead up down the same dead ends like will o the wisps.
The missed opportunites that return in the dark of the night with a spectral grin and the new person or fresh opportunity that grotesquely decays to reveal the same old stupidities we thought we’d staked years ago.

With that in mind, I’d like to create my own scary ghost tour. It would involve drama students popping out from behind cobbled archways dressed as your teenage dreams, your weird depressed aunt popping up and whispering “You always reminded me of myself at your age” and at the end you meet your eight your old self who, blinking in horror, touches your face and whispers “Who are you sad old lady?” Then when you turn to your boyfriend for reassurance, he pulls off his face and he’s revealed to be every man you’ve ever gone out with ever. And it’s all done in Victorian outfits; terrifying.

I know how I’m going to die anyway. I’m going to either accidentally strangle myself with a curtain cord, electrocute myself with a toaster or mistake a French window for a sliding door and fall out a sixtieth floor window. My last thought will most definitly be – I cannot believe I just did that. I will meet my maker in one of those accidents electrical goods instructions warn you sarcastically about and people with too much time post on Darwin Award websites. My death will be so ridiculous and bizarre that my family will be too embarrassed to go into specific details at the funeral; my friends will have to avoid eye contact in case they laugh and strangers will assume I must have died in an erotic self asphyxiation act that went wrong. I shall die as I lived; absolutely bloody ridiculous.

My Top Ten life tips

2011-03-25T07:05:00.001-07:00

When it comes to important scary emails; go by the Schrödinger’s cat rule. Remember, until you actually open it, it still contains both good and bad news; the script treatment is both accepted and rejected, the man is both interested and gently letting me down, the test results are both positive in a figurative and a literal way. Try to put off opening all icky emails for as long as possible. Wait until it either becomes irrelevant or until one of your friends agrees to read it while you hide, with your fingers in your ears, crouched in another room. Then get them to shout out the gist of it under your locked door. I imagine this is how Schrödinger ended his famous experiment, but then in his defence he did probably have an angry radioactive cat to worry about.

When starting a new job, always be in the process of breaking up with someone. This works for both men and women. It immediately endears you to the people you’re working with and will give you plenty to talk about during those awkward first few weeks. Remember to keep it light and breezy, so no tedious trauma just the inevitable end of something that was never really going anywhere anyway. Do throw in a few anecdotes about how rubbish they were to speed up bonding but remember; judge the room, you don’t want to come across as bitter or shrill. Something about a forgotten birthday should be enough to get everybody on side; you’re aiming for feisty and brave, not doomed and broken. If you are actually going out with someone, make sure you change the name of your imaginary ex partner in case they bump into your real one at a later works do and everyone is mad at you for getting back with them.

If you want to seen busy at your job always look worried about something, squint into the middle distance and sigh a lot. Every now and then rub your eyes, complain how badly run the place is and ruefully laugh how you’re amazed it hasn’t closed down years ago. Then return to facebook. Try to carry a lot of files around with you at all times.

If you find yourself in a situation that you know is going to be awkward always bring an attention grabbing prop. It should provide a distraction from whatever is happening and deflate some of the tension. A small child is good, an attention grabbing hat adequate or even, if you know it’s really going to be a right old cringer, a bandaged limb that may be broken. Once, when I knew I was going to bump into someone for the first time after drunkenly making a misjudged move on them, I decided to wear a Christmas wreath on my head for *the laugh*. There was nothing whimsical about my headgear; I knew exactly what I was doing. While everyone thought I was being my usual eccentric self , I was actually being icily cunning. I knew when I bumped into my erstwhile beau; all attention and conversation would be inevitably drawn to the table arrangement precariously balanced on my head and not the events from the night before. Unfortunately, he didn’t call around to the pub that night so I was left with a crown of fir branches on my head, but to be honest, by then, I was really working the look.

When flying home for the first time after moving to London for your triumphant- look at me living my life in the city, proving your parents wrong by how successful and independent you are - make sure you have the details of the airline and airport you are flying from correct. Do not arrive half an hour late, at the wrong airport and try to board the wrong airline. Gatwick and Stanstead are not as you may think “more or less the same” they are, in fact, very far apart. If this does happen, make sure you have enough money in your account to pay for a replacement flight. If this is not possible, make sure you have enough credit on your phone or change in your pocket to ring your dad for his credit card details. If again, this is not possible, try to be nice to the woman behind the desk when she lets you use their phone and apologetic when you have to enlighten your parents of the evening’s events. When you do finally arrive in your home airport long past midnight, after your flight has been delayed for two hours and your Dad is waiting in arrivals, try to drop the defensive I live in London girl swagger and give him a hug. He will have experienced his own share of disappointments that night too.

If you are already half way to the tube before you realise you have a massive stain down the front of top; instead of going home to change, just act surprised when anyone points it out to you, as if it has only happened moments before. Practice looking down and appearing surprised. This should convince everyone you are just a messy eater; ergo: probably good in bed, instead of being a lazy slob; ergo: probably not.

If something happens that you’re desperate to talk about but are scared of word spreading, find your most self obsessed friend and spill the beans to them. You will get all the release of getting it off your chest with the peace of mind of knowing they will probably never even remember the conversation. It’s the human equivalent of talking to the river. Be careful not to include their name in your story as that might trigger certain synapses in their brain to start working. Bookend it all with questions about them as insurance.

If people are talking about a book or film you know nothing about but you are keen to join the conversation pretend that you have seen it and say that it reminds you a lot of another book/ film that you have read. Then start talking about that instead.For example: “Yeah “My Own Private Idaho”, I loved that film. Spellbinding; just so…atmospheric. Keanu Reeves was almost as good as he was in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” They’re making a third film!! Alex Winter returns, now who do you think they should do about the part of Rufus? Recast or would that be sacrilege? Long Live the Wild Stallions!"

When somebody introduces you to a baby for the first time always assume they’re a girl. If they’re a boy, it will be taken as a compliment. The same applies to meeting people with North American accents; always guess Canadian first. Even if you are wrong, they will assume you are obliquely suggesting they had had the benefit of a good health care system.

Whatever happens always ,always remember that if you throw enough shit at a wall, eventually, eventually you will get a hand that smells of shit and a stench that will follow you around for the rest of your life, tainting everything you do, touch and taste with a constant reminder of the time you tried

These things actually happen to me. Part 2

2011-03-24T07:25:00.001-07:00

So today, I dragged myself out of my lovely warm bed to be at the gym for 7.15 for my first induction. I managed to be there for 7.30 which considering I had been up till midnight the night before watching “The Only Way is Essex” was a real achievement. I don’t like gyms, the instructors irritate me; I mean to say… jumping up and down for a living? What gasping chasms of low self esteem does that reveal? To want to do professionally what toddlers do on their lunch break? What sort of work stories you would have- “Oh, I did a really interesting exercise today…oh you should have been there, my knees bent and everything”.

Why are they so smug about being so fit, shouldn’t they be embarrassed about having obviously so little else to do with their time? I don’t wander into libraries, lean over someone reading a book I’ve already finished and smugly ask if they need help understanding the author’s subtext. I understand that getting excited about the finer points of Douglas Adams is probably something better kept to myself, yet in a gym we’re supposed to crumble in respectful awe at somebody who has probably spent a similar amount of time moving contracting and retracting stomach muscles. Why all the aggression; the stomach crunches, the blitzing of buts, the feeling the burn? We’re just doing a bit of exercise not trying to over throw Gadaffi.

I just can’t help thinking that dedicating their lives to such a monotonous and time draining pursuit is poor exchange for just being slightly firmer. Yes, you could spend an hour every day at the gym to fit into your clothes better or you could just wear something slightly baggier. No one notices or cares. But I wasn’t thinking about that yesterday when I joined up. Drugged by intoxicating aroma of chlorine and dazzled by the protein bars on sale in reception, I was too distracted thinking about the glamorous, organised, taut grown up I was suddenly going to become.

Anyway, to save time, I came up with the cunning plan of sleeping in my oldest tracksuit bottoms and taking a change of clothes for work. It was only later when I went to get changed. I realised that my sleep fuddled brain had managed to pack tights, change of shoes and even some body moisturiser; which just shows how ambitious about my new life my semi conscious brain was being, but no actual work clothes. I am now at my desk hoping no one notices I am basically wearing my pyjama bottoms. The elastic in the waist has gone and I’ve had to secure it with some staples and a paper clip. On my lunch break they kept slipping down and I looked like a really really really low rent prostitute. So I have seen what my new grown up self looks like and to be honest, she looks exactly like the mad homeless person I always suspected she would be.

Me and my office best friend

2011-03-08T15:43:00.000-08:00

Photocopiers are the most melodramatic of modern office equipment; permanently collapsed in a corner, coughing and spluttering, it’s innards clutching onto a piece of chewed up paper like a delicately scrunched lace handkerchief.
I know this because I am very good at fixing them. My calm methodical approach to gently easing the jams from the over excited drums, and with gentle authority turning the puzzled machine on and off again, has, over the years, earned me the name the photocopier whisperer.

I don’t judge it; I understand that with a creative genius like that, neuroticism, hypochondria, even downright diva behaviour is inevitable. The photocopier was once the star, you see, that dropped into office life in the sixties, like displaced piece of futuristic debris fallen from the future and changed everything. With one downward release on pressure on a button, a flash of light and muffled thud, oceans of typing pools with tight sweatered secretaries in old fashioned glasses disappeared in puff of cigarette smoke.

Even in your own life time, remember how excited we used to be about the photocopier, the thrill of learning to copy double sided, the shiver of printing a booklet for the first time, the giddy rush of discovering the stapler worked? The heady smell of fresh ink in the primary school secretary’s office as, the clock ticking closer to home time, you proudly collected hot water bottle warm lice letters and rushed to proudly hand them over to your panicking teacher.

Now, the photocopier, large, squat and taken for granted malingers in the office corner, like a bitter first wife replaced in our affections by the new printer with its slim line scanner. We don’t even get drunk and sit on it at Christmas anymore. What else can it do but cough, whine and complain about paper jams? Yes, it has adapted, we can send scans to them now, most print in colour, some are even connected to the internet but we both know the excitement is over. Compared with the sophisticated swishes and zooms of computer graphics, its simple promise to enlarge or contract by a certain percent embarrasses us both. Its futile attempt to morph into its own replacement unravelling into an undignified and desperate gesture, sullying all the old good memories.

Every year the paper files get smaller, the letters fewer and the guilty recycling bin more prominent, like a sickly bastard child reluctantly included in the family photo. The promises of paperless office, the emails bitchily suggesting it doesn’t need to be printed, each a slow drawing down of blinds. We’ve moved on. It’s seen off the fax machine, but this feels different. That’s why I’m patient with it, turn it off when it’s too warm and try not to slam the doors to roughly when, it blinks desperately about another phantom unknown blockage in drawer two that I know isn’t there. It wants to know that I’m still there, that I still care and that I’ll be there when it gets switched on again. And like Atticus Finch. I always will be.

Gráinne gets a new job.

2010-11-15T10:29:00.000-08:00

When you’ve never experienced it, falling in love seems like quite an intimidating thing. When I was younger I just couldn’t imagine this big complicated feeling, a passion that inspires poets, changes history, starts wars and ends films could ever personally involve me. That said; I’d never really wanted to go out with anyone. The thought of truly getting to know someone had all the attraction of inviting a stranger around for a social root about in my bathroom dustbin. Hey there stranger; person I find sexually attractive, how about popping around and getting to know me in all my wobbly, secondhand, cry when I’m drunk tediousness? And while you’re at it, would you like to see me first thing in the morning too? I don’t even like spending time in my own company, not sober at least, why would I expect anyone else to? No thanks. I’d been born with a port wine stain on my personality, a fermenting, boil of neediness and inadequacy that if brushed with any sort of affection would pop and repulse anyone unlucky enough to be around it.

I was however blessed with low standards and high expectations; I thought the solution was to just go out with someone I didn’t really like for as long as it took for them to accidently stumble over the real me. Then when my game was up, we could shake hands, shrug shoulders and maybe go out for breakfast. The trick was to not to really like anybody then you could never ever be hurt. My only other option was to fall in love with someone who then, immediately, tragically died, never to learn how truly messy my bedroom could get. Then I would have all the glamour of a tragic love affair, a tale I could talk about for ages and a perfect excuse never to have to go out with anyone ever again. But that was the ideal and who could bank on that?

What is unexpected about falling in love is that when it happens, how easy it is. Such a pivotal thing that you secretly yearn for, that people spend their lives aching for and when it happens it’s as easy as falling asleep. Love, this ancient celebrity that cameod in Shakespeare, did the dirt on Vincent Van Gogh, wooed Elizabeth Taylor, is now nuzzling up to you and laughing at your jokes. In the wise words on Cheryl Cole- It’s bonkers, pet!

Two months in and the novelty of working in an Irish bar was wearing off. Already some of the girls from the bar were migrating to teaching. Kelly, an orange faced prematurely middle aged girl in her mid twenties had been the first to jump ship. She had an unnerving habit of sighing before, during and after everything she said, as if too emphasis just how weary of this mortal coil she truly was. Every piece of news, flummery, whisp of gossip was met with furrow browed resignation, as though at the age of 26, literally nothing surprised her anymore. Maybe she was misunderstood, maybe she really had had an exciting life, maybe she was just being slowly poisoned by St. Tropez. Her personality met at that special place on the attitude chart where frumpiness and competitiveness towards all other females met.

Yes, teaching had easy hours and weekends off, but I was no Kelly. I wanted to stay at the Bar with Laura and Ife. Laura was a fumbling girl from Nottingham that had ended up in Madrid en route from her year in Australia. Laura seemed to do most things accidentally and it was her shambliness and honesty that made her so adored by everybody. She had a rueful way of apologising for being rubbish that made you want to buy her a fur coat and a tiara. Whatever you were doing, she assured you, was brilliant, any plans she’d go along with, every fact you told was remarkable, every story fascinating. She was home made flesh, a calm Queen of Hearts to my slightly deranged Princess Margaret. You didn’t just want her as you best friend, you hoped that she considered you hers.

Ife was one of the most confident people I’d ever met. An assistant manager at the bar, back in London she worked as a high powered TV producer and gave off the swagger of impregnable competency. A rock. An island. That was until you got to know her and realised that she displayed her independence with the same pride and vulnerability of a twelve year old showing off their new tree hut. There were also endearing gaps in her general knowledge, like when watching an interview with Shaking Stevens she asked confused, hadn’t he converted to Islam. Or when she matter of factly explained that the reason she’d chosen a trip to Caesars Palace over the Grand Canyon on her last holiday was because, she’d already seen the Grand Canyon on television. Or the period in her life when her close friends were genuinely worried she thought she was going out with Pharrell Williams. Then she stopped being my intimidating new boss and became the friend who I could trust with my life.

Week nights were spent at the bar getting drunk on appropriated wine, Saturday nights at R&B clubs where we were sexually molested on the dance floor to a baseline and every Monday whoever wasn’t working would join Gerard for the weekly pub quiz. There, not only did I improve my general knowledge, I learnt about myself. Like the time a new member of our team had the gall, the rudeness to answer more questions than me and in frustration I hid his chair when he was in the toilet forcing him to join another table. Looking at the glares from my teammates I discovered that I did have a competitive side outside All You Can Eat Buffets after all.

Sometimes we were joined for drinks by the other barmen. Shane was a slightly gawky, graduate who had come to Madrid to study guitar. He was sweet and funny but with an earnestness that became quickly irritating. While I tried to forget I was living in Spain, he stopped just short of wearing a sombrero to work. When I had to ring my landlady to let her know that I was moving out, and regally announced that I needed to borrow someone’s Spanish, he smugly refused. I think he thought he was making a tough to be kind comment on my inability to assimilate into the local culture. Instead it just convinced me he was a smug twat who probably fancied me and was getting a sadomasochistic thrill from making my life difficult for sexual kicks. Who knows, the truth was probably somewhere in the middle. I could only take him in small doses, or diluted with lots of alcohol.

Paul was an architecture student. Unlike us, happy to stay and get quietly pissed, as soon as his shift was over he was off; to meet friends, discover some underground bar he’d read about, or head off to another city for the weekend. He never said much but when he did it was always either sarcastic or taking the piss. We instantly bonded when it became apparent we held Shane, with all his sunny optimism, in equal contempt. He went one better, he didn’t really like anyone who worked in the bar. Apart from me, me he liked. Awkward ribs blossomed into private jokes and soon we could riff for hours on the same subject, as easily and gracefully as ice skaters, whipping past everyone else, giddy with our own speed, spinning with the glee of private laughter. Soon it just became normal for us to sit next to each other, natural to be considered a pair, second nature to seek each other out. He had this killer habit of remembering everything I said, of assuming only I knew what he was talking about, of directing his wisecracks in my direction. He seemed to notice, remember and comment on everything I did and said, in way that made me feel like the most interesting person alive. Things were changing, the thought of seeing him made feel exhilarated and like I wanted to vomit and suddenly I was brushing my hair before work. Days without seeing him felt wasted and were spend chatting to him in my head, collecting stuff to tell him about when I did.

During my first day at my new job at the school Laura texted me to say Paul had been talking about me all morning, and I calmly realised, why one day in ,I already missed him so much.

Working in an Irish Bars for beginners

2010-11-08T09:49:00.000-08:00

There are many advantages to working in an Irish bar in a foreign country. You never have to learn their language, you never really have to meet any locals and most importantly, you can still, just about, meet enough new people to convince yourself you’re still having an experience you couldn’t have had at home. It is the microwave meal of foreign travel.

Nobody plans to work in an Irish bar; it’s a waiting room where you pause for life to present its next chapter. People who live abroad are a strange lot anyway. If you’re at home working in a bar, or as a TEFL teacher; people ask questions, wonder what you’re doing next, but if you’re doing the exact same thing, living more or less the same lifestyle in a foreign country, people assume you’re a winner. There are three types of people that you notice working abroad, those there for legitimate career reasons, those pausing for breath, between travels, after uni, a sorbet between youth and responsibility and lost souls, who turn being a foreigner abroad into their entire identity. At home they were just John, but here they are John the Irish Man. They attend Irish nights, listen to trad music, attend Embassy functions, suddenly only James Joyce understands them. Their nationality suddenly makes sense of their life, defines them, excuses all their actions, answers all their questions with the unexpected gratefulness of a diagnosed food intolerance.

The bar I worked in was run by Mathew; a fat pink faced, German school boy of an Irish homosexual. His family owned the entire chain of Irish pubs and Mathew, the runt of the litter, was in charge of ours. We were all terrified of him. He was known to swan into the bar, empty the till, sack a member of staff and disappear for days. He also notoriously, it was whispered, only dated middle aged men that looked like Captain Birds Eye. I ended up living in his flat for two weeks, mid between bolting from Marina’s and moving to another boho dive with a balcony in Lavapies. It was amazing; park views and satellite TV, but I only got to stay there for two weeks before his landlord evicted him. He was that sort of person. Terrified of him, his kindness to this stranger sleeping on his couch made me flinch. In-between hating himself and everyone else, he was as sweet and soft as the fondant fancies he so closely physically resembled.

The real power was Meabh. A tiny, pale wisp of a girl; she may have looked like a frail Victorian ghost but had a disaprooving stare that would terrify any spectral visitor. She had worked at the pub for years and at twenty three had the attitude, wisdom and weariness of someone years older. Initially her toughness, learnt at too young age, frustrated both our attempts at friendships, but over time her kindness and thoughtfulness emerged from her flinty exterior.

Simon was in charge of the late shifts. He was a gorgeous, tanned, shaved head gay man from Manchester, with dry sense of humour and turn of phrase that made you lose your breath. He lived with Gerard in a luxurious flat overlooking Madrid’s transvestite red light district with their pet Chihuahuas. They weren’t a couple but loved and hated each other with all the intensity of one. Gerard spent his weekends drinking and having complicated relationships with South Americans he met in S&M clubs and his weeks as a trade union lawyer fighting for teachers rights in Colombia. After Sunday lunch at their flat, we’d drink gin and tonics, watch the trannies outside and then settle down in front of the only programme on TV in English “Murder She Wrote”. Did you know that nearly every episode ends with Jessica Fletcher pulling a quizzical face? I never really picked up spanish but I did learn that.

The most anticipated customers were the Irish and English lads working in the city. Since none of us spoke Spanish, the those were the only really eligible men, however, they not quite valuing conversation skills as highly as we did, had not only Spanish girls to choose from but every freckly woman’s mortal enemy – the South Americans. The attributes I’d previously considered deal breakers; good sense of humour, being up for the craic, shared knowledge of Neighbours , melted in the hot groomed, sexiness of those girls.

Most of the lads worked for a dodgy local telesales operation that a notorious, but never seen, Irishman ran. Recruited from behind the Irish bars, they were lured with coke, promises of easy money and trips to strip clubs to a business they vaguely described as an investment scheme. The bright eyed boys quickly transformed to loud arrogant customers, visiting their previous place of employment with swaggering wads of cash, the visits diminishing along with their friendliness, until it was vaguely mentioned they’d mysteriously gone back to Ireland, never to be heard of again.

At least we had Lee. A TEFL teacher from Manchester; he was a romantic figure, which even a predilection for pissing in public couldn’t diminish. A spry pixie of a middle-aged man, he had a stunning Spanish girl he cheated on absentmindedly and a twinkle in his eye. When he got drunk, tales from his previous life would seep out. Sad stories of unclaimed children that looked like him, tangled family trees, grim storylines he’d miraculously been able to escape from. Sometimes we were joined by Trevor, a middle-aged man going through a nasty divorce, with an adored daughter who was quite obviously fleecing her lonely Dad. They’d stay late and we’d drink martinis, laugh our legs off and I’d walk home in the night time heat. Was I happy or do I just remember that I was in hindsight? I can’t remember, lets just assume I was, a memory lasting so much longer than the actual moment. Let’s leave me strolling safely home from work, through the stuffy Madrid night, unaware that soon Paul would walk into my life and everything was about to go kaboom! Goodnight Gráinne, save home, enjoy your yoghurt and biscuits in the morning.

Gráinne's Madrid Adventures begin

2010-10-18T04:34:00.000-07:00

So there I was in Madrid; the second European country in as many years, that I had moved to more or less by accident.

I spoke no Spanish, had done a TEFL course in the equivalent of The Danny Dywer School of Higher Learning and apart from a frayed sheet of paper with some scribbled email addresses, I was on my own.

I was to move in with Marina, a spindly Spanish girl I had become friends with on the Comedia Dell’Arte course. I thought she was amazing; she drank her coffee black, smoked roll ups and promised to teach me how to eat healthily, flirt with men and walk like a whughhhman. Most importantly, she thought I was adorable and I’d already cast her as the wise Spanish sister who would bestow valuable life lessons.

I had never met anybody like her before; her wiry fidgety street smarts, made my middleclass friends back home seem plump with suburban safe choices. Her eyes had the dark flintiness of someone who had to look after themselves from an early age. I was in equal amounts in awe and slightly terrified of her, but reassured with the knowledge I was in her gang. She had just broken up with her boyfriend and was looking for someone to share the rent; it all seemed perfect.

Her flat was a tiny badly made wardrobe of a place, with a kitchen that looked out onto the inner courtyard; washing the dishes became a romantic Juliet balcony experience, a tiny living room with a fold out bed and Marina’s bedroom, where I would sleep. In the kitchen was a rickety old gas heater, don’t get me wrong, I love crotchedy old things, it’s just not what I look for in gas heating appliances; every time I looked at it I heard Michael Burke’s voice narrating my movements in my head. Not that we ever used it, it was August and the heat was a dry, heavy, overwhelming presence. The entire city felt like a communal sauna.

Marina never seemed to eat and came and left the flat at the strangest hours. All the shopping trips and pavement lunches together I imagined never materialised, in fact I hardly saw her outside the flat at all. Straight away there was always seemed some bill I had to pay, things were always running out just after I used them; printer cartridges, olive oil cans, gas cylinders, purchases that I needed to share.

Marina’s decorating was interesting too. Along with the porn, filed neatly along wit her dvds on top of the cd player, there were least three framed black and white pictures of a naked Marina with only a pearl necklace or cigarette artfully hung around the flat. So this is what sophisticated bohemian life was like I told myself; I was terrified.

The entire flat opened out onto a balcony overlooking the street below. We lived in Lavapies, Madrid’s most colourful/dangerous neighbourhood. I console myself that it’s now a soulless overpriced area with media types and over privileged trust fund brats, whereas when I lived there it was a crime scene with a Metro stop.

Along with the heat there was the continuous wall of sound; from the first beeps of frustrated cars in the morning to the last squeals of children running around worryingly late at night, interrupted by the constant shrieking drone of scooters. It was a battered notice board of student cafes, Moroccan bars and shops selling cheap electrical goods.

Everyday I went to the Supermarcado and had the same breakfast of a yoghurt drink and almond biscuits, prawns and lemon juice by the kilo for lunch and lost about a stone in a month. Every stroll about the area was accompanied by a Greek chorus of men, shouting “Eh Guapaa”. This was not something I took personally; this was a gift to everywoman leaving their house. It became like a verbal mosquito bite, sometimes accompanied by a hiss, inspiring an involuntary hunching of ones shoulders, and scurrying further head down. Say what you like about Irish men, but one cannot accuse them of being over demonstrative about their appreciation for the fairer sex. Two days into my time in Madrid, I began to look back nostalgically on their tongue tied inability to even make contact let alone emit noises. It didn’t make me feel sexy or attractive, I felt like bringing a loud klaxon hailer with me every time I left the house.

Despite this I was beginning to feel a strange combination of spine tingling terror and bullish excitement.
Not understanding the language made every journey outside my flat overwhelming. I felt like I jumping into a foreign sea, any moment I would be swept away in a tide of strange smells and vowel sounds. But beneath that was also an exhilarating rush, I would learn Spanish, become fluent, study physical theatre in a funky underground school, hang out at the cool bars, the illicit thrill of real change was seductively putting it’s arm around my waist. In a rush I signed up for a month of Spanish classes, bought my books, insisted Marina only spoke to me in Spanish. Not only that I devised a timetable for my year in Madrid, everyday I would spend an hour writing, an hour drawing (some landmarks to begin with then move on to sketching the people I saw in cafes at night) an hours physical exercise (running to begin with then possible yoga) an hours Spanish study and then an hours drama class. And get a job. And make friends, and get a boyfriend. I had a lot of work to do.

I began to meet up with my other Spanish friends and try to follow their conversation, but it was different to when we were in Italy. There, the common language was English, so that was spoken in our group. Here in their home country, I felt a bit betrayed by their return to their home tongue. They wanted to stay out late, drink more, go dancing but it was just so hot, even at night. The clubs were sweaty and loud, a zoo of confusion. After about an hour or two I’d feign tiredness and return to the coolness of my bed, the blessed tones of Radio 4 online, like a lighthouse beacon, reminding me of my own world.

My first Spanish class consisted of me and six other Asian girls in a hot classroom in the city centre. My mind wandered as she slowly went through some grammar rule, while the girls tapped away on a little translator handset that looked like a calculator. I tried to concentrate, I think I did, but I’ve never been very good at languages. In general if I’m not really good at something immediately, I quickly, very speedily loose interest. That’s the thing with learning a foreign language, it’s not really good for show offs. Think of the foreigners who spend years and years studying English- do we congratulate them on their excellent use of irregular verbs, their grasp of idiomatic phrases, or do we just take it for granted that they can speak it? Well every culture is like that. The idea of spending months, years, learning a language just so I could be an average Spanish speaker made my mind baulk. How long would it take before I could make jokes, word plays, puns for crying out loud? What was the point? Does the world need one more average Spanish speaker? I then genuinely began to worry that if I did indeed master a second language that other parts of my brain would begin to suffer. What if my new Spanish vocabulary started pushing out my English words? Boring block words for table or meat, muscling out the wimpier, whispier words at the very end of my vocabulary spectrum. My vocabulary was something I jealousy prided myself with paranoid regularity. If I was worried I was getting early dementia or had finally given myself an alcohol induced brain injury I would test myself to see if I could remember my most obscure words. He spoke loquaciously to the timid girl, with obvious lascivious intent…That was who I was, the thought of losing that made my head spin.

And why was I learning it in the first place? Everybody else in the class seemed to have a clear reason: Jobs in Madrid, partners in Spain. My only reason for being there was that it wasn’t Navan and that felt like shaky reasons for concentrating on all that grammar. Learning a language felt like a big sign of commitment, one I wasn’t ready for, If I learnt it properly they might make me stay here - sorry Latin countries don’t get too comfortable, this one’s moving through… I was the jittery boyfriend of foreign tongues.

Marina was throwing herself back into single like with admirable gusto. Walking gingerly past her fold out bed to get to my bedroom, I nearly took part in accidental threesomes on several occasions. She walked around the flat naked, once taking her inhibition to applause inspiring lengths by sitting spread eagled naked, waxing her castanet on the living room couch. Nights in we’d chat in halting Spanish about our love lives. Who was I fucking she’d ask, who did I want to? I blinked back at her confused; I’d been in Madrid three weeks, how on earth would I have time to get to know, let alone like someone, let alone go on the requisite amount of drunken sessions before that lucky fumble occurred? She sneeringly questioned if I had any experience with men at all? My Spanish was terrible but happily, judgment is a universal tongue. We were both mentally putting each other categories and neither were coming out well.

I ate wrong at well. One night, in protest at her diet of chickpeas and onions I provocatively came home with a bag of chips. My greasy unhealthy deep fried carbs, in her skinny Spanish uninhibited sex with stranger’s apartment. She sat down beside me on the couch and began to delicately help herself to some. Shy nibbles quickly speeded into greedy snatches as unselfconsciously, her hand clawing from plate to mouth, ignoring me the entire time, she finished the entire lot in silence. I couldn’t put my finger on why at the time, but something about it turned my stomach.

I was getting lazier with my Spanish classes. There was homework I could not understand so I decided to wait up to ask Marina to help me with it/ do it for me. She finally arrived in late, with strange men, brandishing a bottle of whiskey she proudly declared she’d found on the street. Sensing me uncomfortable, her eyes glinted back darkly, silently challenging me to say something. I searched for my sassy Spanish big sister but she wasn’t there. I saw myself through her eyes; a pudgy spotty middleclass Irish girl in her pyjamas clutching a grammar book, she was subletting her flat to. I took her in and wondered if she wasn’t Spanish, if she was Irish, would I want to be friends with her, would ever have even known each other? Her friends made a joke in Spanish and I felt the room to their laughter.

I finally went along to a performance at the theatre school I was planning to join. I hated it. It was like something you’d see on a world culture section on an international news station late at night. I yearned to have someone to turn around to, someone I knew, someone I could take the piss out of it but there was no one, I was on my own. I felt a jolt of homesickness. Like a dog with an electronic lease, I felt a jolt. I had gone as far as I could. I could change and assimilate no further. I stopped going to the Spanish classes and the next week I had got a job in an Irish bar. Walking into the cool, dark bar, after the eye stinging heat and brightness of the Spanish street,I could have wept with gratitude.

Has X Factor hit a bum note?

2010-10-12T04:56:00.000-07:00

I never understood the attraction of autumn. Yes there are the gusty, golden leafed walks home, the lure of guilt free cosy nights in after the pressure of sweaty, inner thigh chafing summer nights and snugly winter wardrobe, but the season always reminded me of sea side fairgrounds closing down, sensible school shoes and homework. That was before X Factor. Then I got it.

I love X Factor, and that’s why I’m worried the dream is over.

When I say I love it, I don’t just mean in a snide, ironic way either. I adored getting caught up in the drama and campness of it all. It was the ultimate Saturday night TV show, the type you’d watch when you were little after your bath drying your hair. Being able to ooh and ahh at Dannii and Cheryl’s clothes, get indignant about song choices, take sides in the scripted fights between the judges; it was wholesome innocent fun. During its run you could strike up a conversation with anybody about it, and have the kind of chats people had in the olden days, when people knew their neighbours, about the woman in the Post Office, but instead about Dannii Minogue, which if anything shows progress. With twitter you could instantly share your experience with friends, strangers, celebrities all watching the exact same performance, listening to the same flat note, puzzled by the same bizarre outfit Danii and Cheryl’s fashion one-upmanship has produced. Apart from celebrity deaths and maybe World War II, I can’t think of any other even that has united people in such a way.

The only people you can’t talk to X Factor about are the tedious point-missers who whine that Simon Cowell is destroying the music industry. Do people honestly think somebody is going to wander into Golden Discs determined to buy Bob Dylan and leaved confused carrying a single by Alexandra Burke? There’s always been bubblegum throw away pop, there have always been manufactured bands, they’ve now just turned the process into a viciously addictive TV show. The songwriters and producers that were going to be writing the records anyway just have a new person to hang their songs on every year that’s all. Yes it is sad to hear a chorus of contestants in their early twenties solemnly declare that this is the last chance. It’s heartbreaking in as much as it’s probably true. Of course, you can have a career as a professional singer at any age, but pop stardom is truly the shortest summer. I watched last year’s live final in a gay bar in Hackney, as the winner was called out we all, strangers, held hands and prayed that little Joe would get through. Did we foresee his mediocre, follow up single? No, but don’t tell me we didn’t care.

That’s why I was disappointed by last Saturday’s flat noted return. It should have been great, since the range of songs the acts can perform seems to have finally widened. Due to licensing reasons, a wish to appeal to the broadest possible demographic and brazen cheapness, the songs previously on the show were confined to the kind of tracks usually heard on compilation albums given out in Sunday supplements. The songs “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, “Unchained Melody” and “Smile” have appeared so many times, that they are ruined forever.

It wasn’t just the news that last week’s figures were down, that made me think the shows salad days were over. It was the introduction of twists and more acts that scared me. Messing with a show’s formats is like a once beautiful actress beginning the first tweaks with plastic surgery. You know in a few years they’ll be an unrecognisable insult to their former beauty. I got flashbacks of the once brilliant Big Brother, which gradually started convoluting their format and introducing a cast of thousands and ended with show more mangled than Meg Ryan’s face.

Secondly, after Jedward’s surprise success, this year all the judges seem to want to have their own crazy contestant. This is a bad thing. The whole point of the duos success was the audience’s unorganised decision to collectively subvert the show. Every time the po-faced judges self importantly declared they were trying to discover new talent, the viewers reminded them that is was just a silly TV show, and voted them in for another week. Simon’s decision to “embrace the craziness” and support Diva Fiver, is as deflating as a politician using your favourite song at their party conference.

The show’s also been accused of racism for putting through two white girls who fluffed their final audition ahead of two black girls who sailed through theirs. I actually think they might have a point. I think in our culture, white people are, in general, are less impressed or surprised by black people who can sing really well. Growing up in Ireland in the eighties, I knew no non whites at all, the only black people I saw were on the tele, and it was only when I got older and moved to London I realised that I subconsciously assumed all black people were brilliant singers. I know that’s ridiculous but on TV, especially American TV, whenever any black person sings they always, always have amazing gospel voices. Part of Amy Whinehouse ,Joss Stones and Duffy’s success is that they’re white girls who sound like black soul singers, but if they were black girls with similar voices, they’d probably just be backing singers.

(You could never really accuse Cheryl of racism, her husband was mixed race and that was definitely not a marriage of convenience to raise profiles and cover up rumours of homosexuality. Also, yes, she may have been convicted for a racist attack on a toilet attendant but that was ages ago. How could she judge anybody on the colour of their skin, after last week, when she was quite clearly orange?)

Endemic racism aside-Why don’t we feel the X Factor this year? The show’s previous trademark theme; the unfortunate wretch with a stunning voice and a tear stained back story, achieving success after a carefully plotted journey has famously been ditched this season. Those themes; the deserving working class achieving success through hard work and determination all had a very New Labour tinge to them. Anybody could make it, if they had the talent.

Now instead of being a likeable underdog Cher, comes across as an auto tuned ASBO .The judges drool over the other most notorious contestant Katie about her uniqueness as if copying Lady Gagaga is any more unique or original than copying Britney Spears. Despite this her shrill, smug entitlement has alienated her form the public. There just doesn’t seem to be much innocence left.

Topping the ratings is the series following the show “Downton Abbey” written by Gosford Park writer and old school Conservative Julian Fellows. The script, about a manor house before the First World War, still controlled by rigid class structures, noble obliges, and the each knowing their place is New Conservative philosophy in fancy dress. The privileged Lord of the Estate is a sympathetic, well intentioned man, willing to sacrifice his on daughter’s inheritance to ensure the survival of not only his manor but the way of life he feels responsible for. He’s David Cameron in breeches. As the government, decimates the welfare state, cuts child welfare for the top earners and raises university fees, maybe we just aren’t believing in the X Factor fairy story anymore? The X factor fairground might finally be closing down.

For Blake, the man that changed my life forever...

2010-09-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

Most people boast about being a good judge of character, a minority admit to being bad, I on the other hand have absolutely no judgment at all. It is my one social blind spot; a part of my personality I genuinely wish I could outsource. I know you're supposed to use wisdom, experience,morals, and then decide if you like some one or not. With me if someone is nice to me- I like them, that’s it,I've nothing more technical to go on. I could meet a mass murderer, a genocidal maniac, James Corden and if they’re nice to me; I’m screwed.

Sometimes, worried that my blanket acceptance of everyone has downgraded my opinion to worthless, I’ll decide completely arbitrarily to dislike someone. Almost instantaneously, that person will be nice to me; I’ll feel horrible and be back to square one. Lately I’ve considered just given up having opinions altogether.

When I was younger, added to this personality blindness,was the pressure of having to make absolutely everybody I met like me. The thought of choosing not to get on with someone, of deciding for myself instead of reacting to some one else’s behavior was alien and weird. My plan was to be friends with absolutely everyone, and hope for the best.

These were the life skills I was taking with me on my new life abroad.My homesickness in Italy had been as unexpected as it was pathetic. The first few days were a puffy eyed flurry of abruptly left rooms, locked toilet doors and sobbing, hiccupped nightly phone calls home that even my parents were beginning to find embarrassing. I’d become everything I’d sneered at; the girl who always had to go home from slumber parties early because she missed her Mam, the plastic Paddy who’d already found the nearest Irish pub.

For a person who had been running away from the age of four it was not what I was expecting. In my town I’d never felt like I’d fitted in, truly belonged; I always felt odd. When school friends described me affectionately as “mad” it was like nails on a blackboard- I wasn’t trying to be eccentric, I just wanted to be normal. So why was I missing so keenly a life I couldn’t wait to leave? The minute I landed in Italy, my old life suddenly seemed a haven of contentment, security and belonging. I didn’t know then how much easier it is to leave behind something you had than it is to finally give up on something that was never really there. Why else are bad relationships so much harder to let go of then the good ones? Everything felt horrible, floaty and transitory. I felt that at any minute a gust of wind would run through me and blow me away.

Convinced everything had been a massive mistake, I decided to just ride it out till I could go home, move back with my parents and forget it had ever happened.

Confident that it was a temporary holiday before teacher training I finally began to relax. Slowly I began to see some upsides to living in a medieval town in Italy for eleven weeks. Apart from my actual classes, there was the massive 19th century apartment, I was sharing with the other girls, a stone balcony that overlooked a square with a church and fountain. There was the fruit and veg market, that if I got up in time I could go to in the morning before class. I now knew that Italians wore black to weddings, that their supermarkets had aisles devoted just to pasta and that you can actually drink water out of the town fountains. These were all secrets, keyholes into a life I should never have known about. The beautiful medieval town felt like the set of Romeo and Juilet, that I was free to explore. I was also slowly making friends with the people in my class; French Canadians, an actress from New York and Finnish girls so beautiful, they made you think racial superiority had a point. I sat in the kitchen with them in the morning, sleepily waiting for the coffee to boil, with the sound of church bells ringing in the distance. For the first time in my life I wasn’t someone’s friend, or someone’s daughter, I was me. All the things I’d worried about back home, though present, felt far away like the sea.

It was then that a person walked into my life, a late arrival on the course, a lanky Australian ambling into the class and straight into my life. Blake, Blake, I will never forget you. Finally I knew I was having my first trembling grown up independent opinion about someone. I knew in an instant, that although you were fine with me , I absolutely hated you.

Was it during our very first conversation when I patiently listened to your theory that 9/11 was a cover up, that I felt the first shiver of something starting? Was it when I hesitatingly disagreed and the sunlight hit the side of your face as you sadly shook your head and said you were just passing out seeds of knowledge? Maybe it was the tone in your voice when explained you were inspired to become a street performer because you liked connecting with people on the street and messing with their heads? Or when you described your road to Damascus experienced happened at an Alanis Mourissette concert? Or the cute way you started speaking in weird pigeon English when you were around Spanish people? I don’t know when exactly it happened but I knew for the first time in my life, without friends to check, sisters to confer, I was experiencing my first definite opinion about someone-He was a bloody idiot.

I felt like the child in the Emperors New clothes.Obviously I’d disliked people before but I’d never voiced it- what if I was wrong? But here in Italy- on my own-what did I have to loose? So I didn’t try to be friends with him, but I didn’t avoid him either and if he did anything to annoy me, I’d tell him; the sky didn’t collapse, the earth didn’t open and people didn’t hate me for being so horrible.

They actually began to agree. These cool, bohemian people from as far away as French Canada listened to my opinion.Slowly but surely my belief that he was an absolute moron, changed from a theory into an empirical fact. Class by class, as he pissed others off and people got to know him better, my protestations were proved to be true, by week two; no one was talking to him, by week three he had left under a cloud. I had a won. I hadn’t bullied him out, I just hadn’t been “nice” and it was ok.

The night the course finally ended I was crying again. This time I didn’t want to leave; pledging to always stay in touch, to be friends forever. Part of me loved the drama of it all, the same thrill I secretly get from freakishly bad weather,

funerals and unexpected celebrity deaths the feeling that normal service has been temporarily interrupted.I actually started challenging myself to see how many of my new friends I could make cry. I dropped in words bombs like acceptance, belonging,true friendship, and they’d start sobbing. I’d wail too and the line between sentimental dramatics and heartfelt truths got blurred.

I decided that if I had friends that cared about me, maybe I could put off giving up, caving in and going home for a little while longer. Most of them lived in Spain so I decided that I’d just move there next. No, I didn’t speak Spanish, but knew, at least,I could now spot a prick in at least one language.

A Dangerous Mind

2010-09-27T07:56:00.001-07:00

For some teaching is a vocation, for others a reluctant fallback, for more, like me, an absolute mistake. Fresh from university, after four years of sleeping in, living off Angel Delight and watching “Sunset Beach” I fancied the idea of being a grown up for a while. Regular money, soup for lunch, step aerobics two times a week and drinks on Friday, I would be normal, completely normal. I would wear fake tan, shop at French Connection and buy a proper handbag; after twenty two years of being the weird one, I would no longer be the freak, I would be the smug dull one, stand back, stand back: nothing to see here...

I knew straight away that I was going to be an awesome teacher, I was the English one after all and they were always the best. I’d inspire, change lives and just when all the students had fallen in love with me, go off to better things. Yes, I had no “qualifications” but I had seen “Dead Poets Society” loads of times.

I was also completely in charge of the entire English curriculum. Completely unmonitored, I just picked anything I’d studied at school and still had the notes for. I later found out that at least one play I had made the class study wasn’t actually on the syllabus. I was also at that time slightly obsessed with WW1 so any opportunity I got to shoehorn a bit of Wilfred Owen in was not missed. We studied the poetry, the novels, every now and then the students wandered in to find a WW1 fact of the day on the blackboard and as a treat at the end of term, we watched “Blackadder Goes Fourth, final episode. It was when a student genuinely asked me, if in comparison, Word War II was “not that much of a big deal” that I began to worry if I had gone too far.

I quickly learned that when setting essays for teenagers it is imperative that you make the titles as bland and boring as possible. Any opportunity a teenager gets to write about parents that don’t understand, depression, self harm; they will. If in doubt, all stories will end with someone killing themselves. After having to carefully correct the spelling and grammar of a student’s true account of her traumatic teenage pregnancy, my essay titles quickly changed from the ambitious “What people don’t know about me” to “The summer holiday where everything went really well”.

I really tried. I organised theatre visits, lit incense sticks, burnt candles, played classical music. I did everything, save lesson plans and organise a coherent course structure that a teacher could but instead of looking up to grateful faces, impressed by the winsome hippy that was fighting the man on their behalf, all my charges wanted to talk about was Max Power magazines, Eninem or The Fast and the Furious. A student once tore up a page from their book and ate it in front of me. It was almost as if they didn’t get how cool I was. I let them cheat in exams for god’s sake?!”

Pretty soon my classes were beginning to get a bit Lord of the Fly-ey. Little did I know that those months screaming at people to be quiet, trying desperately to be listened to, liked, respected even were the best training for stand up I could wish for, but much like those brave boys at the Somme I was fighting a futile battle. By the second term I was beginning to wonder if I would be allowed a drinks cabinet in my classroom. Then I started fancying my sixth year students.

Oh Declan, mumbling, shy Declan. I didn’t mark your girlfriend’s homework down out of unacknowledged jealousy but I’m sorry for thinking about it. I’m sorry for the time I confiscated your mobile and was so tempted to root through the messages I had to give it back to you. Did I let you get away with not doing your homework? Yes. Did I imagine meeting you again years later when our five year age gap wouldn’t matter, and if anything me being your former teacher would be a great conversation starter- maybe. Living in the same small town as your students is hard for the most balanced of people, for me- I was a ticking Take a Break Time bomb.

Which was more skin crawlingly embarrassing? The Saturday night I lurched into Declan pissed at the town’s only nightclub and spent the entire night hugging and telling him how great he was? Or his Englsih class I had to teach the Monday afternoon class afterwards, still hungover, where the kind hearted wink he gave me signaled that not only was I not going to be the but of every jokes for the rest of the year, I wasn’t going to be the lead story in any tabloid papers either.I was twenty two but I suddenly felt like a predatory, sleazy old woman. In a weekend I’d gone from being Robin Williams to Sherrie Hewson.

By the end of the final term, my year of not living dangerously was coming to an end.

“One year back at university and with your qualification you’d have a job for life”, my parents urged, “Think of the summer holidays?

I stared into the mirror, at the half a stone I’d put on, the sensible haircut I’d acquired, my orange face glowing back on me and I felt true panic. Teachers, good ones, were supposed to put all their energy into their students, inspire them to fulfill their ambitions, to live their dreams. But I jealously guarded all that for myself-what about my potential, my dreams? How could I have a fall back career when I hadn’t even tried, let alone failed yet?

It became obvious I wasn’t up to it, the afternoon I had to leave an exam I was supervising because I got “a fit of the giggles”. Gasping outside the hall, I told the deputy head, I had to leave as I couldn’t stop laughing. I was really saying, I don’t want to be a grown up yet, I still want to be one of the kids, please don’t ask me back next year. There’s a divide you step over walking into that staff room. A sensible world where homework has a point, discipline a reason and teachers just want to help. It’s a small step for man, but a leap too far for Gráinne Maguire.

Gráinne's Mental InHouse Inventry- Day 4 (ish)

2010-09-24T11:16:00.001-07:00

I quickly decided the only way to get through the two month Comedia Dell’Arte course I had accidentally enrolled in was to Audrey Hepburn it. Much like my heroine in “Sabrina” I would spend my time in Italy improving myself. I’d survive on fruit and nibbled croissants, drink two litres of water every day and spend my weekends visiting art galleries and jazz bars at night. I would return to my home town, a chicer, thinner and more glamorous version of myself. People would say “Gráinne, you’ve changed- you’re so different” and I’d say “Oh I’m sorry, could you repeat that? My brain thinks in Italian now”.

The classes themselves were my first challenge; Audrey had it easy. All she had to do was delicately make soufflés in Parisian cookery classes; I had to perform medieval comedy. Have you ever tried to make people laugh doing stuff you don’t find remotely amusing at all? Only the cast of “My Family” know my pain. The funniest thing you can do in Commedia is pretend you have found a flea in your hair and then pretend to eat that flea. The Mediterranean students buckled with mirth, the Canadians and Americans smiled slightly sycophantically and I like a nervous gangster with Joe Pescie shooting bullets at my feet, just kept going.

By week two even flea eating was beginning to get old. I finally found myself onstage on my own and I had depleted all the insects, in every part of my body. It was crunch time, I had to just stop messing about, stop slagging off Italian comedy and actually use this opportunity to stretch a new muscle, learn a new skill, take a chance and force myself to find my own unique voice.

“Drink! Girls!Feck! Arse!”

Now I was a joke thief. I was actually ripping off Father Ted. The fruit of my heroes’ years of hard work, the worst comedy crime, the shame, the poker hot shame... But I didn’t see looks of disgust and vanishing respect in the eyes of my expectant audience, I saw laughter and love and acceptance…because they had never seen Father Ted had they? They were all bloody foreigners; they thought I was making this fantastic grotesque old man character up myself. That simmering shame hit boiling point and evaporated into great gusts of giddy exhilaration…

“Girls! Lovely girls! Hairy Japanese Basterds”

More laughter, more love, more respect. I didn’t feel bad, I felt like an evil genius. Take that skinny, bendy, Spanish girls with olive skin, I was hilarious. By the end of the week my catch phrases were the stuff of legends. In sketches they bounced off the walls and ricocheted around the room; I’d have a cunning plan, I couldn’t beeeleive it! It suited me sir!

The time I improvised leaning against a bar and falling through the opened counter- I was nearly carried out on their shoulders! I felt like a comedy version of George McFly, but I was not just cheating and nicking other peoples jokes for fleeting popularity, I was making an important cultural point. Nowadays humour is just funnier than medieval folk theatre. Northern Europeans are wittier than their southern friends. Every time I made an American laugh, thinking that they were enjoying Renaissance comedy in it’s purest form and really they were clapping at something I’d completely nicked from “Absolutely Fabulous” I felt the thrill of victory.

But I had underestimated Italian theatre, I’d come to its homeland, taken the piss and I knew it was only a matter of time before the gods of Harlequin and Il Captiono made their anger felt. So when on the morning of our first acrobatics class our teacher breezily announced that the starting position was a handstand, I thought my karma had arrived. Ignoring my classmates misguided words on encouragement, I explained that the reason I couldn’t do it wasn’t about confidence, it was simply a combination of my body’s complete lack of aerodynamicy and the laws of physics and his old pal gravity. Couldn’t I just start with hedgehog rolls?

“Don’t be silly, you’ll be fine”, my classmates encouraged me. “Are we bothered? Does our faces look bothered?”

“I will fall on my face and injure myself” I explained

But who cares, they reasoned, it’s was just us in the class, a local class for local people.We'll have no trouble here...

So as I leaned against the wall, upside down, my legs supported by two encouraging Spanish girls, my sweaty t-shirt falling over my red perspiring trembling face, exposing my wobbling belly to a cheering class. I really thought OK Medieval Theatre you’ve had your fun, we’re even now. I was wrong. Acrobatics was for only half the course, for the rest we were studying tango. It would be torture and it had nothing to do with fancy footwork.

Now, I’ve always considered myself very lucky to be blessed with low standards and high expectations;in practical terms that means I will pretty much fancy any man, heterosexual or otherwise, that I spend any amount of time with. So by mid course I had massive crushes on every single guy in my class. The tango classes meant not only did my twenty two year old self have to get breath in your face intimate with every male on the course but I had to do all the grinding, all the staring in their eyes sexiness with deadly seriousness and Not. Laugh. Once. It was like a sexual confidence form of “Operation”, a Chinese water torture; my personal Room 101. Every class I’d almost combust with nervous, panicked hysterical embarrassment. My inability to keep a straight face was at first few endearing in a Baby from Dirty Dancing kind of way, but it quickly soured to annoying, curdled to irratating and set into just plain weird. The Mediterranean girls could not understand why I found it all so impossible, “Just be sexy” they reassured me, which was like asking a blind person if they ever tried just really squinting their eyes.

The final straw was when our teacher decided to sepreate the sexes and as the music played the women were to lock eyes with a man of their choosing, walk sexily across the room and claim their partner with a seductive dance. As my Latin sisters shimmied past me, I finally cracked and fled to the toilets. Hunched over the wash basin I repeated to myself” Relax, you’re Irish, we have good personalities, we don’t need to be sexy” until I could breath again. I never went back.

Being Audrey was proving harder than it looks. At weekends I’d pop on my fifties skirt, tie my shirt coquettishly at my waist and in my ballet flats wander around the old town centre. I’d sip the coffee in the square, I’d read novels late night in the cafes and I’d wander round ruins carrying bunches of flowers. But I didn’t feel winsome, carefree and young, I felt bored, empty and lonely. I wanted to go back to my home town changed but hadn’t I come all this way to escape from the place- why was I rushing to go back? But unless I returned how could I know I was changing, improving, getting better? If there was no one there to watch my transformation and tell you it was happening, how could you know it was real? What was the point? As I sipped my coffee I realised, that if I saw myself from the outside in, I’d be so envious and assume my life was perfect, like Audrey Hepburn’s in fact. The thought made my head spin and I felt like I was floating out into space.

Gráinne's Mental InHouse Inventry- Day 3

2010-09-22T07:12:00.001-07:00

Randomly moving to a new country on the spur of the moment always seemed to me an incredibly glamorous idea. One of my favourite films ever is “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. I became obsessed with it one school summer holiday and watched it every single day for a month. Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly flits about New York, sleeping with men in a manner that makes promiscuity seem the most elegant and endearing of lifestyle choices. Again the main point of her being an exploited, lonely call girl completely escaped my attention, to me she was like “Benji-The World’s Littlest Hobo”, only with better cocktail dresses.

The free spirited girl is my absolute favourite movie cliché; wafting in with a sexy fringed goofy smile, drinking too much, gingerly eating with her fingers and then,just when the male lead has dumped his boring nine to five girlfriend, buggering off again.

My first attempt at being elegantly waifish wasn’t an entire success. I’d taken it into my head to teach in Korea but failed the interview when I thought it’s be hilarious to say my main qualification for the job was having seen MASH loads of times. I’d just finished university and was still convinced I was an undiscovered acting genius. That was the main reason I went to that university in the first place; to join their drama society. I made a fantastic first impression too, swaggering in like young Orson Welles, casually dropping on the auditors desk an outline for my one woman production of “Withnail and I”; Rushmore had nothing on me. My Waterloo was that week’s drama society fresher’s party when, in a fit of nerves, insecurity and cheap vodka, I got heroically pissed, made a move on the auditor and fell asleep behind a piano.

It was so confusing. In films when the carefree girl gets drunk, if anything she gets more adorable, but to the flinty fresher’s of Dramsoc I was now socially dead. In my slobbering needy first week mess, they’d seen their own worst fears externalised and projected. If I was the uncool, eager to please, gauche newbie it couldn’t, by deduction, be them. If I had only known to swagger in the next day with a rueful smile and a devil may care wink it would all have been forgotton, but I had the nimble social skills of an articulated truck. Humiliated, I spent the next three years avoiding the place, having panic attacks just walking by their offices, a strange case of being too dramatic to do any actual drama. So on graduation I signed myself up for a theatre evening class determined to make up for lost time.

But in a surprise twist, instead of feeling the warm glow of a creative homecoming, I found the drama classes tedious and boring. There was all this talk of text analysis, voice training and movement. Movement? Who frigging cares, I move everyday, consider it done- when do I get to pretend to be a drug addict? When the other students talked eager eyed about working with new playwrights, improvising or Commedia De’ll Arte I could barely keep my eyes open. Commedia Dell’Arte, if you’re not aware and why should you, is a hilarious form of medieval Italian theatre. Except it’s not, it’s Benny Hill in period costume, Shakespeare with just the comedy, full of men overacting, women pretending to be shephards and the audience pretending to find the whole thing hilarious. I hated it and anybody who knows me,and knows that pretending to be a medieval shepherd girl is pretty much my idea of the best thing ever; will appreciate what a damning indictment that is.

Then it dawned on me, maybe I didn’t want to immerse myself in parts, become different people, disappear into a role; maybe I just really wanted to show off. I didn’t want to play some frustrated teenager in a housing estate, I wanted to play a Queen that discovers a terrible secret and then dies for her country. I was already so good at the dying; my Barbie’s always had disfiguring illnesses and tragically passed away mourned by all, joined by a struggling to cope Ken in a suicide pact days later. Turns out there was more to acting than that. Boringness, Brecht and Bloody Breathing exercises….

So after an entire class discussing what a poem might be about. (God. Give. Me. Strength.) I happened upon a notice advertising a comedy acting course in Italy. Now that, I thought, is something I am interested in, prat falls, hitting people with sticks, maybe learning how to do that Charlie Chaplin hop skippy heel clicky thing! I didn’t need to know anymore, I was doing it, I was finally off to see the world, my Huckleberry friend and there was such a lot of world to see…

Two months, one handed in job notice and a one way flight to Italy later, I found myself in a dusty drill hall in central Italy. Fava, our teacher was explaining what we’d be studying over the next three months. In Italian. That’s sweet, I thought, maybe I could learn a bit of that while I’m here, mentally logging off till the English bit came, Oh, he’s talking in Spanish now. Maybe I could learn a bit of that too.... Finally the English bit came.

“And also-Welcome, our British friends”

Was that it? He’s been speaking in Italian for a bloody hour? Then a quick inventory of the crowded class revealed that amongst the Italians, Spanish and French Canadians, there was only three other English native speakers, glistening like a rubies in the rough, and I was pretty sure I had already fallen out with most of them already. Faltering, I turned to the Italian girl beside me and whispered how excited I was to be studying comedy acting. She looked confused, I explained again slower with added mimes.

“You know- comic acting...we’re studying falling about… like in the black and white comedies...Charlie Chaplin?”

“Comic acting yes, I suppose…but in Italian we call it Commedia Dell’Arte. Didn’t you read the course booklet?”

Holy shit. I had time for a quick internal Moe from The Simpsons hands to face Waah, and it was time to start the breathing exercises.

Gráinne's Mental InHouse Inventry- Day 2

2010-09-21T07:52:00.000-07:00

The major lesson I’m learning this month is that when the manure hits the air con you can go one of two ways: Feel sorry for yourself and go bad luck is my avatar, stop washing your hair depressed or camp. Very Camp. This month I chose the later. I was not down and out. I was wronged and fabulous. Less Little Mo, more Scarlett freaking O’ Hara.

Post Edinburgh Festival the plan was to take September off. I was back to Ireland for the month to gently convalesce, like Robert Downey Jr at the end of “Chaplin” but instead of staring dreamily over a lake in Geneva, wrapped in a tartan blanket with my nineteen year old child bride, I’d be watching re runs of America’s Next Top model and eating toast. That was the plan.

Then I checked my bank balance and it politely suggested otherwise. It didn’t give me my balance as much as start laughing at me. Actual chortles. Like “Beadles About” guest starring Stephen Hawking. Personally I miss the days when your ATM just told you how many pounds you had in your financial pigeon hole. Will somebody please explain to me slowly, once and for all, the difference between your “cleared balance”, your “available balance”, and your “I hate to break it to you but that’s your balance” balance? I’d prefer if they just said “Listen we’ve rattled your piggy bank and it doesn’t sound good”. I also find their offer of advice slips patronizing. Banks offering to give me advice? That’s like Kate Moss offering parenting tips. Thanks Banks but why don’t you figure out how to stop bankrupting the country first, yeh? Then get back to me. And even then, only offer me useful advice like; stop buying a Starbucks every morning; it does not make your life more glamorous, or apply for that PGCE or go back to your natural hair colour for god’s sake.

Anyway, it became swiftly obvious that I couldn’t just slink home for a spell of reconnecting with my Celtic Soul; I needed to start temping. Stat. I couldn’t even fall back on my old reliable medical trials; selling your body but not in a sexy way. Prostitution for people who are rubbish in bed. Like a spa but with more unnecessary surgical procedures. Yeah, they’d be tough but I was up for it, Scarlett O Hara had to fight off Yankee Carpet baggers, I could handle a week of feeling permanently carsick. I’ve done two already, one for sleeping pills which convinced my mother I was going to turn into Elvis Presley and another for a muscle relaxant. Pah, I thought, my muscles are relaxed already. It was horrible. I had to stay in the unit for a week and swiftly turned into the ward’s Jack Nicholson figure; complaining, causing trouble, playing mind games with the nurses; it started with hiding unwanted food in my dressing gown pockets and ended just before I brought in the prostitutes. (On a positive note, I now know I could definetly handle prison)
But there were no trials and I had rented my room out to a stranger on Gumtree till October- Whither now Scarlett?

My genius plan was just to quietly move back into my flat, sleep on the couch and hope none of my flatmates would notice or mind. How hard could it be? Yes, I’d have no key and would only be able to leave the flat when I knew they were in and yes they were never ever in, but how much did I leave the flat anyway? I had eggs in the fridge and bread. Water in the taps. My job didn’t start for another week. I could bunker in…

By day one I was feeling just a bit weird. By day two I was so spooked and paranoid I hid in the bathroom when my flatmates came home. By day three I had gone Grey Gardens, Howard Hughes, what day is it bat crazy. Yes, I was still Judy Garland fabulous but I was heading into the couldn’t pay her bills, threatening to throw herself out the hotel window, do you want to be known as the place where Dorothy died part of her TV movie and I had a whole month to go.
It was around this time I had a phone call from a friend asking if I wanted to do a gig that evening. “No can do”, I monotonely explained, egg yolk flaking around my mouth, lying on my back on my living room floor in my dressing gown “I don’t leave the house anymore. Besides it’s five o’ clock and I’ve just found an old bottle of Absinthe, so my weekend’s full now”. There was a long silence and then my American friend quietly suggested I stay with her for a bit.

Gráinne's Mental InHouse Inventry- Day 1

2010-09-20T07:37:00.000-07:00

I’ve always been a great believer in risks. Taking a chance, living for the moment, reaching for the bloody stars, whatever S Club 7 told me to do- I did. You’re supposed to live every day like it’s your last, it’s what every single quote of the day, Disney film and house anthem has been telling me to do for the past twenty years...
Well damn it, I take risks, I’ve taken risks, the risks are gone, all of them. I am officially out of risks. I couldn’t even lend you one if you popped around and asked nicely. And what do I have to show for it? A great bloody big what the hell am I doing soufflé, seasoned with a gaping bank account and a dollop of full fat uncertainty.

My greatest fear as a child was mediocrity. I know that sounds very dramatic and self obsessed but you underestimate how painfully seriously I took myself as a young’n. If you had asked me what my favourite film was I’d have looked you in the eyes and said “Taxi Driver”. I would have been lying, it was “Mermaids”. However if you had asked me what my greatest fear was I’d have answered “That I’ll end up like Salieri. Rival of Mozart. Driven mad my jealousy, frustrated ambition, the knowledge of my own mediocrity and paucity of talent. An also ran, a nearly, a just not quite” Sadly that would not have been a lie. “Amadeus”, the film about the genius composer and his frenemy Salieri, freaked me out, haunted me and I swore I would never be ordinary, never accept the easy option, the H&M version of the designer original ,with all the heart stopping sincerity only a twelve year old girl can muster.

His penniless death in a pauper’s grave passed slightly over my head but then I have a habit of missing the points of things. I also thought Wham’s Last Christmas was about an organ transplant that had gone wrong (In my defence it was released around the same time Nanny finally got her new kidney so talk of rejected body parts were terms flying about our house at the time)

I decided there and then it was better to risk everything in the pursuit of greatness than merely exist in the hope of adequacy. Like that quote? Thanks, I made that up when I was fifteen. Yes, I was that annoying. Imagine how irratating English teachers must have found me? The thing is I have been making all my adult decisions based on this young girl’s philosophy.

Now I’m beginning to wonder how that’s working out for me and think it’s time for a bit of life motto stock taking, some personal philosophy in house enquiry. This has been inspired by the recent Edinburgh Festival where I took my first hour show up. I had a great time there, it was brilliant but like most short term goals; love affairs, children, fake nails, it was a great way of avoiding reality. As a comic you’re encouraged to give your first show absolutely everything; finiacally, emotionally and mentally and rise or fall like a Byronic hero in the attempt. This was my moment, the one that Martine McCutchen had sung about during her brief pop career, the one Leona Lewis had waited for, the one Whitney Houston had begged for during the 1988 Special Olympics. All the girls were on my side, warbling and rooting for me, to screw my courage into a ball and like a more confident Alfred J. Prufrock dare! The entire history of popular culture and English literature where telling me I was doing exactly the right thing putting all my money, quitting my job, subletting my flat into my show. And did I gloriously fail or heroically succeed? Or did I just have a modestly successful first year in Edinburgh, and find myself afterwards slightly further along my comedy road but I still not quite on the M1?

Did I think that would be the outcome? Yes…and well, you never know do you…. Who knows what happens? Edinburgh is a lottery, Hollywood for ugly people… Chances are something would just happen, if I was brave, worked hard enough and believed. Felt the fear, the fear of unemployment, financial meltdown and homelessness and did it anyway. Things always just happen. So that’s why I decided to rent my room out for not just the entire month of August but September as well. I didn’t need somewhere to stay did I? I mean to live? You know to have all my bloody possessions in one place at the same time? What like loser Salieri would do? I’ll spend my rent money on flyers thanks. Who needs to follow suburban squares restricted by their bourgeois principles? Losers. I’m a bohemian... I didn’t need a job either. It’ll be fine hand that notice in...

So here I am. Post living the Edinburgh dream, sleeping in friend’s spare room for the month, slacking at an £8.50 temp job, praying inspectors don’t jump on my bendy bus and absolutely no idea what I’m doing with my life. Literally, no clue. So I’ve decided to document my commitment to bohemian risk taking. My refusal to have a fall back plan. The shiver that runs through my spine every time a job in teaching is mentioned. The smug feeling I get rooting through old class mates face book photos. Ha, look at those losers with their rewarding day jobs, houses and families living nearby! I’d be played by Angelina Jolie in a movie of my life. I just wonder how she’d play the scene where hungover in the supermarket, hovering over the reduced counter in her pyjamas, young couples with babies doing their weekly shop making her soul sob?

I‘m going to look back at all the times I could have done the sensible thing and self righteously didn’t. I know what you’re thinking. She’ll decide that of course taking the risks always pays off, ruefully not regrette a rien and Keane will start playing in the background. It’s always like that isn’t it? Yes, well once, after reading a Henry Miller novel, I insisted on sleeping on a park bench. My bag got stolen. So let’s not go making any assumptions shall we?

Not Goodbye but Au Revoir shitheads!

2010-04-29T01:33:00.000-07:00

If the marriage of Cheryl and Ashley has taught us anything, apart from that even the most dramatic splits get tedious if dragged out long enough, it’s that all things must come to an end, and much like their relationship and the career of Lindsey Lohan this gorgeous column is facing it’s final curtain, or at least taking a break until after Edinburgh.

What a year and a half? What a privilege! We’re wandered together you and I, like Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin through The Hundred Acre Wood of the Celebrity Unwell; break ups, overdoses and personal disaster, together we’ve listened, learned and mainly laughed at them all.

But then everybody is replaceable. Much as I’d like to imagine you staring at the bottom of a whiskey tumbler, sleeping pills in one hand, old photo in the other like Rita Sullivan who’s just found out that Alan Bradley was back.

But let’s be honest, pretty soon there’ll be another celebrity journalist with an unhealthy interest in Suri Cruise to win over your shallow fickle swinging bricks and I’ll be yesterday’s Heat front cover. Think of poor Christina Aguilera, taking time out from wearing arseless chaps to have baby; she probably thought her job was safe. Sod it she thought, I can actually sing and Britney is turning into Syd Barret in a push up bra, I’ll have another mojito thanks. Then she finally returns to work to find Lady GaGa, like the replacement temp from hell, writhing around her corner desk, her plants un watered, her files completely rearranged and her own career suddenly irrelevant.

Oh Christina the shame! You didn’t hoof your way through Disney Club with Britters claiming Mickey Mouse was talking to her to be replaced by a posh kid from New York City. It’s almost as if people have forgotten how dirty, sorry dirrrty you were! We watched her grow from wannabe in a bottle, to I’ve been tangoed bad black hair dye washing isn’t sexy , to her final transformation into a Marilyn Monroe drag queen. Constant reinvention being the requisite for all self respecting popstars nowadays; honestly Madonna has a lot to answer for.

Throughout all her personas there was always something flintily unlikeable about the girl. Yes she had a voice that could knock down buildings but she never seemed like the type of girl who’d hold back your hair if you were vomiting, more like the one who’d spiked your drink in the first place. She looked like she’d sell her own granny for a lead vocal whereas Lady Gaga acts like she’d stab her own mother for the sheer theatricality. Oh Christina, we’ve tasted the real thing now and compared to the perfect full flavoured pop madness of Gaga, you remind us of the flat coke dodgy landlords try to get away with serving .

Though it’s not Gaga I worry about, or even Christina, it’s the little ones I lose sleep over-like wee Lee Ryan from Blue. That’s why I’ve started a new charity; Lee Aid. Do you know for just three pound a month you can sponsor somebody to follow the ex Blue star around and check everything that comes out of his mouth. For five pound you get to be that person.

Poor old Lee, like Father Dougal with a permanent erection, the sudden boom in communication hasn’t helped him. The singer has a veritable blazing squad of illegitimate children, cheerfully divulges threesomes with fellow band members, and when trying to crack America responded to the recent terrorist attacks with the now legendary “"Who gives a f**k about New York when elephants are being killed".

He has really met his Waterloo in the form of Twitter. Maybe the site should be forced to add a security question “Are you Lee Ryan formerly from Blue” and like clicking that you are indeed under 18 for other websites, if you click yes, you’re immediately directed to a Disney website.

Lee has been a busy boy. He’s used the website to call various members of the public pig faces, threaten others with violence and attempt to sell a film script to Tom Cruise. He quite sweetly signed the message LEE RYAN!!! X. AS if to reassure Tom, that his eyes weren’t deceiving him, it was the All Rise star himself.

While Blue's cover of the Elton John song suggested it was “sorry” for me it's “good bye” that is the hardest word. Thank you so much for joining me on my scavenging through the rubbish bins of celebrity gossip. Hopefully we’ll see each other again, and know, much like the crazy characters Jennifer Connolly met in “Labyrinth”, whenever you need me I’ll be there. However, unlike them, you won’t find me creepily looking over your shoulder every time you look in the mirror (which must be getting very annoying for Jennifer by now - move Hoggle I’m trying to put my contacts in!)No, I’ll be at your nearest newsagent or the magazine section of large supermarkets. Rifling through the gossip mags and not paying for any of them.

Somebody please make it all go away.

2010-04-22T06:56:00.000-07:00

I’m not usually a bitter person but when I read about Kerry Katona moving into a million pound Brighton mansion I start wondering if I should have ditched my English degree and got married to someone from Westlife instead. Even Jedward is beginning to look like a better option.

The exiled Queen of Iceland has declared war on ex Brian McFadden; branding him a bad father in a recent tabloid interview. Her first husband and father to the younger batch of her brood is currently living in Australia and is a judge on “Australia’s Got Talent” which is like Gordon Brown being a judge on a “Why am I so Adorable?” or David Cameron on “ Britain’s Got Sincerity” or Nick Clegg on “I give it another Week, tops”. Brian has the bittersweet privilege of being the Pete Best of Westlife. He left the band in a flurry of hubris, ready to launch himself as the next Robbie Williams, as if the world hadn’t enough problems, and like an Emmerdale actor earnestly declaring they were off to Hollywood, was never heard of again.

Kerry, now managed by Katie Price’s old management team has been cleaning up her image; out goes the leaching husband and drunken TV appearances and in comes play dates with Peter Andre and washing herself. As a way of setting the story straight, because in this time of economic depression nothing adds more to the folly of the nation, she’s been revealing the sweaty ins and greasy outs of her grubby marriage.

With an honesty that we’re supposed to applaud rather than be physically repulsed by, she describes whole weeks lost to coke and online bingo. Oh, the glamour-forget the golden parties of Old Hollywood; Drinks at the Copacabana, Errol Flynn chasing after underage girls, Joan Crawford beating her kids around the head with wire clothes hangers; we have the image of Kerry alone in a darkened bedroom, the blue light of the monitor flickering over her tear swollen, kebab encrusted face, googling herself and sobbing.

It’s the kids I’m happiest for. Whereas before, they lived with an attention seeking coke child, now they have a Mum selling her most sordid secrets for cash. Days left alone in front of the telly while Mum rustled about upstairs replaced by nights in alone as she attends parties to prove how she’s turned her life around. So every trip to the zoo will now be accompanied a camera crew to prove what a great Mother she is? At least they’re getting outside the house.

I honestly think I preferred her when she looked like a cabbage patch kid on crystal meth, at least there was an honesty to it. The sanctimonious, shrill confidence that if you bleat loudly enough about your mistakes you are not only automatically entitled to forgiveness, but should in some way be respected for it, is a particularly irritating sound.

Speaking of dodgy parent’s, Michael Douglas is rueing a few of his life choices after his son Cameron narrowly escaped a lengthy year jail term for drug dealing. The youngest member of the acting dynasty fell into drugs at thirteen and after his family refused to fund his habit, the thirty one year old began drug dealing. I don’t know what would be more confusing, your Dad choosing “A Chorus Line” over spending time with you or waking up to discover that Catherine Zeta Jones in your new Mum.

However bad Michael might be feeling compared to Jack Tweedy he is positively Christ like. Tweedy is in court at the moment accused of raping a teenage girl he picked up at a nightclub. The professional widow has embraced the Lidl fame left to him by his late wife Jade Goody.

A kingdom of easily impressed young girls, drugs, crazy parties and arrogant recklessness was his for the tasting. Who can blame him for living the MTV dream; easy up for it woman, blinging big cars and being the King of every Wag wanabee infested nightclub this side of Essex? Even if the pimpled reality is a drunk terrified teenager allegedly raped in the toilets of a rented suburban house in the tired early hours of the morning,

The pictures of Tweedy and his co accused friend, entering and leaving the court are a stomach churning study in smugness. How can we be blamed for anything they seem to whine; look how expensive my sunglasses are? Chill out! Fame has a magnifying affect on the personality, like very old age, getting drunk or the mumblings first thing in the morning, it strips away to the your true personality. When Jade Goody first found fame, she seemed truly grateful, like a child who had just been adopted. Unfortunately not all personalities bear up to such close scrutiny.

Reality is overrated

2010-04-14T07:21:00.000-07:00

It must be great being a celeb; free stuff, being able to get away with murder, figuratively and literally and best of all, completely unsolicited advice from other famous people you’ve never met. I can’t count the amount of times in moments of difficulty; I wished I was important enough for Nikki from Big Brother to mention me her weekly column. How reassuring it must be for Sandra Bullock or Nicole Kidman, as they flick through the glossies under a dryer at the hairdressers, to know that at least Alex Curran cares and is well gutted about their recent problems.

Thankfully, with the wonders of modern networking sites, celebs are no longer limited to gossip periodicals to address their nation. Thanks to the wonder of Twitter, a direct line to the masses has been installed for the entire showbiz family. Demi Moore can castigate Kim Kardashian for her use of the term “pimping”, Kirstie Alley can dispense diet advice, Perez Hilton can insult everyone, while the rest of us, their digital privy council, can follow their tweets, hung over at work and trying to look like we’re busy. The general rule of thumb is you can say whatever you like as long as you put LOL at the end.

Twitter is the ultimate form of expression for Generation Text; take the most intimate observations and in jokes usually reserved for those nearest and dearest and share them with the entire online planet. Perfect for an age bracket that only feels alive if they’ve been retweeted. We have evolved from sealed envelopes to town criers, desperate to let entire digital universe know we’ve just had a hob nob.

So a perfect platform for attention seeking and crow barred jokes, but completely ruined when some get carried away and start over sharing.( I’m lying of course, over sharing is when Twitter truly catches the light). Jim Carrey recently used his twitter account to announce the end of his seven year relationship with Jenny McCarthy and give his thoughts on the Tiger Woods saga. Defending the golf star, he argued that the sportsman had effectively sold his childhood to please his demanding Dad and that his wife must have known about his infidelity and was willing to accept it, for the financial rewards of being the wife of the world’s number one golf star.

Tiger Woods has been in a few emotional sand bunkers of late. Not only did he loose the American Masters after a distracted performance but the winner Phil Mickelson, dedicated the victory to his devoted cancer stricken wife. Despite struggling through treatment, she made a romantic, unexpected appearance to be by her husband’s side. Would you like more salt for your wounds Tiger? Yes, just in case you were wondering, the universe is having a massive laugh at your expense. The institution of marriage has taken a bashing of late: the Coles, Tiger’s shenanigans, Katie and Alex, the world of celeb seems determined to make the idea of long term commitment look as ridiculous as possible.

It was only a matter of time before the great Earth Mother of Matrimony began to let her wrath be felt and rumbling up like an avenging Boudicca ready to protect her turf, Elizabeth Taylor is preparing to walk down the aisle again. Considering she’s now confined to a wheel chair and most people vaguely thought she was already dead, you know she’s really pissed. Make no mistake, she loves getting married; she’s done it eight times, which is two ahead of Henry VIII. Her starter marriage was to a Hilton, her third husband died in a plane crash, she stole another off Debbie Reynolds, married Richard Burton twice, a US senator, a construction worker, had a diamond named after her, won two Oscars and then spent most of the nineties hanging around with Michael Jackson. She makes Lady Gaga look as exciting as The Isle of Man.

To balance out, some legends prefer the single life like TV Queen Oprah Winfrey. A recent unofficial book about the chat show star has been published claiming that Oprah has not been entirely honest about her private life. The book claims that Oprah’s early years; the almost mythically grim childhood of deprivation and abuse that inspired so many and made her incredible success all the more life affirming wasn’t quite as horrific as she suggested. It also claims that Steadman, rather than being the perfect partner ready let his lady bask in her success, is nothing but a stooge to hide her work obsessed asexuality. Which begs the question; who bloody cares? If we want the prosaic, blow by blow tedious reality we can just Google Fiona Philip’s twitter page. The public can only bare so much reality and the light is so unflattering, true stars create legends.

Can't Stand You Now.

2010-04-06T09:49:00.000-07:00

Who knew Olivia Newton John, that lovely seventies pin up had so much in common with Gail Tilsley? No, she hasn’t been caught scrapping with Eileen Roberts outside Frescos, gorgeous Sandy from Grease has recently found out her ex- boyfriend didn’t drown on a fishing trip three years ago after all but faked his own death. At least Gail had the dignity of her husband actually drowning.

TV makers tracked Patrick McDermott to a small coastal resort in Mexico, where he had been working on tourist boats and living under an assumed name. As he continued to pay into his life insurance policy there was no financial reason for his escape, it seems he travelled to the other side of the world and created an entire new life identity just to get away from the “Let’s get Physical “star.

No matter how many girls’ nights out she goes on, it will take a pretty flattering haircut to get over that little revelation. I would love it if when she finally caught up with him and demanded to know what the flaming gula he’s been up to, he shrugged his shoulder s and said “You know, rocking and rolling and what not”. (For hardcore Grease fans only)

Poor old Lindsay of Lohan has been dumped again recently, this time by an entire fashion house. She was dropped by fashion label Ungaro, before Paris fashion week, after her first and now only collection as the house’s creative director received unanimously awful reviews. Her debut collection featuring sequins and nipple tassles was so bad, Emmanuel Ungaro himself , who no longer owns the fashion label, publically declared it a disaster.

Her recent behaviour has been so rambling, at one stage visiting three nightclubs in Hollywood in one night that even LA police have suggested that she seek help. Caught on the hop by the unexpected deaths of Heath and Brittany, newspapers have prepared obituaries for celebs at risk including Ms. Lohan. The former actress’s career has crumbled to such an extent, she has evolved into a bizarre version of Kenneth Williams. Content to wander onto any chat show that will have her, instead of displaying William’s shrill brittle wit, we’re encouraged to bleakly stare in the grinning face of imminent personal disaster. Maybe she should just go the whole hog and hook up with Pete Doherty.

Kate Moss’s ex has been creating some rock and roll high jinks recently by spitting water on a Five TV presenter. Yes, how hardcore is that? What next? Getting into a fight with Melinda Messenger? Flipping John Barrowman the bird? Crazy horse Doherty is reforming “The Libertines” with Carl Barat, after both their solo careers failed to produce one decent single and will perform at several festivals this summer.

Pete has been kicking off his live shows with appearances at London Fashion Week. Sid Vicious eat your syringe out, nothing says rock and roll anarchy like free clothes. I liked The Libertines music; it’s the too fragile for this world, emo- Christ, prattling on about Albion, fey posing of Pete that I find so irritating and boring. If Pete wants to wander round like a bloated self regarding Victorian chimney sweep, than I wish him well, I just wish he’s written at least one good tune since 2004.

He was recently questioned by police in connection with the fatal overdose of a young director making a documentary about him. Robyn Whitehead , a heiress from the famous Goldsmith family, was twenty seven year old when she was found dead in a flat frequented by Pete and his entourage. When Pete has a bad period, he gets interviews on Newsnight and broadsheets columnists bemoaning the waste of such a delicate talent. The vulnerable young women attracted to his darkly glittering lifestyle end up alone and dead in council flats.

There’s a long history of beautiful blonde waifs falling in with “geniuses” and it’s always the very people that glamorise self destructive behaviour that stay in control. Mick Jagger might have sold the idea of the swinging sixties but it was Marianne Faithfull who ended up living on a wall. Andy Warhol was happy to photograph Edie Sedgwick losing her mind but he ended up one of the most commercially successful artists of all time and she was dead by twenty eight.

Despite all the handwringing and profiles a verb away from being obituaries, Pete is still very much with us. After the arrests, the wandering into court actually in possession of drugs, the crashed cars and blood encrusted gigs, he has become the Queen mother of wasted youth, heading into his thirties, still managing to wake up somewhere safe. As always, when it comes to rock and rolls “lost boys” it’s a case of cherche les dead rich girls.

Rick GAY Martin (no. 1 in the great missed headline opportunities of 2010)

2010-03-30T16:37:00.000-07:00

The showbiz world was rocked this week with news that some people actually thought Ricky Martin was straight. Ricky may have been in the closet, but it was a Perspex one, back lit with throbbing disco lights and several naked gyrating oiled men. The Puerto Rican love god, famous in the nineties for his orange face, first found fame with his cross over hits “She Bangs” and “Livin’ La Vida Loca”. I know this isn’t a “fashionable” thing to say but I genuinely think that Rickster might be the one gay man in history who may have actually, genuinely, just not met the right woman.

From his song lyrics alone the ladies he did try to find love with were a rum crowd indeed. Hanging out in their “leather and lace”? Not drinking the water, making him order French champagne? Apart from the fact since all champagne by its very definition comes from that area of France so “French” is an unnecessary specification, they were all obviously high maintenance minxes indeed. If only he had written a song about a girl who maybe wasn’t living a “vida” quite so “loca” but was happy with a Bacardi Breezer things could have been so different.

While it did take him a long time to open up about his personal life, even denying it outright in interviews, it’s understandable considering his sexuality was a huge part of his appeal. In show business being gay doesn’t necessarily pay. “Will and Grace” the much trumpeted pink sitcom managed to make it to at least series nine without any of their gay characters getting so much a kiss let alone a fumble in the jungle. Hollywood might have made several films with gay characters but there’s as much chance as George W Bush playing a confused cowboy as an openly gay actor. In pop, the gay trajectory is one respectable hit, a few reality TV show appearances and then it’s cameos in “Grease” from there on.

Meanwhile probably wishing that she was a lesbian is everybody’s favourite at least I’m not her; Peaches Geldof. Walking proof money can’t buy happiness, has been dropped by “Ultimo” underwear chain after images surfaced of the blonde naked and looking like an extra from “Trainspotting- the Porno”. It’s not the first time Peaches has been in this kind of trouble. Two years ago an ambulance was called to her central London flat and the model had allegedly to be resuscitated. Peaches claimed at the time that the emergency was caused by fumes from a home hair dye kit. This begs the question, what strength bleach must she have been using and did she know that you’re not supposed to inject it?

What I find troubling about Peaches is that she has been in the public eye for so long; it’s easy to forget she’s only twenty one. She’s been married, divorced, allegedly OD’d, embraced Scientology, will she have to invent an entirely new way of messing up her life to see her through to thirty? She’s like a child prodigy, but instead of being a genius at music or valuing antiques her gift if for really annoying people. An admirable skill but a sad one for an obviously vulnerable waif, who lost a mother to heroin, with a father who seems more interested in saving the world than his own family. It’s not like she’s unique, the grubby tired pictures of the jaded starlet are just the unseen flipside of the London scene smugly gazing from fashion magazine social pages. She just got caught.

Love Peter Andre? Adore Kerry Katona? No, they’re not the opening questions for a mental health worker about to section somebody; they’re the thinking behind OK’s current front page! What would happen if those two every found themselves with the same management team? A burgeoning romance perhaps?

The Faustian publication who have bought their souls to for a handful of Cheesy Wotsits seem intent on pushing the twosome together- my eyes- my eyes! It’s like a stud farm trying to mate their two most mentally unstable horses. In their defence, Katie Price’s new ITV3 show and entire life since the divorce seems to be one big long status update to remind us all HOW HAPPY SHE IS. Not bitter, or still obsessed with her ex! Like the not quite moved on ex girlfriend she seems to be using the entire popular press as her own personal Facebook page, furiously tagging all the best pictures of herself and writing on all their mutual friends walls about how BRILLIANT her new husband is and how she how she has NEVER known love like this. It would even be believable if Alex Reid didn’t look, in every single picture of the pair, like he is very quietly crapping himself.

He's a phenonemon- that much is true!!!

2010-03-25T05:44:00.000-07:00

Next time phenomenon you whinge that you’re being overlooked at work, spare a thought for Sandra Bullock. The actress has spent almost two decades making romantic comedies with Hugh Grant, a fate many wouldn’t even wish that on Ian Huntley.

Picture Sandy in her trailer waiting for her call on set so Hugh Grant can start gurning and spasming into her face again and imagine her ruefully picturing life if the films she was originally due to star in; “Shakespeare in Love” or “Million Dollar Baby” hadn’t collapsed in pre production. As she pratfell into her sixteenth door of the day, perhaps pausing to wipe some of Grant’s drool of her face, the forty five year old would probably pause to wonder if Gwyneth and Hilary had to do this BS anymore.

Recently it seemed as if Cinderella had finally made it to the being taken seriously ball, when she scooped this year’s best actress at the Oscars. Yet less than a week later, what are people talking about? “The Blind Side” a groundbreaking movie where a middle class couple adopt a homeless teenager and he steals their belongings and nicks their car. Don’t be silly, they learn life lessons. No, her husband cheating on her with a tattoo model.

It had to be this film didn’t? Not “Speed 2- Cruise Control” not “Practical Magic”. At least Jennifer had the dignity of losing her man to Angelina, Bullock’s rival looks like a Barbie doll left alone with a small child on a long car trip with a box of felt tips.

The previous Best Actress winner Kate Winslet also enjoyed the cruelty of your private life going tits up when you finally get the career you dreamed of. After being the youngest actress to be nominated six times, last year at last, she got her hands on the Oscar. Looking at her beaming face you would think that after years of being the bridesmaid this woman was finally enjoying her moment centre stage. However it since transpires that the bride’s groom was already beginning to look elsewhere and she has filed for divorce from her film director husband Sam Mendes.

Meanwhile poor old Nadine Coyle, aka the one that sings in Girls Aloud has wised up to the way of the celeb world by using her emaciated figure rather than her voice to kick start her solo career. How sickening must it be to be her at the moment? Attempting to be the break out star of Girls Aloud when you’re up against Cheryl must be like being the best student in your class while everybody’s making a big fuss of the special needs girl because she’s learned how to use a pencil.

Cheryl’s much trumpeted life performance on Radio 1’s Life Lounge was so lifeless and dull that there were reports of people randomly slipping into comas on hearing it. For years Nadine belted her way through the Girls Aloud back catalogue probably thinking just you wait bitches, when this gets stale, I’m out of here before you can say Robbie Williams without the obvious mental damage. Then just at the crucial moment, lil’ Cheryl get’s cheated on and Nadine is old news. She’s probably planning her own racist attack on a toilet attendant while we read this. Nadine has already over come intimidating obstacles, achieving sultriness and glamour with an accent even Irish people struggle with. Before Nadine the city of Derry was best known for Dana, eighties car bombs and confusing English people about whether you put a London before it, so really she should get some sort of grant.

Instead she’s in competition with somebody you legally need to but “brave” “fragile” or “lonely” in front of. Nadine saw a gap and went for “hungry”. And oh how hungry she looks, literally and metaphorically. She recently popped up on a bizarre ITV tribute to the late Stephen Gately that sat uncomfortably between and “An Audience with a Ghost” and a Tony Ferino special. It felt like we were invited to his funeral and out of a painful need to please, the lads tried to disguise their obvious grief with a bit of dancing. I’m sure Stephen did love entertainment but isn’t it a damning verdict on someone to suggest that the best way to sum up and celebrate their life is with a cheap Sunday night special on ITV featuring ad breaks, popstars plugging new albums and Christopher Biggens? It was so disturbing it actually made me fear death in a new way. Not because I suddenly realised the never ending vacuum of nothingness awaits us all but that conceivably, if I died possibly saving a small country or Cheryl Cole and if my parents raised enough money, Ronan Keating could make a strange tribute show for me too.

The Rumble in Rangelagh

2010-03-18T06:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes life as London’s premier Irish community celebrity correspondent can be pretty jazzy. Regular lunches with the actress who plays Mary from “The Royal Family”, cock fighting with Terry Wogan, guiltily bundling a drunken Daniel O’ Donnell into an unsuspecting taxi after another lost night in Brixton; I won’t lie it has its moments.

But every now and then news drifts in about events unfurling in the old country of such awesomeness that you bitterly regret every lunch with Christine Beakley and every Queen’s shilling you sold your slowing warping accent for. I am of course talking about “The Rumble in Ranelagh” the celebrity scandal that is entertaining the Irish nation so much, that for a whole morning the entire country forgot they were going to have to sell their spare kidneys to Chinese business men for bread.

The scandal has everything; pissed former beauty queens, private jets and middle aged businessmen in public scuffles with angry TV presenter girlfriends. In other words it makes the whole Ashley and Cheryl saga seem as titillating as Deirdre and Ken from Coronation Street discussing whether they can get the trust back. This is celeb gossip Irish style and as such involves a lot of alcohol, violence and girls being really pissed off with each other.

The Princess Diana of the piece; Glenda Gilson, is the popular presenter of Expose, the flagship gossip programme for TV3, which is what a TV station would be if it mutated overnight from the free magazines given with weekend tabloids. The villain, former Miss Word, daughter of Chris de Burgh and all round Queen Bee of the Dublin Social scene Rosanna Davison. Rosanna represents the fin de siècle of the Celtic tiger, tanned to within an inch of her pores, hair straightened for a night out, get pissed ,vomit on her rugby boyfriends shoes, life off Daddy’s money- old school. Post economic collapse, RoRo and her friends wander confused around busted Dublin, like ghosts from the Court of Louis the Fourteenth stumbling through Revolutionary ravaged France wondering when the party is going to start again. In many ways our country let them down.

Glenda, despite a sixteen year age gap, had been secretly dating middle aged business man Johnny Ronan. The relationship had been a turbulent one with Johnny at one stage charmingly using that old fashioned device of a press statement to deny any relationship with the former model. It was during one of these rocky moments that Glenda, after a heavy night drinking watching the rugby drunkenly ordered him to come and meet her via some blurry text messages. Johnny arrived and the pair had a full screaming match on the street outside that culminated in Johnny grabbing Glenda’s head and Glenda attacking Johnny right in the rugby balls. To put this in perspective, it’s the equivalent of Fearne Cotton brawling with her secret lover Sir Alan Sugar outside a pub in Golders Green.

The next day, enter Rosanna, Glenda’s Best friend forever, to console the smarting millionaire business man over a few pints and a few fumbles if blurry tabloids pictures are to be believed. The new best friends decide on the spur of the moment to jet off on Ronan’s private jet for a few nights in Marrakesh. As you do. They had tried to get in touch with Rosanna’s boyfriend Wesley Quirke, heir to the Dr. Quirkey amusement arcade emporium but he unfortunately had his mobile turned off. When the pair returned days later, Rosanna was forced to issue a statement stressing her innocence and indignation on any smirch to her character.

The showdown was set for the following Friday’s “VIP” Style Awards where both The White Queen and Red Queen of the Irish social scene were nominated for most stylish Irish celebrity, an extremely competitive category in a country that boasts both Enya and Mrs. Doyle. However at the last minute Rosanna dramatically remembered a skiing trip that had been booked earlier and would make attending anything other than the red carpet part of the evening impossible. Why somebody would book a holiday on social event that justified their very existence was not explained. She also revealed she would be attending solo since as it was only a flying appearance there wasn’t much point in boyfriend Wes escorting her. I’m sure trust fund kid Wesley must have extreme demands on his time.

On the night- caluu, caley, wronged Glenda emerged and in a triumphant , teary, Aretha Franklin playing in the background way scooped the big award of the night, named most stylish Irish celebrity. A compliment indeed considering how famous the Irish are for their style. A sign that good women triumph in the end and in a world still reeling from the news that little Mark Owen is a trouser bandit, we need all the good news we can get.

A Day in my life

2010-03-12T05:23:00.000-08:00

I was used to fame; a woman where I was temping freaked out when she recognised me from a brief appearance on Sky News. Like a pro I spent all morning putting her at ease and being as down to earth as possible thinking; this is how Robbie Williams must feel. It lasted till I completely jammed the photocopier and then the office Cinderalla swiftly became a pumpkin temp again. So when I went for an audition with a friend for Orange Mobile and it went well, I wasn’t that surprised when her agent asked to meet me. I had sailed through the audition and though I hadn’t quite counted my chickens, I had decided exactly how I was going to spend them. This agent was my ticket out of the admin slums and like a particularly stirring Alicia Keys video, nobody was standing in my way. Yes, it would mean cancelling a meeting with two friends arranged months ago, but hey, I was no Kelly or Michelle, Beyonce was going to the agent’s workshop.

I knew the score, it would be full of middleclass teenage girls with eating disorders and expensive tracksuits, I'd swing by, we'd exchange knowing glances and when the pleasantries were over, she'd flip open her contact book and I'd be in a Cadburys advert before you could say, Edinburgh completely paid for...

So after wandering around freezing and lost for about fifteen minutes, the greasy chips that I’d grabbed on the way from work slowly congealing in my tummy, I finally found the entrance to the school the classes were taking place in. Harrow wasn’t normally a place I associated with show business, but what did I know. The class was full of about thirty twenty somethings, the earnestness and concentration so powerful it was almost combustible. Actors- pah! I was a writer. I write their words. The agent who was running the class asked the newcomers to introduce themselves; their name and something they were really good at. Oh, Ok agent, you want to do this dance? Fine, let’s foxtrot.

Rob sprang forward, and declared he made a mean spag bol- laughter spinned through class, Tina announced she was a great pilates teacher- impressed ooohs reverberated through the room, Gráinne stepped forward and said her twitter updates had been really funny lately. Silence.

It was a successful drama group I quickly learnt. The classes improv group had just won a prestigious improv competition. Their devised piece was not only hysterical, she proudly revealed, there were moments where it was actually, pause, extremely, pause, moving.
But they weren’t ones to rest on past glories though, there were scripts to work on. A comedy script. Oh, I thought, this will be embarrassing, G- Dog is back in the game. But before we could read the scripts we had some thinking to do. “Words were nothing” the teacher explained, “Anybody can say a word. But what brings them to life?” “Emotion?” A nervous voice suggested? “Exactly” the teacher confirmed. “Comedy is all about emotion” I was still pretty sure it was words.

We split into groups to work on a scene and she then rated our efforts. Out of a choice of three, I came third. My smugness was now beginning to desert me. I could actually see it, outside the window having a fag and occasionally peering in and laughing at me.

Then the agent announced fantastic news. Somebody in the class had been shortlisted for the Orange indent! Who could it be?! How embarrassing for them I thought, I’ve been to one class and already I’ve exposed the futility of their ambition and I didn’t even want to be an actor. How bracing must this gust of reality be for them? For about three seconds I felt like Audrey Hepburn in “Roman Holiday” a secret Orange mobile indent superstar undercover in their midst.

Then step forward Sonya, a rambling teenage Jade Goody tribute act who described how she nailed the audition by revealing how much she hated Tinkerbell from Peter Pan. JM Barries metaphor for infant mortality was exposed as nothing but a common hoe. “I bet she was with all them Lost Boys” she angrily declared, like a contestant on lost Edwardian version of Jeremy Kyle. “Isn’t she wonderful?” the agent calmly stated looking serenely around the sea of almost completely nodding faces. “How can we learn from Sonya’s energy how we can get that audition recall too?” I suddenly had a vision of Edinburgh but instead Sonya was now doing my show about how Alice in Wonderland was definitely a prostitute. It got quite good reviews and there were suggestions of a brief Soho theatre run.

The class was £7 and it took me two hours to get home. When I finally made it into my kitchen I realised the horrible stench that I had smelled all day was in fact the sole of my shoe slowly rotting. That is all.

No, there is no mention of Mark Owen, I am still too traumatised to discuss that man.

2010-03-11T09:19:00.000-08:00

There are some journeys in life that are just too scary to be navigated first hand; moon travel, night buses and romantic flings with Peter Andre. What Peter professional widow Andre? The man who spent the past year looking sad in photo shoots in Starbucks, ruefully wondering if he’ll ever find love again? The man who mentions his celibacy in every single interview? “What do you think of the war in Iraq Pete?” “No, nothing, not even a cuddle since Katie” Surely he doesn’t think that his core market of prepubescent girls and their HRT addled mothers would begrudge him a bit of happiness, even if it is with a blonde former glamour model? I mean with him it is all about the music.

Yet unbeknownst to everybody it transpires old King Umpa Lumpa himself has been getting some giggy all along. Lucky old Maddy Ford met the pop icon at that notorious celeb lair, a children’s birthday party. Yes we are through the looking glass people into the insania world of the mysterious man himself. Have you ever dared to wonder, what smooth line of honey he’d use to lure you into his world of v necked t shirt heaven? Wonder no more, Maddy’s taken one for the team. “He whispered into my neck “I think you are gorgeous”. Wow, who knew he had such away with words? Well anyone who’s read the lyrics on his CD sleeve notes you could justifiably reply.

Despite enjoying the benefits of being in a relationship with Maddy for over six months, he repeatedly questioned whether he was “ready” for one. That old chestnut, haven’t Hallmark noticed a gap in the market with that one? They could stock them in card shops beside “Happy Birthday- I love you but I’m not in love with you! Enjoy your special day!”She also recalls how a week after telling Peter about her mother’s traumatic early death, he invited her to an event and suggested she bring her Mum along. When he did finally dump her, scared that it was about to become public, he released a press statement lamenting his terrible taste in women, saying “I sure know how to pick them”. Oh Maddy, you’re better off without him- isn’t Dane Bowers single?

What she needs is a real man. Step forward Colin Farrell, a presenter at last week’s Oscars. Colin found fame in Hollywood as a gifted actor, charismatic party boy and doe eyed pin up, but mainly for knocking boots with Britney Spears. His bad boy reputation is interesting considering he went to private school, auditioned for Boyzone and is from Stillorgan, a middle class suburb of South Dublin famed for having a lovely shopping centre and a large bowling alley. For Irish people any area they associate with trips for the first communion is hardly The Projects. In the UK, bowling alleys equal Kerry Katona country, in Ireland they can actually add to your property value.

Despite this slightly odd pose, like most Irish people, I have a soft spot for the man. Mainly because for the next twenty years , no matter what giddy heights of celebrity he climbs, whether he’s kissing Angelina Jolie or riffing with Will Smith, some Irish person will nudge the person beside them and sneer “sure he was in Ballykissangel!” thus puncturing the scene of any glamour or fantasy.. Irish actresses have never fared as well in the city of dreams, mainly because as a race, we’re best known for our personalities. The nearest we had to International glamour was Andrea Corr but in her twenties her Dundalk accent was so strong it sounded like a donkey being violently drowned. Ireland likes to get excited about the slightest claim to Hollywood that it can.RTE is the only news channel that will report an Irish sweep at the awards because Johnny from DIT had a week’s work experience on “The Hurt Locker” .They’ll then go live to Johnny’s mother’s kitchen where she’ll tell Joe Duffy how happy but completely unsurprised she is because he was always very artistic.

The Oscar’s lived up the glamour of the occasion. Then the very next day, former Hollywood golden boy Corey Haim, went to bed with the symptoms of a bad flu, his Mum called the ambulance and by the time he brought him to the hospital the thirty eight year old Lost Boy star was dead from an assumed accidental drug overdose. I don’t know what it would be like to be famous as a child, to be offered drugs as a teenager every time I felt insecure, depressed or rubbish. I don’t know what effect being “friends” with Michael Jackson as a fifteen year ole would have on me or how I’d deal with being washed at by my mid twenties. Luckily I didn’t have to. Now we only have one Corey left. Hollywood is horrible.

Come on gay celebrity couples- get your finger out!

2010-03-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

If the last week has thought us anything, it’s that killer whales don’t make great pets, you wouldn’t like prime ministers when they’re angry and heterosexual couples are rubbish.
With Newcastle’s Queen finally exporting Cole, married footballers rutting like shell shocked soldiers on shore leave and the most boring couple in history Tess and Vernon barely surviving the dullest sex scandal in modern times ( I like ur T*ts cocker :)) it seems our only hope lies in the gays.

Elton John and David Furnish are the last proper celebrity romance still standing. I’m sick of reading about boring breeders and their petty problems, in this modern age of civil partnership isn’t time we had our first great gay sex scandal? If Elton ever,god forbid, cheated on Furnish the scandal would be such a glamorous, perfectly dressed, directed by Tom Ford, spectacular involving golden yachts, Venetian masked balls, a lost Egyptian prince and the entire cast of “Glee” that it would make Rebecca Loos and David Beckham’s affair as sexy as Frank Butcher and Pat getting frisky on Aldi gin.

Awed by its glittering magnificence and not a little turned on, Furnish would be forced to ruefully ruffle Elton’s wig and warn him never to do it again. Not for him being photographed sobbing in a tracksuit, it’d be lunch with Liz Hurley and a happy reunion before you could say “Let’s have Pamela Anderson over for vol au vents?” They’d then celebrate the whole scandal with a massive big party in the style of Louis the Sun King.

Speaking of divas, Lily Allen is threatening to quit pop stardom to open her own designer clothes rental shop. How will pop survive without its Samuel Pepys commentating on the urban issues of the day? Without her there’s only N-Dubz performing their West Side story style plays to give us advice on modern relationships. I really want to like Ms. Allen but could do without her limp wristed, shoulders hunched, waddle on stage as she doesn’t even try at being as successful as she is. “I guess I’ll perform at the Brits” she seems to shrug, “But it will delay me from my party with Alexa and your one from Popworld”. Compare her studied ambivalence with the eye boggling desperation of Lady Gaga and maybe she is better suited to needlework.

She has started a war of tweets with Courtney Love after the pair fell out over dresses for the Brits. Poor Courtney is not only turning into a Spitting Image puppet of herself but has lost custody of the daughter she had with Kurt Cobain. How rubbish of a mother do you have to be to lose custody of a teenager? Babies, toddlers, heck, who hasn’t accidently dropped one of those or left them on the bus but being such a mess your seventeen year old daughter is fed up of you takes some doing.

At least Kurt never had to see his Nancy Spungen become Joan Rivers. It’s always hard to watch your heroes wane but it’s downright twisted to see them reach their dotage and end up being patronised by Jeremy Clarkson. Nelson Mandela survived twenty seven years in prison but faced his toughest challenge yet when forced to make small talk with the Top Gear presenter. I think most of us would prefer breaking bad news to Winnie over that. Despite haven once written an article slamming the erection of a statute in his honour and comparing his revolutionary roots with Al Qaeda, the presenter gushed about meeting the former president. Hi s question to the ninety one year old Nobel Prize winner? Had he ever been to a lap dancing club? He’s crazy! I’m glad my taxes pay for those jeans! Maybe we should be glad if he didn’t ask if the end of apartheid was delayed by women drivers.

Mandela was apparently confused as to who Clarkson actually was and mistook him for an astronaut. Never mind, maybe they just couldn’t get “Top Gear” on Robbin Island. Be honest, which image is more painful- the idea that Mandela is losing his marbles or the gruesome alternative where he instantly recognised Clarkson, begged for a spot on “Top Gear” and ended up beating Jay K’s lap record? Me too and no, that doesn’t make you a “bad” person.
I think they should use Mandela’s confusion as inspiration for their next series. They could attempt to send Richard Hammond into space with hilarious consequences. It would be great, the bid could be launched at tax payers’ expense, Rich could suffer unnecessary, pointless brain injuries, waste NHS resources and fire services time, put his family through their worst nightmare and come out at the end a national hero, a top selling author and even more smugger than when he first attempted the selfish reckless immature stunt in the first place.

We’ve had monkeys in space, so why not a hamster?

Cheryl Cole- our generation's Princess Diana

2010-02-24T03:14:00.000-08:00

There’s only one thing worse than being talked about, dying alone riddled with syphilis but apart from that not being talked about comes a close second. So Ashley and Cheryl Cole must be feeling relieved as their split replaces bullying prime ministers as everyone’s conversation of the day. Ashley, like some misbegotten character from a Thomas Hardy novel is reaping the ill wind of his bad deeds; attempted house break in, ankle sprained, his woman done gone and left him. He’s like a cross between a country and western song and a Burberry baseball cap.

With indecently fabulous haste, Cheryl has stopped fighting for her love, dumped him by text and is now in LA being comforted by a professional dancer. As Oprah would say, this can be a learning moment; if you insist on getting married to a cheating, arrogant footballer make sure you have a fantastic career of your own or you could end up like Mrs. Terry, clinging to your man like some relic from the 1950s.

Is there a more skin crawlingly, irritating sight that that of a grinning wife smugly posing for the cameras with the cheating husband she’s proudly standing by? It’s almost as stomach churning as the thousands of wannabe wags enviously studying the pictures and silently respecting her for holding onto her man. In terms of misguided pride it’s up there with the surly smug girls pouting in R and B videos as they jadedly hump somebody dressed like Fred Elliot drunk in the jewellery section of Argos. Other women aren’t jealous of you love; you’re wandering around a busy supermarket, packed with fully clothed people, in a g string; you just look cold, go put some clothes on and apologise to your mother.

To rub salt into Cheryl’s marital wounds her X Factor boss Simon Cowell has proposed to his girlfriend of six months, makeup artist Mezghan Hussainy. How gutted must poor old Terri Seymour be, the ex he went out with for eight years who still lives in a quasi granny flat at the bottom of his LA mansion? And what about poor old Sinitta? Poor ex girlfriend, recently divorced wandering around his garden in her palm leaves Sinitta, losing out to the help? Oh the shame.

Also hitting Splitsville, population, you, you big loser is the Romeo and Juliet of the “At risk” register, it’s Kerry Katona and Mark. The former Iceland star has apparently been doing more than just press ups with a trainer at her fitness camp. Despite intense talks at a nearby industrial estate (would that I were making it up...) the pair seem to be no more. Now I want you listen very quietly for the second. That dead buzzing silence you hear is the sound of the entire world giving a poopsie about any of it.

Kerry and Mark splitting the same week as Cheryl and Ashley? In celeb terms that’s like inviting your friends around for some left over beans on toast the same night they’ve been invited to Elton John and Lady Gagaga’s surprise engagement party. Even the former Coles had the sense to delay the inevitable news of their divorce until the fuss about John Terry and his wandering penis had calmed down; they’re not silly.

Kerry has fallen from loveable reality star, to car crash TV to the lowest rung in the celebrity food chain; a boring irritant. Oscar Wilde said there’s nothing more ridiculous than the feelings of someone you’ve ceased to care about and there are no break ups more final than when the public grow bored of a former favourite- just ask Katie Price. What more could Kerry do to tempt our interest? We’ve seen her fat, thin, fat again, thin again, drunk, sober, heartbroken, incandescent with joy. She is like a raggy doll we can’t think up anymore games for. Sorry, Kerry but I think it’s definitely over this time.

The one flickering light of hope in our broken hearts is the news that Robert Pattison is definitely dating “Twilight” co star Kristin Stewart. Now, I know this makes me seem like Ian Hislop on HIGNFY when he smugly pretends he thinks Britney Spears is a type of French root vegetable ( and really swap French for American and he’s nearly there), but that whole vampire movie phenomenon has passed me by.

Kristin always looks as if someone has just asked her to tidy her room and I only know Robert as Cedric from “Harry Potter “ an appearance that provoked such lustful thoughts that I was on the cusp of voluntarily signing myself onto to some register until I remembered he was just playing a schoolboy . Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for the pair of them, but let’s not kid ourselves; they’re no Stacey and Bradley. Sob.

SSHH! John Mayer please stop taking...

2010-02-17T03:51:00.000-08:00

It hasn’t been a great month for the celebrity male; reviled, distrusted, abused, only Katie Price is keeping the battle of the sexes in check. This week we learned more about the texting habits of Ashley Cole than we perhaps, in hindsight, ever needed to know. The sometime footballer and full time bounder and cad married to pop’s own Caramel bunny was caught sending text message to a mysterious blonde secretary and there’s talk the Cole marriage is finally over.
The entire Fleet Street has become Cheryl’s over involved big sister, glowering at Ashley and pointedly sighing and leaving the room whenever he shuffles in. Presented as such a rotter, I expect him any day in a News of The World exclusive, caught in a cape twirling his moustache tying the X factor judge to the nearest rail track, all for shits and giggles.

However, there are more things fishy about this story than an Old man and the Sea convention. Firstly, Ashley claims that the pictures were taken while bored in a hotel room. How fed up could a multi millionaire footballer get in a luxurious suite that the most entertaining way he could think of passing the time was taking moody pictures of his pants on his spare mobile? Secondly, how many millionaire footballers are pay as you go? Perhaps that’s the cause of half of their problems; all the wives they should have rang, all the mistresses they should have warned, maybe all those sleazy mishaps were just down to having no credit.

Ashley then, forgetting there were pictures of his willy on it, gave this phone to an unnamed, unscrupulous friend who repaid this bizarre gift of kindness by forwarding the pictures on to the mysterious lady in admin. The riddle in the Sphinx approached the press with the pictures but didn’t want to go public for fear of losing her job. Yes, that would be a great worry for a woman on an administrator’s salary, all that money, attention and instant fame. A shy demure type who has one night stands with married footballers would melt under that pressure. She only has to look at the likes of Rebecca Loos and Abi Titmus, with all their instant wealth, and thank her lucky stars that she has a life of diary management to look forward to.

And what of Cheryl? All of this terrible press attention coming coincidentally at the incredibly difficult time of her first solo Brit appearance and public voted nomination for best single. I know- shame on my cynicism, after all it’s a real relationship we’re talking about, it’s not like someone paid them to get married. Oh wait, actually...

The inevitable Brits controversy began early about this year with Leona Lewis complaining about the event serving foie gras. Wow, I know, and some people call her boring. The star was fresh from appearing in the charity single for the Haiti disaster. Its heart warming to see all the different countries pulling together to help out; the Irish have been organising comedy nights, Britain’s been releasing fundraising records and America’s been stealing children.

First the island is devastated by earthquake, now it’s receiving aftershocks of celebrities popping up asking if anyone would like a cup of tea. They’ve had John Travolta on his plane, Angelina Jolie on some sort of peace keeping mission, and even Alexandra Burke is promising to pop over for a while. I’m sure they’re thrilled, “Yes, my house has collapsed, I haven’t eaten for days and all my family’s dead but “Bad Boys” is so catchy!”

Meanwhile the entire US of A have yet again been clasping their face in the manner of Moe from The Simpsons at the words coming out of blues guitarist John Meyer’s mouth. Imagine the crazy wanderings your mind take when you’re either half asleep, drunk or controlled by an evil alien from another planet who quest to ruin your career and reputation forms part of a grander plan to take over the planet’s minerals. Maybe John Meyer is in fact the earth’s first alien Avator and pretty soon we’re going to have another one sounding like Ripley from “Alien” trying to learn our ways.

In an interview with esteemed periodical “Playboy”, the centrefolds weren’t the only ones making tits of themselves. Jessica Simpson was like napalm in the bed apparanlty, he loved Jennifer Aniston but just couldn’t imagine ending up with her and in the most controversial part explained the absence of any black women in his romantic CV by explaining that John junior had a segregationist policy and was not interested in non whites. I think maybe he and Ashley Cole should both start booking their plane tickets to Port au Prince pretty darn quickly. But Ashley leave the mobile at home yeah?

Oh, boys eh?!

2010-02-11T07:08:00.000-08:00

Vernon Kaye, until recently, was hard to place. He was just the annoying man on the television with the stupid Lego man hair who married the blonde who looked like the result of a drunken encounter between Cat Dealy and a frog.

An impoverished man’s Dermot O Leary, he was a hangover in human form on T4 , before taking the helm of “Family Fortunes”, joining the ranks of Amanda Holden in making you realise that you’d perhaps underestimated Les Dennis. It was hard to have an opinion on him, just like it’s difficult to find someone with a strong opinion on Habitat, The Lightning Seeds or the feeling of being mildly depressed you get at about 3 o’clock. That was before he became the grinning face of everything that is wrong with modern man.

The thirty five year old married man was caught sending explicit texts and Twitter messages to several glamour models. When, in a shock move that no one could have seen coming, one of the girls went to the press, he was forced to admit his digital dalliances in a grovelling press release. The newspapers joked he would definitely “be in the doghouse for the next few weeks”. Oh yes, they smirked, his other half won’t half give him grief, the cheeky monkey! The reports emphasised that nothing physical ever happened which is unlikely to be much consolation to his wife. “Listen babes- No fluids were exchanged, I just made it obvious in a very public manner that given the chance I most definitely would, if I wasn’t fettered by your Victorian values and the bloody Daily Mail” Men are biologically programme to cheat, pundits argued, it’s comes from their caveman roots. It’s interesting that they’ve managed to evolve the ability to digest cooked meat and use a Nintendo Wii but not keep it in their trousers isn’t it?

His wife Tess Daly had not only just given birth to his second child but was also just releasing a book about her pregnancy experiences. I’m sure the next edition will have a whole chapter on discovering your husband is a complete tool. What’s depressing is not just the sleazy, juvenile manner of his cheating it’s the women he has been lavishing all this attention on. Tess, his wife, is a stunner; a tall willowy blond, with a successful career who seems approachably down to earth. Women can identify with her, if only because we’ve all experienced some sexual harassment in the workplace and at least ours wasn’t broadcast live every Saturday night and involving Bruce Forsyth.

Yet the women that he was willing to risk his career, family and wife’s heart over are the plastic blondes most women hope men grow out of once they hit puberty. He met Rhian Sugden the twenty three year old page three girl, at a night club in Bolton and her claim to fame thus far was having once experienced Russell Brand. When a grown man chooses someone whose entire wardrobe seems to be wipe clean over a sexy woman in her prime, it’s depressing to put it mildly.

Also misunderstood by our moral standards is footballer Jon Terry, who can’t understand why given the fact that he’s very good at kicking a ball around a field, it doesn’t give him the right to stick his premier league into any fixture he likes. He was caught playing away from home with his teammates ex girlfriend Vanessa Perroncel, devastating his wife and humiliating his teammate.

His PR team deserve some sort of manipulation award for the way they’ve handled the story. They’ve bought her silence and there have been hints that other ladies who’ve also shown their support for their national side in a very physical way have also been kept quiet with money. Vanessa has been portrayed as a confused, vulnerable woman desperate to protect her son and get back with his father. This has mainly been achieved with lots of shots of her looking confused in an anorak. Meanwhile, Terry has been sold as a silly lad, fundamentally good, keen to get back with his childhood sweetheart, who he will definitely never ever cheat on again. It seems if you’re good at certain important things; football, TV presenting, it allows you to behave like a toddler. It doesn’t extend to other professions, you’ve never heard someone shrug their shoulders and opine “Well, what do you expect he is one of the world’s top dentists after all”. Recently, the poster boy for self indulgence, Gazza, was arrested twice in one day after spectacularly falling off the wagon. If only he’d just been a really good at something less important, say badminton or brain surgery, he might actually have had the chance to learn how to behave like a grown up.

With new guest writer!

2010-02-11T07:06:00.000-08:00

Hello darlings! I think already you’ve noticed something different this week about this charming little column. Before you even started to read it, there was something changed, something more glamorous, more exciting, more sensual, no? I confound you? I confuse you?

For that I apologise but the reason is simple my darling, The usual young lady who writes it is sick, she is sweet but she has weak Irish bones whereas I am Czechoslovakian and strong. She could not have dragged herself from a childhood in a communist state through her skiing skills alone and established herself as one of Canada’s top fur models. Could she with only her glamorous beauty have entranced New York’s most powerful businessman and torn between the husband that adored her and this new powerful stranger with the funny hair, chosen a life of sophisticated parties and international hotel finance? I bet even her Home Shopping Jewellery range would have been awful. As I said to my good friend Dame Shirley Bassey only last week, these young girls may have the unlined faces but can they design reasonably priced costume jewellery suitable for any occasion? Shirley was drunk of course, she did not care.

Have you guessed yet my darlings? Why of course you have, who else could fill that last moment with such romance and elegant passion? It is I, Ivana Trump, fresh from my wonderful stay in the British Big Brother house bringing you your showbiz news. They said to me but Ivana, how can you? You will be busy on your yacht with Michael Winner and your good friend Joan Collins? Why fax of course- I’m up to date with all the new things! Then I put my earing back in my ear, hang up and laugh.

And what fun I had. I proved to all my fans that I could be just like anyone else. I cooked. You saw that yes? I dressed myself every day. I do the cleaning and the washing. I had the fun, which I love the most. I am so glad that the Alex Reid won. It was strange because before we enter the house he seemed to be troubled by a strange puffy faced orange woman. She screamed at him because he made her very mad with his yapping and his talking. He was not allowed to say her name, make eye contact, mention her, or to talk about anything that had ever happened between them or her wrath would be very great. Then she slapped him across the face and he cry. But how wonderful to see young love triumph, as Alex left the house like a little boy who’d won a trip to Disney land because he had not much longer to live, it turns out that this angry woman was using bored disgust to hide her true love.

Like a Princess Stephanie of Monaco, if the rumours about her being a prostitute were true, she braved the flashing bulbs and camera crews just to be by his side. Now they have eloped and got married in Las Vegas with only a few witnesses and a film crew for company; it is like Romeo and Juliet, but without the missed messages and joint suicide; I hope!- fingers crossed for you guys! At the BB party afterwards I saw a sad little man in a cowboy shirt, quietly reminding people that he was married to her too for a while,but no one seemed to notice. I said to Stephanie Beacham “How sad!” but she was too drunk, she did not care.

Then we bumped into the lovely Lady Sovereign and I Slept with Ronnie Wood. Lady Sovereign she is this strange punky girl who like to make herself ugly. Why not put on a dress I ask her? Look sexy, but no she is a rapper from the projects of Wembley and she likes to look like a boy. She laugh and tell me that I know nothing and perhaps she’s right. I slept with Ronnie Wood had been taking the pictures in the underwear all day and now she not want to talk much.I understand, when I was running Trump Towers and tring to keep that bitch Marla Marples from under my cheating husband I too was fatigued. I offer to show her some moves, some tips from my modelling days, posture, over the shoulder sexy, jaunty nautical, but she, she did not care. I was too old she says and she join in the laughing.

For a moment I was sad but then out of the corner of my eye who should I see? It’s Roger Moore and he has champagne and I realise that I too am now drunk and do not care! Have a wonderful week readers. Please don’t be sad that you are not Ivana trump. I am Ivana Trump, use me for inspiration instead. Ciao!

Why you should never mess with children and no I don't mean it like that.

2010-01-27T09:47:00.000-08:00

Just as most adults put children in the same category as communism; a good idea in theory but a nightmarish catastrophe on any sort of practical level, it’s reassuring to know the only other group who hate kids even more are other children themselves. If you want to make a child laugh, really chuckle; just point to something bad happening to one of their friends.
There is however a special level of hatred, pungent, rattling hatred, children store in boxes under their bed reserved for that most particularly loathsome group; child stars. Yes, all of them; younger siblings in soaps, shrill show offs gurning in commercials, the little girl in movies who wander to their mother’s door and simpers “Will we ever see daddy again?”, anyone who exposed your star turn at the school nativity as the pointless waste of time it was. Like overachieving cousins your granny openly prefers, most children propel themselves through their formative years fuelled by sugar, biscuits and jealously of them.

So it has always been; your mother was probably delighted that Tallulah from Bugsy Malone ended up as a child prostitute in Taxi Driver, your granny hoped Elizabeth Taylor would get thrown from her stupid bloody horse in National Velvet, just as her mother set fire to pictures of Shirley frigging Temple thinking I’d be breaking down racial taboos by dancing with Bo bloody Jangles too if I didn’t have TB to contend with.

Luckily if you grew up in the eighties the chances were your over achieving celebrity siblings, rather than eventually showing you up at family reunions, would fall into a world of drug addiction, soft porn and episodes of Hollywood True Stories with sad music. Thankfully for every Natalie Portman there are twenty dodgy videos of Screech from Saved by the Bell.

It’s only fair, yes they sold their childhood to satisfy their parents’ frustrated dreams, their adult lives a confused quagmire of festered potential spotted with random appearances at cruelly ironic university gigs but equally they did get to grow up in one of those houses on the TV with pastel colour schemes and swingy doors.

This is a business America does very well. Forget Ian Beale’s creepy kids, Ashley and Mary Kate Olson first appeared in family sitcom “Full House” at six months and were CEO’s of their own billion dollar company before they were teenagers. Now they dress like eccentric bag ladies and wander around New York parties like Cabbage Patch Kids the perscription drug years.

Some fans take their personal involvement in their childhood superstars lives a step further, a “Different Strokes” fan recently put up bail for its star Gary Colman after he was arrested for assault and unable to pay the tariff. I’m glad, him we owe. Most of my generation learnt their entire moral and emotional vocabulary from Arnold Jackson and his wry step dad Mr. Drummond. In fact in Ireland, my generation learnt absolutely everything about the world from American seventies sitcoms so we grew up a confused bunch still traumatised by Watergate, and hoping Reagan would get us through, well into the early nineties.

They also have the two dons of doomed youth; the Coreys- Haim and Fieldman, whose CV reads like an exercise class in wasted potential; so lets’ start with the cult teen movie, good, how does that feel? Now we’re bending into a dodgy friendship with Michael Jackson and now up through a brief pop career and we’re into heroin addiction, excellent, shake that out! Britain’s nearest equivalent is Ant and Dec. Why does everyone assume their lifelong friendship is proof of their genuineness? It could just as easily be the result of a solemn pact made after a drunken night in South Shields that ended with a dead stripper during their Ready to Rumble years. Maybe they’re both paranoid if they leave each other’s side for one moment, the other one will run to the police.
Papers have reported the weird fact that now, not only do they always stand on the same side of each other, but have recently bought identical houses, on the same road ,in the same order as they appear on TV. As a sign of fame burn out it’s hardly thrilling; Marcia from the Brady Bunch became a coke whore. The affects of their early fame is almost as rubbish as that early fame itself.

And there in hangs the tale- maybe the happiness of child stars is linked directly to how many children were jealous of them at the time. Imagine millions of bitter tots collectively shaking their clenched little fists at their television screen, wishing them ill and malevolently thinking- I could do that. All that collective bad karma must end up somewhere. “Why Don’t You?” and “Biker Grove”? Happy career in light entertainment. Disney star before you left primary school- Lindsay Lohan. QED.

Oh Tiffany!

2010-01-21T06:31:00.001-08:00

Being a grown up is a pain the whoopsie; as we stare down the cold hard barrel of reality we have to accept life’s facts; not only is it unlikely that you’ll ever be fostered by Pippa from Home and Away but your teen idols dearest ambitions may remain unfulfilled too. I felt that dull thump of mortality watching Martine McCutcheon, the nineties Cheryl Cole, Eastenders great white hope, pop back on our screen advertising yoghurt. Oh Martine, Britain’s self styled answer to J-Lo, where did it all go wrong?

It’s easy to forget just how popular Martine was. She broke our hearts playing Tiffany in Eastenders, bringing doe eyed Hollywood glamour to the grubby streets of Walford. When Tiff met her inevitable tragic end, watched by over twenty million quietly sniffling fans, she seemed certain to conquer Hollywood for all the other raggedy East end street children. Her autobiography, the first of that much maligned genre, revealed a deprived and abusive childhood, her talent and tenacity a lifeboat from a world of drudgery.

When her first single went straight to number one ,showcasing an angelic voice, it seemed a fitting end to a modern fairy story, this cockney Cinderella was finally going to go to the ball. Her stage debut in “My Fair Lady” was a perfect casting; she was going to show those snobby West End wendies that a working class girl from a soap could cut it in the elitist world of musical theatre. Move your arse Tiffany, we cheered, you can do it! But then suddenly everything began to go wrong.

She missed more than half of the performances due to sickness and instead of sympathy, there were rumours of malingering and complaints of unprofessionalism from more experienced members of the cast. She still, however, had her big film debut in “Love Actually” in a part written specifically for her. The film’s London premiere gloomily foreshadowed Martine’s misbegotten movie career. Despite an expensive dress and extravagant hair do , the photographers seemed more interest in another lesser known actress also appearing in the film , a posh wan girl in a demure outfit; Keira Knightly. Now Keira’s confused pout earns her millions and Martine is advertising dairy produce.

She now faces her greatest indignity yet; the former Mrs. Mitchell is reduced to writing novels, the poor man’s DVDs. As she tries to convince us how excited she is about her “The Mistress”, I want to get the entire British public to politely turn away and wrap a blanket around her. I know Martine, it’s not fair, we hate Keira Knightly too.

Should she wish to, she doesn’t even have the option of Celebrity Big Brother to kick start her flagging career, as the grand old lady of televised desperation faces her final curtain this month. In its original muggle format it turned everyday “normal” people, in the most inverted of commas, into celebs. Its glamorous sister has the opposite effect; famous faces that may have inspired some curiosity reduced to puffy faced zombies, shuffling around the Big Brother house in dressing gowns like sick teenagers home sick from school.

While the normal version of the show featured hopeful youngsters giddy with the promise of fame, a great big throbbing hole of need where other people store their personalities, the celeb version was an elephant’s grave yard of jaded, pragmatic soul selling. Over the years we’ve had Michael Barrymore, Ulrika Johnson and Jade Goody, shop worn stars, staring at the camera like puppies at an animal shelter begging desperately to be loved again. The spat out, chewed out, aftermath of fame without skill, or talent long exchanged for indulgence and gratification. This year’s is a raggy doll bunch of coulda, shoulda, woulda celebs, including Vinne Jones delicately balancing being a geezer hard man nut with performing tasks requiring jumpsuits and Alex Reid, Jordan’s new consort, a freakish toddler on steroids, making Peter Andre look like Peter Ustinov.

My favourite is Stephen Baldwin,or Alec Baldwin if you squint your eyes and imagine everything he’s saying is meant to be sarcastic. The Usual Suspects star has found God the way a teenager with ADHD discovers a band they really like or a fitness freak champions a new form of squatting. Take away the religion and he could be shrilly hectoring about anything, it just seems to be an excuse to be overbearing and self righteous. What fun it must be at the Baldwin house come Christmas with all the brother sat round the table trying to remember which one is which and who was married to Kim Basinger? You seen Martine, do you really want Hollywood fame if it involves a ministry that spreads the word of God through extreme sports like Stephens? Actually, please, please don’t answer that.

Victoria Beckham- the brave Helen Keller of Light Entertainment

2010-01-14T08:58:00.000-08:00

Jobs are awful things. Employment is the terrible toad that squelches on our day, the harridan we married too young and are now stuck with for life, the bore that drags us away from our rightful place driving speedboats in Monte Carlo with Joan Collins.

However, Monday mornings as we face the barrage of rain, depression and broken dreams like World War One soldiers with Oyster cards, we should spare a thought for those less fortunate. There are people out there who are equally rubbish at their jobs but are denied the ability to hide it or the dignity to weep in privacy. If we forget to send that important fax, we can just shred it, if our job application inspires genuine laughter, deny deny deny, whose to know? If however, you are a celebrity and are truly dire at your job, things become slightly more difficult to cover up.

Step forward Victoria Beckham. She first found fame as being the Spice Girl with the worst voice, a heady achievement considering she was in the same group as Geri Halliwell. Her following solo career was one of the most misunderstood and shamefully misjudged events in nineties pop. Her Sisyphus like determination to have a number one hit despite talent that registered in negative numbers should have inspired teary eyed standing ovations. She could have toured primary schools, as an example that even those with most special of needs can be accepted in mainstream entertainment. She couldn’t hold a note or dance, yet she still released records, this Helen Keller of pop deserved a Pride of Britain award not ridicule.

Blighted with singles that were always a number two in every sense of the word, she did what any sensible person would do, quit and pretended she wasn’t really bothered in the first place. Fashion it seemed was her real first love. I know it made eating disorders fashionable but you still couldn’t help feeling sorry for the clothing industry as it faced the full heat of Beckham’s clumsy, tongue clenched in gritted teeth attention. After her unsuccessful swan dive into the world of overpriced jeans she found her place in the world of limited edition high end clothing. Learning from the Dane Bowers incident, she turned to someone who could actually list his job title in his passport without inspiring laughter and went to star designer Roland Mouret for guidance. Apparently just as “sick” now means “good”, “guidance” must now mean “an exact copy of your designs” as you’d be hard pressed to find a difference between the two fashion houses. Luckily the designer of the legendary “Galaxy dress” who shares the same management company as Beckham doesn’t seem to be litigious or mind.

Along with fashion she has tried to use reality TV to win the hearts and minds of the notoriously discerning American public. After her reality TV failed to capture her legendary dry wit, her most recent attempt was a guest judge spot on the latest series of “American Idol”. Many pointed out that Victoria judging a talent show is like Iris Robinson judging an appropriate relationship with teenage boy contest but there she was behind the judge’s desk looking more and more like a skeleton dunked in mahogany floor varnish. The verdict was that she came across as too nutty, in a show that once employed Paula Abdul, in a genre that still counts David Hasselhoff as one of their own, to be given the job permanently. Praise indeed.

If there’s anything worse than being bad at your job it’s not getting the appreciation you think you deserved. Jennifer Lopez has been attracting attention lately by claiming her last film “El Cantante” would have won her an Oscar if enough Academy judges saw it. That’s what J-Lo lacks- exposure.

Every Jennifer Lopez film since “Out of Sight” have been so bad, either the director was on drugs, suicidally sarcastic or a confused child on work experience. If you sat through “Shall We Dance” the rom com where Lopez repairs Richard Gere’s marriage through the power of ballroom dancing, you’d understand. The only thing that got me through it was imaging that those rumours about Gere were not only true but taking place while the scenes were being shot.Before you judge the overpaid reality denier, have a bit of sympathy first. Imagine your very worst day at work, the time you deleted the wrong email, accidentally shredded that file and mistakenly charged that flat screen to the company credit card. Now imagine that it was all filmed and put on worldwide release and you had to show up months later in a dress on a red carpet and say how much fun it had all been. Then my friend, you like Vicky and Jenny would be well and truly busted.

Hugh Grant is dead on the inside.

2010-01-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

As the January magazines mentally mug you with diet plans, detoxes and promises to transform your life in two and a half hours, I’ve noticed they’re dodging the real conundrum 2010 poses- are you a Russell Brand or are you a Hugh Grant? You can’t be both, or you’ll end up as Russell Grant and jolly though he seems, I want you to aim higher.

Grant is back on our big screens disgracing himself in a film so bad it seems like a spoof from an episode of The Simpsons. What happens when a bumbling Englishman and his uptight New York wife witness a murder and end up in witness protection in small town America? – Hilarity!? A bit about a bear!? Urinating on any credibility you have ever achieved in your entire adult career?!! I haven’t even seen this film and already it makes me wish the polar caps would hurry up and drown me before in some cruel twist of fate I’m forced to stare in its direction and am unable to avert or close my eyes.

“Did you Hear about the Morgans” may just sound like your average rip off of “City Slickers” a dead eyed, cynical molestation of Curley’s memory but if you’re very quiet you’ll hear the gentle whimper of both lead actors finally giving up hope. Sarah Jessica Parker ,playing the brittle New York harridan, was once a promising actress but seems to have accepted she is doomed to play Carrie from “Sex and the City” in every other film she makes. Now, from what I remember all Carrie ever did was pout, tilt her head down and act like a five year old girl with special needs so I doubt we’ll ever be blessed with her Lady Macbeth.

Grant now seems to hate his audiences almost as much as he hates himself. Like a faded tart applying her makeup of yesteryear, he smears on the bizarre mannerisms and increasingly grotesque stuttering and eye poppings of the English gent persona that made him seem a breath of fresh air over fifteen years ago, and boy does that air now reek. His career has followed a Benjamin Button trajectory, moving from working with Polanski to milking a cow with Mrs. Big. The diffident, hapless air in interviews that seemed so appealing when he was younger now seems arrogant and imperious. He finds film making hideous, he’d rather be playing golf, he really should sit down and write that book he -one wonders why the man doesn’t just bugger off then.

It’s a lesson to us all, what happens when we sheepishly take the cheque and avoid eye contact with themselves in the mirror. We can all slip into it- You’re at the pub and you suddenly get a rush of certainty that you’re above all this, you can’t be arsed to make conversation, bloody Sandra Bullock in ringing on the mobile and you suddenly really feel like using a prostitute. You know you should make your excuses, go home and kill yourself but can’t be bothered. Do not let this be the year of being Hugh Grant. If you ever feel like being that lazy, pop on “Bridget Jones” and think, yes it is a zesty, witty romp, Renee Zelwegger is adorable but how would I feel on my death bed knowing this was the epoch of my professional life, a giddy artistic peak I would never ever scale again. Look into that heart of darkness and then go for a run or something.

Luckily there is an alternative to that corroding, fossilising cynicism - a bit of joie to vivre, a burning curiosity to try everything twice; take life by the cojones a little. This year, why not connect with your inner Russell Brand. Brand is the anti- Grant, a sweaty, hairy, working class grafter to his squeaky clean, lazy , fop. While Grant’s on screen fear of women always had shadows of passive aggression, Brand seems fuelled by his earthy lust for all things feminine.

Brand may irritate as many as he attracts but there’s no denying he’s a trier. His ebullient enthusiasm has seen him hooked on heroin, a sex addict, a millionaire comic with a burgeoning film career and now a pop star girlfriend in the form of Katie Perry. The pair spent Christmas at her parents’ house where Brand managed to win around her born again Christian preacher parents. He then surprised his poppet with a romantic trip to India, where he proposed. All wonderful things but all requiring making a bloody effort. In contrast Hugh Grant is single, still kind of seeing the fragrant Jemima Khan after dating Liz Hurley for over fifteen years.

Never mind Hannah Waterman’s new fitness regime, if you really want to make 2010 interesting , Brand is the one you should be copying.

If it's not on the frount cover of "Grazia" it hasn't really happned yet.

2009-12-16T07:25:00.000-08:00

Celebrity news is a lot like fish; we want it fresh, we like it juicy and in Japan they eat them raw. The internet until recently, was the fishing trawler we sailed in, roughing the winds of rubbish websites and free porn to get you the stories about stars that you needed, stat. The early days of the internet were like the wild west of celebrity news, there were no rules, no legal teams, it didn’t even have to be true, who cared- yeehaa!

Today, however, if you were to hear, that say a certain pop star had not only broken up with her boyfriend but also flown a passenger plane into a landmark building in the process, when you googled it at work, searching desperately for an adrenaline shot of excitement in the flat lining monotony of your office day, when Mr. Google rooted around in his big bag of facts, that story wouldn’t necessarily be the first to pop up on his little page.

Killjoy celebrities now employ people specifically to sieve through search results ensuring that the more embarrassing stories are firmly locked in the dusty forgotten vaults of result page three. According to my recent spins the most popular searches about Tiger Woods have to do with something called the PGA (I’m assuming it’s some nineties girl band he’s impregnated) and the area of Kate Moss’s life people genuinely find the most interesting, according to her google reports is her chuffing Topshop knicker range. It’s airbrushing but for the entire internet, untaggging all the unwanted icky bits and deleting all the double chins. I’m sure when George Orwell, rasping over a typewriter predicted the fiendish big brother brilliance of fact eradication, he had no idea his TB riddled mind wasn’t actually forecasting Stalin’s Russian but the future of celebrity PR.

Catch of the day is Catherine Zeta Jones, returning to the stage after over twenty years to appear on Broadway. I feel sorry for CZJ, when she first winked and caught the world’s attention she was a fresh faced stunner in her late twenties, relishing her moment in the Hollywood sun. This was the dream that had kept her going all those damp years down the pit in Wales, tap-dancing through the strikes, pirouetting down those damn valleys. As she walked up her first red carpet she surely thought, damn you Maggie, this is one mine you won’t close down.

But I think she mixed up admiring the vintage years of the moving pictures and actually getting married to it. She probably meant to say to Michael Douglas “Hey, what was Charlie Chaplin really like?” but what came out was “Yes, of course I’ll marry you”. Poor Kecko, he looks like a sandcastle that one more wave is going to collapse. Catherine always dressed like a star, but unfortunately it was a star from the nineteen thirties who was still alive and trying desperately to prove she still had it, while actresses the same age as her skipped by in skinny jeans. And now tragically she is forty and at the age when she should be moving onto her tasteful Donna Karen phase , she’s looking like an Upper East side granny.

I’ve a horrible feeling that if her and Michael bit the dust she’ll pull a Mariah on us and dress for the next decade in dental floss.

Sometimes your only hope on the celebrity high seas is that a story isn’t true, that a line isn’t twitching, that it’s all a dream. Here goes-Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhall might be splitting up.

I know, let’s just change the subject for a little bit to allow our subconscious to process that information while our conscious mind retracts from the idea like an elastic band made out of molten lava and broken dreams. X Factor- Joe won! Didn’t Cheryl look nice; apparently her and Ashley want to have a baby. That’s about as likely as...

And we’re back. The couple who had been dating for two years have reluctantly decided to split. Friends say that Jake AKA the world’s perfect man, was looking for more commitment while Reese, still smarting from her divorce from Ryan Phillipe was reluctant to get remarry. This beggars the question how shitty must her marriage have been to turn down the chance to be Mrs. Gyllenhall?

To put it into context, had Joseph Fritzel’s daughter, pre counselling, her eyes still blinking in the fresh Austrian morning air, been showed a picture of him in his little check shirt and asked if she was up for it, she’d been picking out wedding dresses before you could say, feck it every family has their problems. It’s with news like this that I turn to the sacred showbiz columnist prayer “If it’s not on the front cover of Grazia it hasn’t really happened yet”. You scoff but I plan to use it to sit out the next general election.

The Prime of Miss Louis Walsh

2009-12-09T10:40:00.000-08:00

In the most improbable car accident since Princess Diana, Tiger Woods, previously the most reliable star of the world’s most boring sport, smashed his slow moving car into a tree in his own driveway. It quickly emerged that rather than rushing to rescue him, it was his wife’s discovery of his pathological inability to keep his own clubs in his caddy that propelled her to attack his back windscreen with a ten iron. Since then a veritable tsunami of cocktail waitresses, porn stars and reality TV contestants have washed up on the tabloids front pages all claiming to have had private swings with the US Open champion. News stations in the US have even been forced to create phone lines at the end of reports for women who think might have slept with the golf sex machine. Blessed with a gorgeous wife and a beautiful family, people are stunned that he would risk everything for a few shots in the rough.

It was his all American image that attracted the lucrative sponsorship contracts and advertising deals that had him on course to becoming sports first billionaire. How on earth did a man trained obsessively at a competitive sport since childhood, drilled to be ambitious, selfish and single minded and assured that he was the greatest in the entire world, turn out to be a be so bad at personal relationships? His mother assured him that he was wonderful and his Dad declared that he would not only be the best golfer the world had ever seem but probably the best human being ever and yet he still turned out to have the morals of a bank overdraft fine? Incredible.

His poor social skills became stuff of golf legend, with tales of his bad language, abrasive behaviour and general rudeness became notorious. Still as he smiles at his loyal wife over breakfast as her morning croissant flakes over fresh new stories of his wandering irons, I bet Elen blocks out the rising screams in her heads by repeating “but he’s very good at hitting little balls into across big fields, he’s very good at hitting little balls across big fields”

Meanwhile enjoying some bittersweet schaden freud with a double shot of vodka is Jo Wood after reports that her ex Ronnie was arrested for beating up the teenage girlfriend Ekatrina Ivanovc that he left her for. Neighbours were woken by the couple’s screams before witnessing the Rolling Stone attempt to strangle the tiny blonde and part drag her down the street. Ekaterina is not pressing charges and although she has moved out of their mansion is reportedly desperate to win back the aging rocker.

Meanwhile Jo is happier than ever. After years of marriage her new single social life has doubled her friends and for the first time, she incredulously revealed in an interview the only person she has to worry about is herself.
Maybe Jo needs to sit down and have a quiet word with Amy Whinehouse. The newly revitalised singer, sporting a fantastic new pair of breasts seems to be using her new found confidence to win back her ex- husband Blake Fielder- Civil.

This is the same man who recently finished a spell for GBH and attempting to pervert the course of justice, a sentence he seasoned with a short stint in rehab for his heroin addiction, the drug he introduced to Whinehouse with such brilliant results, the same man that broke her heart so badly she penned her break through record, Back to Black and wrote some of the greatest descriptions of the unflinching exquisite agony of heartbreak. And yet and yet, call me a romantic but wouldn’t it be great if they could make it work? If their raggle taggle, can’t live without you, if I live with you we’ll probably overdose and die, rollercoaster settled down into boring old happiness. It’s that insane hope that created the great art that Amy’s adored for and probably of the misery that’s made her infamous too.

That’s why there a lot to be said for every woman having her special friend, you know, a confirmed bachelor, the sort of man you wouldn’t mind getting changed in front of. Every girl needs her own Louis Walsh. He is the unsung hero of the X Factor, the one that takes himself the least seriously, who doesn’t mind making an idiot of himself because he realises how ridiculous the show is and how lucky he is to be there. This is the same man that spent most of the eighties touring the midlands with Johnnie Logan, who could begrudge him a bit of glamour at this hour in his life? Louis seems to be looking much fresher lately with rumours of a few nips and tucks here and there.

I’m saluting this late spring for little Mr. Walsh, may his prime be long and happy. Maybe, he and Jo could get together and have a double wedding with Blake and Amy? As Tiger Woods have showed us; stranger things have happened...

Healthy Living with Katherine Moss

2009-12-02T12:53:00.000-08:00

I don’t know about you but when I’m looking for some healthy eating tips I always think, damn I wish I had the telephone number of a woman made famous for being abnormally bony, I bet she’d have some sensible dietary advice. I rang up Kerry Katona the other week when I was going through man problems and Madonna was such a help when I freaked out about getting obsessive and distractingly puffy faced as I get older, now here I am, feeling bad about having that donut, if only there was someone who I could turn to.

Kate Moss has got herself into some hot water (ugh just think of the calories) after flippantly remarking in an interview that nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels. Little mini Moss probably doesn’t follow the traditional food pyramid instead swearing by the lesser known cigarette-shaped Marlboro lights model .She is after all a supermodel; the average catwalker thinks that a sign you’re putting on too much weight is when you get your periods again so she’ll hardly be bleating about the benefits of your five a day. Also, it’s a bit hypocritical of glossy magazines to condemn her when her skinniness was the very thing that put her on their front covers in the first place. It would be like Hugh Hefner disowning Pamela Anderson for suggesting she was only popular for her breasts.

As for being a poor role model to young women, well knock me down with a lettuce leaf, Kate Moss is slightly irresponsible shock horror, next you’ll be saying I shouldn’t have asked Ronnie Wood to lead that marriage counselling weekend? If we can’t rely on celebrities to tell us what to do on who can we rely on? Experts! Pah, if they were any good they’d be on the front cover of “Heat” and until that day, I’ll rely on Amanda Holden thanks.

Celebrity is fickle, one minute you’re the bee’s knee next you’re the wasp’s sting. Poor Suri Cruise could do no sartorial wrong until recently then all of fashion world were lining up to take the four year old down just for wearing high heel shoes. Think of the damage it’s doing to her feet, they shrieked, imagine the irredeemable change to her posture, they warned. Considering her mother is slowly becoming invisible and her Dad thinks he’s the king of the aliens, Suri’s probably leafing through the glossies, fag in mouth, strong martini in hand, thinking, honey, that’s the least of my problems.

You see, it’s hard to recover from being famous at a young age, a bittersweet problem faced by X Factor judge Dannii Minouge.Despite starting out in showbiz first, she always seemed a slightly rubbish version of her older sister. Kylie was the blonde bombshell in sunny Neighbours, while Dannii was the surly goth in disaster stricken Home and Away. Kylie partied with Michael Hutchinson, while Dannii got hitched to the guy form Nip/ Tuck (actually at think that last one was a draw) Kylie span around while all Dannii wanted to do was have one blooming hit song.

After being bullied by Sharon Osbourne and completely overshadowed in last year’s show by the shiny new Cheryl, this year, at last, Dannii seems to be finally having her moment in the spotlight. Maybe the public are beginning to tire of Cheryl, especially after appearing in an ad for volumising shampoo despite the fact half of her hair began life on someone else’s head. Dannii is winning the battle of the outfits, each week striding on stage, like an eighties power dressing Nelson to Cheryl’s, big hair little dress again, Napoleon, every Saturday her Waterloo, her newly mobile face, released from its botoxed prison relishing the victory.

Still reeling from the loss of Jedward, then the world of music received a second blow this week, when it emerged that The Pussycat Dolls, the band that did for feminism what BSE did for the British Beef industry may have swung their final greased poll and sadly hung up their stripper heels for the last time. Reports suggest that the other dolls, Raggy, Blow Up and New York, grew fed up with Nicole, the lead singer’s constant spotlight stealing and showboating. Nicole has the highest profile in the group thanks to a relationship with Formula one driver Lewis Hamilton and solo collaborations with the likes of P Diddy. They also grew offended when the last two singles were described as featuring Nicole rather than just from the entire group.

I think they should bin the show- off and get a new lead singer, come on Dannii, this could finally be your moment! Unless Kylies free of course, or Cheryl’s interested or Louis has nothing on then you definitely have the gig. Maybe.

Oh Katie!

2009-11-25T05:00:00.000-08:00

Can a truce be called with Katie Price? If she just gave us a list of her demands; social acceptance, an annual tithe paid by the entire population directly into her bank account and Peter Andre penitent in a sackcloth, could she please, please just give us a break? She has become the nation’s nightmare ex- girlfriend, claiming to have moved on but still sending drunken, saucy texts messages and then screaming at you the next day for messing with her head.

In her recent appearance on “I’m a Celebrity” the former stunner finally morphed into a bitterer version of Mrs. Haversham wandering inconsolably around the Australian jungle in her faded bikini trying to woo back the nation and remind us how it used to be. Her physical appearance is genuinely becoming disturbing, her puffed up face is beginning to look like a fish in drag and she’s only thirty one. After walking off the show after being voted for her umpteenth trial in a row she used her post interview to break up with her cage fighting/ cross dressing boyfriend Alex Reid. Oh dear, we’ve come a long way from singing Disney duets with Pete haven’t we?

Just when we need a voice of sanity more than ever we’re dealt the blow that the world’s fantasy mother is moving out- Oprah Winfrey is retiring from her landmark chat show to concentrate on her burgeoning digital channel. The news came in the same week that “Oprah” received some of it’s higher ever ratings thanks to the appearance of a certain former vice president Sarah Palin. Palin was talking about her autobiography “Going Rouge” her version of last year’s election and calling card for a possible 2012 election run.

Her book raised eyebrows and dropped jaws (try it yourself, it’s actually quite sore) when she revealed how during a political trip to Texas to discus oil drilling, the heavily pregnant senator woke to discover she had gone into labour. Not one to be distracted by a bit of vaginal dilation, she grit her teeth, delivered her speech encouraging exploration in endangered areas (broken embryonic fluids or not those Polar bears are going down) laughed off jokes that she was leaving early to give birth (if only they knew she chuckled) and boarded two flights just so she could give birth later that night in her home state of Alaska. If someone told you that story on a parkbench you could have them certified but in a book on national television it becomes an inspirational story.

It was also Oprah or specifically her couch that gently let the world know how completely bloody mental Tom Cruise was. Before he used his interview with Oprah to practice human feelings he was just the toothy guy from Top Gun, now we know him as the world’s most sinister dwarf. His cult, I mean religion, I mean organisation that rips people off, Scientology have been under a bit of heat down under with the Australian government launching an investigation into its practices and threatening to remove the tax free status it enjoys as a registered religion. It recently lost a key celebrity member Paul Haggis, the Oscar winning director who criticised the inconsistencies of what he as a member knew happened privately and what their spokesperson’s admitted in the press.

It’s depressing how many other celebrities you lose respect for when you learn that there in the same club as Peaches Geldof- Kirsty Alley- no not Rebecca from Cheers, yes she too was strolling down the street one day and got distracted outside Pret a Manger by a free personality test and now thinks that she needs to go on thousand dollar course to win her soul back. I just hope Sam never finds out; even Dianne at her worst would never have fallen for that nonsense. The biggest disappointed, apart from Bart Simpson (yes) was the actor Jason Lee from “My Name is Earl” I was going to marry him; now I’m having big doubts (The wedding’s still on though...just)

A recent expose book revealed that a former member of the religion received a personal one on one session with mad eyes Cruise himself which involved trying to move ashtrays by shouting at them. I’ve tried to find keys by shouting for them so I could have saved him some time and told him that it just doesn’t work. I had thought that nothing would convince me to take this pyramid scheme of a religion seriously until I thought up the ultimate challenge. Take Katie Price, give her a few of your little courses and return her to us with just a glimpse of a humanity behind her eyes and then I actually might give the whole metal rods a go myself. Failing that just make anything Sarah Palin says make sense.

Is Mariah Carey a misunderstood marxist hero?

2009-11-19T01:40:00.000-08:00

Ever get the feeling you got the wrong impression of someone, summed them up slackly, sold them short? Well, I’ve been having that uneasy feeling about Mariah Carey of late. She was never a woman I took to my heart. She may be blessed with a voice that seems to dance around octaves yet she also seemed to spend most of this decade dressed as a street walker. What a depressing thought, a woman so blessed with talent, yet still seemingly feeling the necessity to borrow her clothes from an adult film star in the last throws of her career. Yet, in recent interviews with Mimi something strange is happening. When asked why she called her last album E=MC2, she dryly explained it was because she and Einstein had so much in common. Could the one thing she managed to keep tucked up her body-con dress hidden from the public all these years be a cracking sense of humour?

Yes her music may be the aural equivalent of the emptiness that descends after night of class A’s and have breasts so fake they should come with quotation marks, but thanks to the security that only a new healthy marriage and a resurging career can bring, she seems to be showing a newfound ability to laugh at herself. Who knew she could be witty; maybe it was just all that lyrca cutting off circulation to her brain?

Following Rihanna’s public revelations about her abusive relationship with Chris Brown, Mariah revealed the emotional cruelty that wracked her first marriage to Sony music magnate Tony Mottola. Not only did he control every aspect of her public image, even determining whether she should have a fringe or not, Mariah revealed she was barely allowed leave their million dollar mansion and spent most of her early twenties lonely and isolated. She finally got her own back by using the very million dollar Vera Wang dress she was married in for a video where she escapes the clutches of a slimy older man and runs off with the cute guy from Prison Break. When asked whether it was weird to use her actual dress she calmly explained that the dress was the least abusive part of the relationship. She’s now happily married to TV presenter Nick Cannon and has transformed her music career into a global empire. She is an ambassador for Caribbean Island, has her own perfume and cosmetic line and is soon to be seen sans make up in a gritty urban film “Precious” about a social working helping an abused teenager.

She also released a sarky music video where she mocked the man of la macho, Enimen for claiming to have slept with her. It wasn’t just the sarcastic single that showed her spirit, it was the scathing interviews to publicise it that showed she was not a dame to mess with. Had she actually heard the single, she was asked, where Mr. Mathews bragged about bedding her? No she replied sadly, the radio just never seemed to play it. Her single went platinum. Game, set , match, Carey.This week she has also managed to annoy, of all people, Philip Schofield by being hours late for her This Morning interview and delaying matters even further by struggling to find an outfit she liked. To add glitter to injury she then refused to let him post any pictures of her on his twitter page until her people checked them and then nixed the idea when she didn’t like them. So she’s no sweet and dippy Stacey from X factor then. She’s the music equivalent of Donald Trump but instead of real estate she’s selling her glamour girl image which is has to be guarded at all costs. If she has to choose between being a bit of a diva or damaging her million dollar brand, it’s a case of screw you Phil, sorry you know I do love your show. ..

Mariah is also appearing at Westfield Shopping centre to turn on their Christmas lights. There have been reports that the singer‘s demands are becoming nightmarish for the management there. She reportedly demanded a special pink carpet, limousine and podium, twenty kittens, one hundred doves and special butterfly shaped confetti to shower on her adoring fans. Now, this may to the outsider sound like the spoilt dead behind the eyes diva returning to her infant ways but again are we judging her too quickly? Is it that unlikely that she’s using her visit as a secret plan to bankrupt Europe’s largest shopping centre, the biggest symbol of globalisation and corporate greed by pointing out the hollowness and vacuousness at the heart of the capitalist dream? Or that she’s having a laugh quite literally at their expense? If we’ve learned anything, it’s never underestimate Mimi.

Bringing you the news that matters

2009-11-11T10:34:00.000-08:00

It is with a heavy heart that I announce that Simon Cowell has officially broken John and Edward. On last week’s show Jedward and lovely Lucie from Wales found themselves unexpectedly in the bottom two. The twins from Dublin had become the show’s surprise stars; Louis Walsh their mentor was jubilant while Simon Cowell, their arch critic, seemed increasingly frustrated, arguing that it was after all a singing competition and threatened to leave the country if they won. There was the bizarre version of “Oops I did it again” complete with matching red vinyl suits and bizarre incestuous undertones and a version of Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs” where they struggled around the stage like two drunks asthmatics gate crashing an end of term school play. Judge Simon huffed and puffed but try as he might he couldn’t blow the house of Jedward down. Short of popping a shirt button open with rage (if it wasn’t open to the waist already -ladies!) or waving his fist at them and exclaiming “you pesky kids” he couldn’t have made his disdain for them more evident. So when he was finally gifted the chance to rid himself of the Macaulay Culkins to his Walter Matheau and save the silver voiced Welsh lass, Jedward fans throughout the nation sadly noted the time, stopped all their clocks and quietly prepared for the inevitable.

Annoyingly , what he ended up doing was even worse than just voting them out. If he’d done that they’d at least have left on high; loveable, odd underdogs to the end. But by going to the public vote, a vote he knew thanks to the boys big press they’d win, he revealed himself to be what he always was, not the show’s grouchy judge with an eye for talent but the programme’s canny producer with a nose for ratings. We’d all been swindled; we were supposed to think we were annoying Simon by liking them, suddenly everything seemed like a bitter sham. What next? Simon and Louis don’t hate each other but are two happy middle aged mates working in music management? Cheryl and Dannii aren’t really waging a tit for twat war through the medium of hairdos but are two successful women who just don’t know each other that well? My eyes, my eyes as the scales fall away. Damn you Simon Cowell.

Meanwhile poor old Britney is in trouble with the Australians after disappointing concert goers by lip synching her way through “life” performances. Britney was criticised for seeming vacant, unengaged and bored with fans fleeing three songs in. I’m surprised people expected anything else, the light died in Brit’s eyes a long time ago. She’s become a performing monkey blankly going through the motions. They say that the age you are when you become famous is the age you’ll stay for the rest of your life. So they’re paying to see a sixteen year old former drug addict who is not trusted to be alone with her own children and then wonder why she doesn’t have much pep in her step.

Maybe she needs a new man in her life. Peter Andre is on the loose now, freshly divorced and feeling flush after winning a libel case against a gossip magazine that claimed he was pretending to be good father for publicity purposes. Andre celebrated his victory with another exclusive photo shoot with his kid’s faces lovingly displayed over a ten page spread. Nothing says family man like selling pictures of your children for money so he sounds like a catch!

Or maybe Brits should just stay single for a while longer like fellow pop starlet Rihanna. The girl has been having a tough year but luckily her record company who have owned, sorry, supported the star since she was fifteen are taking excellent care of their young charge. In an interview, that happened to coincide with her latest album release, the singer spoke to American TV legend Diane Sawyer about her abusive relationship with fellow singer Chris Brown and revealed in detail the horrific night he almost killed her. In a fantastic piece of journalism the veteran reporter, receiving the highest ratings of the year, grilled the shaky, nervous looking twenty year old about being knocked about by the first love of her life. Apparently her record company deliberately held back on spending money on the video for new single as they knew the resulting controversy would provide enough publicity anyway. To help her further along the road to self esteem and confidence they also released tasteful new shots of the singer topless and in various S &M outfits. I think I speak on behalf of most people when I say how happy I am that RiRi has finally escaped from such a cruel, exploitative and degrading relationship.

I love Michelle and Barak..or do I? dum dum duum!

2009-11-10T11:23:00.000-08:00

When we first met the current occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue it became a journalistic cliché to refer to the Obamas as the new Kennedys- an unfair label to put on any new political family.

It’s like calling around to the new next door neighbours, admiring what they’ve done to the place before pausing on the doorstep to exclaim with a winsome smile on your face - “You know, you remind me exactly of the family that used to live here. You know the one... Dad got his head blown off and the mother ended up with a sleazy Greek who never really loved her. Their surname became synonymous with tragic bad luck. God, who were they again? Anyway, welcome to the neighbourhood! ”

It can’t be reassuring for Barak, living in a country populated by a sizeable community of racists with grudges and guns to remind so many people of the man whose assassination was a defining moment of the last century. He wouldn’t be blamed for wishing to be compared to one of the non murdered by a lone gun-manny presidents. Although, if he was a fan of the Oliver Stone film he’s probably working on some major, major CIA funding cuts as I type. “What’s that Barak? The CIA’s new budget stretches to just one gun we have to clock in and out and share? And you’ve put Kevin Costner in charge. WTF?” It must be frustrating for Barak as, apart from his youth, good lucks and oratory skills, he hasn’t that much politically in common with JFK. In fact his attempts to unite a deeply divided America have much more in common with Abraham Lincoln.

Who was also assassinated. Right better forget that one too...

It isn’t very flattering to Michelle either. Yes, she rocks a shift dress and looks great in pearls but unlike her breathy, baby-voiced predecessor, the Princeton graduate is unlikely to ever have to depend on cheating spoilt heirs to keep her in American designer one offs. Rather than sigh and start mixing an extra strong martini at the news of her husband’s latest indiscretions, she’s more likely to sue and take everything belonging to him. If Barak ever cheated on Michelle with some modern Marilyn, the world would be so universally disappointed in him we’d give her the presidency as part of the divorce deal. Every State of the Union address would end with Congress officially stating for the record that the new president was better off without him. The comparison is also not very encouraging to little Sasha and Malia. If they really are the next Kennedys, who gets to be Caroline and who draws the unlucky John John straw and ends up spiralling to her death in an out of control aeroplane next to a coke addict they’re in a loveless marriage to? More importantly which unfortunate cousin ends up with a Schwarzenegger?

Barak may wish he had his own Rat pack and possible mob connections at the moment. He’s experiencing receding ratings due to his reluctance to outline his exact plans in Afghanistan and the unpopular healthcare bill he is marginally managing to drag through Congress. To keep approval ratings up he seems to be increasingly relying on Michelle’s steady popularity. The First Lady has appeared on the front cover of countless magazines, guested on reality programmes and even popped up on Sesame Street. They recently gave a joint interview in which the revealed how the presidency had affected their marriage and how they struggled to have some “them” time. Barak complained about recent criticism for using the air force one jet to take his wife on a date and Michelle remarked that their marriage was constant hard work. We found out that Michelle turned him down several times before they got together, that White House staff often walk in on them mid embrace and that Michelle livens up boring Official meet and greets by whispering unprintable comments about visiting dignitaries in her husband’s ear.

Now, we may feel like we can’t get enough of the golden couple at the moment but we also feel like that about Jedward who, in our heart of hearts, we know in six months time we’ll view with all the affection of a pool of unmapped vomit the morning after the night before. I’m worried it’ll soon become a case of too much information. I just don’t want to know this much about the ins and out of their relationship and when I do catch a glimpse into their private world, like those swoonsome pictures of the Inauguration Ball, I want to tingle with the unexpected intimacy of such a glamorous moment not jadedly note that they’re at it again.

I like our Obama crush; it’s a natural reaction to the current cynicism specifically after the gloom of the Bush/ Blair years. We need idols to love, larger than life people to root for and aspire too. Just as the Kennedy’s seemed to offer glamour and style in a country wracked by racial tension and the threat of nuclear war, the Obamas offer integrity and idealism in a political world corroded by corruption and arrogant warmongering. One joint interview too many and they’ll turn from the gorgeous new neighbours you wanted to hang out with to the ones that you dread bumping into because you’ve heard them having very loud smug sex every night for the last week.

Forget about being the next Kennedy’s they’re close to being the next Newlyweds with Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey; the pop starlets who allowed a MTV TV crew to document every moment of their fledgling marriage and then wondered why it combusted like the Challenger disaster four years later. So maybe Obamas, ask not what the country can know about you but what you can keep mysterious from the country and whenever you feel the need to spill the beans look to the patron saint of too much information; Bill Clinton and reconsider.

Sacre Bleur!

2009-11-03T19:00:00.000-08:00

Hey gang! Do you remember when Sartre said that hell was other people; well what many don’t realise was that he had two very specific people in mind. For as well as discovering that existence precedes essence and that freedom is a burden in an indifferent universe (thanks JP!) , he also had, one morning on the Left Bank, a chilling vision from the future so horrifying that he spat out his croissant ,splattered coffee all over his new stripy sweater and startled a passing mime artist “Sacre Bleur!” he bellowed, summoning Simone in from writing his next essay, hell was other people but how to describe the soul destroying, faith in god annihilating snapshot of the tomorrow he had seen? Who would believe him? He paused, gazed wearily over the Seine and sadly adjusted his trusty string of garlic. They’d just have to wait, live long enough and see it on ITV I player themselves and then the world would understand what he meant. Once they’d seem “Fearne Cotton meets Peaches Geldof” with their own innocent eyes.

ITV have brought us Room 101 in its literal televisual form. Not a jaunty chat show with Paul Merton but a programme so mind bendingly awful you’d gladly chew your own head off just to escape. Watching Peaches speak is like staring into a black hole of boredom, where nothing escapes, humour, intelligence, joy, light; if you stare at Peaches Geldof long enough you end up seeing the back of your own head. The show’s format is like Louis Theroux sponsored my Bliss magazine, but instead of trying to learn more about the interviewee the programme seems to pivot on whether the celebrity guest will want to be friends with its host Fearne Cotton at the end or not. It’s like ITV is paying a random famous person to keep her quiet for a while. Her next project is presumably a travel show where the sole aim is to find the country that’s most flattering to whatever outfit she’s wearing.

Cotton is a cyborg set to cute; everything she says, does, thinks is ruthlessly designed to make you find her as sweet and adorable as possible; liking her is a command not an option. Her delight has the hollow ring of a skinny girl claiming to be fat. In last week’s show she ran around after Peaches Geldof, like a seagull chasing a trawler for social acceptance. I’m surprised two such cataclysmically irritating people so close together didn’t set off some celestial reaction and result in animals acting spooked in New York zoos, horses eating their foals or Great Birnan wood suddenly arriving at Dunsinane Hill. I know for a fact, someplace else in the world, two otherwise insufferable people became slightly more bearable just to balance out the cosmic order.

Peaches Geldof, famous for being the daughter of Bob Geldof and Paula Yates , is as delightful as any privileged, jaded twenty year old, who lost her mother to a drug overdose and has been attending celebrity parties since she was fifteen can be. Maybe she will grow up and cringe at her earlier social malapropisms or still be too much of a smug numbnut to care, till that fine day she is on our TV screens. She moved to New York a year ago to establish a writing career but her most impressive achievement is, in that short period of time, acquiring a perfect American accent. She like totally loves like sci-fi, Richard Dawkins and awkward moments, weird stuff like that since she’s such a nerd. I find it interesting that people who revel in how weird they are always seem to like the same “nerdy” things. It’s always seventies or eighties nostalgia, obscure punk bands or Victorian writers, no one ever brags about how much they like Northern miners’ brass bands, home brewing or the novels of Gyles Brandeth. Pensive Fern tried to get Peaches to really open up; Peaches just looked really hung over and bored. The two fixing each other with laser stares; you will find me adorable, you will find me cool, like mutant teenage girls with passive aggressive super powers.

The shock revelation of the night was that Peaches had accepted the Church of Scientology into her heart. How did Fearne deal with the news that her subject believed in angry aliens? She said how amazing that was! And then in an incredible turn of events, that no one saw coming, despite Peaches having spent much of the documentary ditching her, falling asleep in her company and occasionally sneering at her to her face, Fearne concludes that Peaches seems like a really nice, down to earth girl after all. Well, of course she’d say that, Peaches had no option,the freedom to choose being mates with Fearne is an illusion. No wonder Sartre was scared

We must protect John and Edward

2009-10-28T12:41:00.000-07:00

The insanity of this year’s X Factor is building nicely, thanks mainly to everybody’s favourite cocky teenagers John and Edward Grimes. Even their name is slightly rubbish. How did they think it up? “Let’s call ourselves Grimes and Grimes, no that will never work, it’s too much like Robson and Jerome, hang on what about if we just used our first name. Genius!” Their continual presence on the show is proof that the British celebrated bloody minded belligerence is alive and well. Cementing their place in my heart is the news that Peaches Geldof sarcastically called them “musical prodigies”. Since her main achievement is being a fertilized egg, I don’ think the twins will mind when their bopping about on national television.

The show also has it’s own baddy Danyl Johnson. Before you rush to defend him remember this, the man is twenty five years old and he chooses to spell his name that way. He has achieved something rather magical this year, making being a brilliant singer really annoying. Every week he comes out, does the whole wide eyed I’m so lucky to be here shuffle that no one buys for a moment ,lobs his mike around for a bit and then blasts his way through another tedious pop song. Our reluctance to take him to his bosom is echoed in the judges sparing comments about his performance. Every week they drearily doll out the most reluctant of faint praise with all the enthusiasm of someone drinking a suspicious smelling drink for a dare. With past contestants we revelled in their vocal acrobatics but there’s something about his personality that gives us a cramp. He was in last week’s final two, which sent his mentor Simon Cowell into spasms of indignation pointing out that it’s a singing competition not a popularity contest. I never thought I’d be saying this but poor Simon, you crazy dreamer, how naive you are.

Stacey, the rambling Essex girl, we love her. We love her so much we even voted for Rachel just for doing an impression of Stacey on last week’s show. She seems genuinely excited to be there and that babbling incredulity is something that can’t be faked, no matter how many times you run up and down the stage mid song.

Speaking of people we just don’t seem to like, Sienna Miller is going through a tough time. The exquisite blonde has made her Broadway debut in “After Miss Julie” a reworking of the Strinberg classic by Patrick Marber. The critics have been less than enthusiastic about her performance and to add to her career woes her ex squeeze Balthazar Getty has been seen out and about with Lindsey Lohan. How depressing must that be, to be as beautiful as Miss Miller and lose your man to a train wreck like Lindsey? You’d feel like there should be an Independent authority you could complain to. There was a lot of controversy in the States when Miller and Getty first got together because of the unfortunate matter of a Mrs. Getty and several mini Getty’s as well. Sienna was branded a home wrecker and labelled “Sluttiena” by certain members of the press. Isn’t it ironic that the word “member’ is also slang for a part of the male anatomy and in this case both meanings of the word work. Sienna’s reputation further plummeted where pictures of her topless with only a sailor’s hat at a jaunty angle to protect her from the Mediterranean sun were published. The couple broke up soon after but, after a few clandestine meeting, there was reportedly hope on Sienna’s side of reconciliation. Then Ms. Lohan fresh from her latest split with Sam Ron, wandered incoherently and slightly off balanced into the frame.

Lindsey coincidentally also had a fling with Sienna’s other ex Jude Law who is also appearing on Broadway. He’s still reeling from the birth of his daughter to a woman he shared a brief Christmas jingle with. The Florida model claims that the little girl looks exactly like her Dad so somewhere in Miami there’s balding, smug baby in a v neck jumper and scarf looking inexplicably pleased with itself. Despite being cheated on by Jude, dumped by Getty and her obvious commitment to independent low budget films the public have never really warmed to Sienna. There’s always been something too shrill; too smug too satisfied about her. She strikes me as the type of girl who flirts shamelessly with her male friends and then acts confused when they eventually asked her out.

Still at least she hasn’t been physically attacked, unlike poor Leona Lewis. The X Factor winner was attacked by a crazed fan recently at a book singing in London. There were reports that the culprit was in fact regular award ceremony stage crasher Kanye West declaring “No disrespect Leona but I really feel Ray Quinn should have won” but they’ve been hurriedly denied. Being an X Factor winner is more dangerous than it looks. Are you listening to that John and Edward? Look after yourselves boys for Christ’s sake.

Jimmy Carr died for our sins

2009-10-28T12:19:00.000-07:00

The always thoughtful conservative press, aware that many of its readers are missing their traditional fox hunting have introduced a new sport to keep their loyal subscribers busy - comic baiting. Simply take a well known comedian, quote part of their set completely out of context and wait while people queue up to be offended on behalf of others. The latest victim of this new fad is Jimmy Carr. His quip that the current war in Iraq means that Britain will have a fantastic Para-Olympic team was seized on by the Sunday papers and then dragged out by back bench Tory MPs looking to remind their constituents that they’re still alive.

It’s a win- win situation; newspapers get a good splash headline plus acres of pages filled with outraged, indignant columnists and obscure MPs get their faces on telly the year before a general election, the only victim is the comic. He ends up with his material mauled to a misshaped mess, reputation destroyed and public figures can, with complete impunity, call for the end of his career, just for doing his job properly.

Confusingly, injured servicemen aren’t even the butt of the joke. Jimmy was pointing out, through humour, that by 2012 there will be a generation of otherwise healthy men and women maimed and injured due to a war many now see as at best pointless at worst illegal. People should find this joke unsettling and slightly disturbing but the anger is better directed at the government for bringing their country into the conflict instead of the fool on stage for pointing it out. Politicians angrily claimed that the only people with the right to make that sort of joke were the soldiers themselves. I agree, there is a dearth of military men on the stand up circuit at the moment, mainly as they’re a bit busy being blown up. So until they’re less occupied, much like the citizens of Iraq, we’ll have to rely on professional comedians to satirise the war instead, even if, as mere civilians they’re scarcely allowed to.

The evolution of being offended from an occasional frustration to a national game of moral one -upmanship has had a disastrous affect on comedy. Established comics have to choose between playing it safe or potentionally jeopardising their career, jittery producers become reluctant to commission anything that may offend somebody, somewhere and the result is bland opinion less TV and radio programmes that no one; the producers, comics or audiences really care about.

People often wonder why Britain has no equivalent of John Stewart, whose Daily Show became a deciding factor in last year’s American elections. The truth is that a comic with his strong political opinions and passion, exactly the things that you need for satire to work, would never be allowed on television here. The father of modern satire Jonathan Swift wrote an essay “A Modest Proposal” at the height of the Irish Famine suggesting that the Irish people should eat their babies as a way of avoiding starvation. In this current climate there’d be protests outside his house and claims he was glamorizing cannibalism. A democracy prides itself on the freedom of its arts, the ability of its novelists, painters and poets to publish and produce whatever they like. Throughout history comedy, and its swottier sibling satire, has been the Arts poor relation, but it’s comedy’s scraps for free speech that have probably made the most difference to most ordinary people’s everyday lives. It’s time we as a society defended that tradition and comedians stopped apologising.

I read the news today, oh boy

2009-10-21T04:38:00.000-07:00

Nobody expects to agree with The Daily Mail. I have a theory that’s it’s actually a character newspaper, like a paper version of Alan Partridge or The Pub Landlord and is written by a group of very sarcastic left wing hacks. Knocking the right wing ravings of its editorial has almost become a sub genre in stand up itself. The earnest ranting that muslin lesbians from Nigeria were coming over here to spread foot and mouth, the constant referring to World War Two as if, it was not only was still happening but the Allieds might still somehow lose, it’s devotion to their page three blondes; Princess Diana and Madeline McCann. For any budding Mark Thomas, criticising it is like taking candy from a baby, a dead baby. So it’s saying something when even by their subterranean standards, a column that appeared in last week’s newspaper offended so many people that the Press Complaints Commission website crashed. This is, remember, a paper that employs Richard Littlejohn, a man who once pointed out that the Ipswich murder victims were only prostitutes, to write words.

On Thursday last, their charming columnist Jan Moir, took time off from her busy schedule of slagging off middle aged women and Kerry Katona to write a piece about the death of Stephen Gately that was so offensively, unnecessarily cruel and breathtakingly cold that it’s callousness is almost impossible to exaggerate or ridicule. When most people heard that Stephen had passed away on holiday in Portugal, their first reaction was to wonder at the implausibility of it. Tragic early deaths were for serious musicians or doomed actors not cute singers from naff nineties boy bands. It was always hard to take Boyzone seriously. Their first cringe worthy appearance on The Late Late show, their endless cover versions, Ronan’s braying accent that got off the bus somewhere outside Nashville; they always seemed like five men lads who were just having a go. Name the other ones; come on, not Stephen or Ronan or the one who was in Corrie for a while, the other ones. You can’t can you, but you think they’re probably aright, like distant cousins you meet at weddings or funerals. Compared to the professionalism of Take That and the slickness of their successors Westlife, Ronan’s craven ambition aside, they always seemed grateful and surprised they were still getting away with it. Of all of them Stephen was the most harmless. A diddy cherubic faced little bopper, he surprised about three cows in west Cork when he was outed, forced by a kiss and tell in a rival newspaper to admit his preference for men. He followed Boyzone with a brief but successful solo career and then joined the world of musical theatre. He had a gorgeous voice, he looked lovely, everybody seemed to like him.

His complete blandness makes Moir’s viscous attack all the more perplexing. After his sudden death and the normal rumours that surround any young person’s demise, an undiagnosed heart condition was revealed as the medical cause. His remains were being flown home, before his burial on the following Saturday when the journalist decided to launch her own take on his passing. Calmly dismissing the medical reason for his death, she saw it as the only possible result of his decadent lifestyle; death by gayness apparently. She warned any young men who may have looked up to Stephen, in case they were considering homosexuality as a lifestyle option to consider his squalid and lonely death. They’d invited another man back to their flat that night she crowed. She then, using the recent tragic suicide of Matt Lucas’s ex husband as further proof, damned civil partnership as a failure. The gays can’t be trusted with marriage you see. Heterosexual marriage has been booming for centuries, the gays and their “husbands”, inverted commas appearing around the word whenever it’s used in a homosexual context like a pair of gloves holding something dirty, soil it with their horrid ways.

You can say whatever you like about an innocent dead man and let his grieving family be dammed when there’s pages to fill, prejudices to confirm and attention to create. Stephen was buried two days later, surrounded by the family, friends and community that loved, adored and respected him. Moir’s column is subtitled “Are you thinking what she’s thinking?” Thankfully the answer is a baffled and very angry, no.

My date with Stephen Fry

2009-10-21T04:37:00.000-07:00

Few people evoke such feelings of devotion and affection in the British public as Stephen Fry. He is the nation’s dream dinner partner, fantasy friend, the thinking fag hag’s crumpet. The main theatre at Bloomsbury was packed full of expectant fans secretly hoping that, at the end of his talk about the short stories of Oscar Wilde, the few minutes it took to get their book signed would be long enough to say something so witty he’d invite them round for a cup of tea later. All of us united in the feeling that we knew him, not just from his decades of TV appearances, radio shows or perpetual twitter updates, but personally, clutching hardback copies of his new book there’s a strange feeling he might actually recognise us.

I used to love Stephen Fry. He was everything teenage me from a headache of a town in the midlands wanted to be; witty sophisticated, English and middleclass. I genuinely thought that once I moved to London our paths would somehow cross and he’d become a benign fairy godfather in my life, doling out advice and witty anecdotes over coffee in his Hampstead kitchen. But then like most teenage crushes once you find out that everybody else had the same fantasy, honesty permitting, I hid my love for the man at the back of the wardrobe like an embarrassing fashion mistake. He changed; became the man responsible for people using unnecessary adjectives in sentences in an attempt to appear witty, the face of exclusive, expensive London that I could just make out through the windows of small restaurants but never enter, he was all the Oxbridge comedy people that were clever and cute and hilarious and worked in Radio 4. He was the world I had wanted and it was full.

The man himself, my dream Dad, arrived on stage looking much slimmer than I remembered less Paddington Bear more city fox. Happily his talk coincided with Oscar Wilde’s 155th birthday, and Stephen took us on a whistle stop tour of Oscar’s life. He had a curious way of describing Wilde’s country of origin, admitting that many people didn’t know that his parents were Irish. Maybe it’s the border county blood in me but that seems to me a particularly odd and ungracious way of describing someone’s place of birth. Since Wilde’s persona was that of an outsider aping and dissecting the superficiality of English culture from that period, dismissing his nationality seems a very shallow way of looking at the man’s work. Cultural colonialism aside, Stephen described his early life in Dublin, as a boy so quick at reading his brother could win bets on his swiftness at finishing books, through to his glamorous life at Oxford where his devotion to aestheticism and flamboyant fashion set him apart from the reigning Victorian conservatism of that time. After a brief fling with poetry and a spell where he seemed to be doomed to be famous for being famous; a gifted raconteur and public speaker but with little substantive to show for his extra ordinary mind, he finally discovered his flair for playwriting. It was unfortunately on the very same evening that the theatre world was standing to ovate the opening night of “The Importance of Being Earnest” that the Marquis of Queensbury; the Dad of dear old Bosie-Oscar’s boyfriend from hell, was writing the note that called him a sodomite, and would result in a disastrous libel case, his conviction for sodomy, two years in hard labour, banishment and lonely death in exile in Paris.

Although it is chiefly as a dramatist that Wilde is remembered this night was to celebrate the other side of Wilde’s personality, glimpsed through the short stories written for his children. It was not for his caustic wit and cutting turn of phrase that he was lovingly remembered by his friends but, preserved in his sad, beautiful tales, his gentleness and kindness. In a week where a national newspaper saw fit to publish a column that seemed to revel in the death of a thirty two year old pop singer, this celebration of compassion seemed fitting.

I of course got my book signed, there’s no point holding a grudge. I asked him to sign it for my godson Setanta and he made the same joke about my uniquely named nephew that I’ve been hearing since his birth. Yes, Stephen, just like the sports channel, no I hope he’s not cancelled either. Ha ha. The notion that is was ancient Celtic name slightly longer than it was a TV station eluding him. He didn’t invite me over for tea; he didn’t ask me to Emma Thompson’s house for a game of charades, he didn’t even adopt me. I didn’t mind anymore. I’m not English and middle class, you see. I’m Irish, just like Oscar Wilde.

Knock knock

2009-10-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

Whenever I have a difficult decision to make, specifically if it involves that of a sensitive racial nature, I always think: what would a professional ballroom dancer do? Apart from their rhythm and winning ways with a carefully placed sequin, they are legendarily perceptive at judging the racial mood of any country. It’s a little known fact that before Nelson Mandela became everybody’s dream granddad and professional celebrity hugger, he was the fox trot champion of Apartheid South Africa. His canonical autobiography was originally called “My Long Salsa to Freedom”.

So, imagine my confusion when Anton Du Beke professional boogier, a man whose job it is to move to the beat of music and not fall over, was accused of racism. It all began when he hilariously suggested his dance partner Laila Rouass looked like a “Paki” after emerging orange faced from a fake tan session. It has to be remembered that to a ballroom dancer badly applied fake tan is as offensive as a shouting “Alright paedos!” on a day trip to the Vatican. St. Tropez is part of their ceremonial make up, the Umpa Lumpas are their gods, in a way Laila Rouass was offending him.

The Oscar Wilde of the cha cha cha had earlier quipped that he hoped the actress, who parents come from Morocco and India, wasn’t a terrorist. How does he think these up? Luckily the George Mitchell of light entertainment Bruce Forsyth was on hand to smooth over any stormy racial waters. He sagely pointed out that the English had been called “limeys” for years and they didn’t mind. How many English people living in isolated minorities, had the words daubed on their businesses or screamed in their ear as they were kicked to death, he wasn’t sure. I think Brucie is a diplomatic resource we need at the moment. We could send him along to the Left Back, gather the Palestinians and the Israelis around him in some “An audience with” setting and he could tell about the time he and Tommy Steele had been double booked for Sunday at The Palladium and just got on with it, did a tap dance double act and it all turned out marvellous.

Meanwhile The X Factor bandwagon has rolled into town; bring out your unloved and deluded, enthusiasm for regret, innocence for bitter disappointment. When I see the contestants manically sob into the camera with all the creepy enthusiasm of Tom Cruise that this show could change their lives forever, I always wonder: have they not seen any of the other series? Do they really not pause to ponder where last year’s twelve finalists are? Robbie Williams made his comeback live appearance on the first show, performing with the kind of wide-eyed desperate enthusiasm of someone with a gun to his head. ”Do you want us to love you again Robbie?” The producers were probably whispering in his earpiece “Then dance for us fat boy, dance”.

This year’s main talking point is John and Edward, teenage twins from Dublin who can neither sing nor dance but they can jump up and down a lot. They have been described as TV marmite, which I think means you either love them or hate them, not that they’ve got a yeast infection. I predict them lasting for another few weeks before Simon leans back with all the weary judgement of Solomon and acknowledges that maybe he got them wrong and ,to the audiences cheers, admits there was something fun about them . They’ll then be swiftly voted out the following week, journey and story arch completed. This week’s evictees were girl group “Kandy Rain” a name that sounds like an uncomfortable R Kelly B-side. The group of ex- strippers wanted to prove there was more to them than their ex profession so came on looking like, well, ex strippers. Sadly, as the main proportion of the audience is women, the chances of an attractive girl group going far in the competition was about as slight as their outfits. The ladies didn’t help their cause by describing themselves as “sexy”. Nobody likes anybody who describes themselves as sexy. A woman who calls herself sexy is like a man who ruefully describes himself as sarcastic and shy with women, claiming he’s exactly like Chandler from Friends, it just makes everybody want to vomit.

There is also Danyl Johnson, a man as annoying as the spelling of his name. Judge Dannii , who also seems to have come up with the spelling of her name while drunk, made a massive error when she seemed to out the twenty five year old live on air. It later emerged that she wasn’t trying to damage the young man’s chances by stirring up the unconscious homophobia of the British people - she was just attempting to be funny. Oh dear, that’s twice this week Antipodeans have tried to crack a joke and ended up insulting great swathes of the viewing public. When your attempt at humour results in jammed phone lines and campaigns from newspapers to have you fired, maybe just stick with knock knock jokes.

2009-10-07T16:14:00.000-07:00

Workplace romances are always tricky. You need to make an effort with clothes, brush your hair every day, fake enthusiasm about spreadsheets and not look like you want to kill yourself at 9.15 when you realise you’ve only been at work for fifteen minutes.

But spare a thought for David Letterman the married late night King of American late night TV chat who was forced to admit live on air to dipping his pen into the office ink. Letterman found a file in his car containing incriminating evidence about his dalliances and a demand for two million dollars or the information would, with flick of a malicious wand , swiftly turn into a book and film. A nervous Letterman was then forced to break the news to the American public with the confused studio laughter suggesting the audience thought it was all just some very strange wind up.

Letterman has become an American Angus Dayton, someone once famous for crowing over other celebrities indescretions who finds themselves in the headlines. Although unlike Dayton, Letterman is actually funny, writes his own material and seems to be doing well out of the scandal. Viewing figures for his show have sky-rocketed with more than a third more people tuning in. Surprisingly, no advertisers have distanced themselves from his show and, compared to the scandal that ensued after Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’s little on air blooper, his career does not seem to be suffering.

It helps that he’s built a career around being a little bit dodgy, sleazy but in an acceptable just the right side of flirty way. He’s like the old man at the party that will joke about getting you drunk so he can feel your breasts, make you genuinely worried that he will, but then not leaving you feeling unaccountably disappointed. He once memorably compared Sarah Palin to a “slutty flight attendant”, suggested her daughter was going to get impregnated at a baseball game and got flashed live on air by Drew Barrymore so no one is really that surprised.

Another person suffering from work based romances problems is Polish Roman Polanski, however since the college involved was a thirteen year old girl he’d promised a modelling career to and then allegedly drugged and raped, it’s understandably different. The director fled the US after being arrested for the crime over twenty seven years ago and has been living in Europe ever since. It was only when he flew to Switzerland to accept an award at a film festival that the Swizz party poopers arrested him and are now preparing to deport him to America. Roman has been refused parole and is awaiting extradition after the French government removed their support.

A petition of International artists has sprung to Roman’s defence including Martin Scorsese, Salman Rushdie and Woody Allen. Here’s a note for you, if you’re ever in a position where you’re accused of a sex crime with a young woman and Woody Allen rings up offering to be your character witness, make yourself a cup of tea and then take a hard, cold look at your life choices.

The defenders of the director have asked for the crime to be judged in relation to the decade it happened in, hey it was the seventies crazy things happened; we wore terrible flares, we loved Lava lamps, we buggered the odd child, relax, hey let’s watch “Charlie’s Angels”. I was born in the eighties, so I think it means that should I wish to I can sink Argentine vessels that are attempting to escape, because that’s just what we did then. The second line of defence is that since he is such a gifted film maker his crime should be considered in light of his incredible talent. This means that should you stumble home late from work, hair stuck to your face after another rainy evening and gratefully switch on your bedroom light to find Steven Spielberg in your bed, eating your food, downloading porn onto your computer as he gloats at the dirty protest he has decorated your entire room with, all he’d have to do is produce a copy of ET and legally you couldn’t touch him. It also means that if you like this column I could probably take some of your crisps without asking. The final line of vindication for the wee man has been the alleged victim’s unwillingness to press charges or even talk about the case publically. Her reluctance is not , it’s argued ,that of a middle aged woman unwilling to revisit a traumatic event from her childhood but proof that she thinks in hindsight that it’s all been a bit of an overreaction and besides it was ages ago!

Roman Polanksi ; giving the seventies ,sleaziness and the passage of time itself a bad name.

Rock on Tommy

2009-10-01T06:30:00.000-07:00

Have you ever worried that you’ve really put your foot in it? Carelessly assumed an overweight woman was pregnant, mistakenly let slip a friend’s fumble with another mate’s man, accidentally seemed to, not only support the Jewish holocaust, but actually wish more had been killed? Yes? Then you’ll know exactly how everybody’s favourite Navan man Tommy Tiernan feels after an innocent interview with Hotpress magazine got a bit Mel Gibsony and the media called for the man, who once forced The Late Late Show to go to adverts, to be slung out of the country. How did this happen?

Back when curly haired Tiernan first won our hearts and the prestigious Perrier comedy award his signature style was stories about his adolescence fighting the mindless authority of petty teachers and the unthinking small mindedness of the midlands town he grew up in. However, fifteen years as the unchallenged King of Irish comedy changes a man and perhaps scared of becoming part of the establishment; a Brendan Grace for the Bebos, the safe jester for the Celtic Tigers, Bertie Ahern with jokes (although the latter’s banking material is hilarious…), he has transformed himself from the Ireland’s white headed boy to the son everyone’s slightly worried about. Travellers, Madeline McCann, children with Down Syndromes the handicapped, nobody escaped Tommy’s wide eyed rants.

Certainly in the infamous Hotpress interview he didn’t seem like a raving fascist sympathiser. Asked by a member of the audience if anybody had ever taken umbrage with his risqué material, he expressed frustration at the delight certain people take in being offended, a blind, humourless, superiority achieved without actually listening to what he was saying. He recalled an encounter in America where two members of the audience took offence at a joke he had made about the Jewish people’s involvement in the death of Jesus. Bare in mind, that this claim is one of the most clichéd, hoariest of attacks, akin to calling Irish people alcoholics, about as controversial and topical as any two thousand year old event can be. It was this closed minded rush to be offended, to judge, the dreaded dead thoughts that George Orwell warned against, when people stop thinking for themselves and just know, that annoyed the comedian. He then joked that he hated Jews anyway and that he wished more had been killed in the holocaust. The audience then laughed, not because he had single-handedly transformed a wet tent in a field in Ireland into the Nuremburg rally but because after listening to him talk eloquently for over half an hour the audience decided he was making a joke not suddenly revealing himself as an insane fascist Jew hater.

But perhaps we have to ban anybody mentioning anything slightly controversial unless they highlight the fact that they’re not racist mad men first? It wasn’t like Tiernan just walked on stage and said “How’s it going? I’m Tommy, who here loves The Holocaust? Am I right?!” Are we that immature and insecure as a society and have such little faith in people that we can’t take it for granted that a comedian is making a joke? We all know racism is bad, that the holocaust was a tragedy, but it’s not a comic’s job to remind us what we already know. Audiences tend to make a Sartrian choice; you are attracted to people who confirm what you already think anyway. There are plenty of genuinely borderline racist comics out there; happily exploring the same issues with a lot less sophistication than award winning comedians. If the former is the only comedians who feel safe making those jokes than that is not a healthy, balanced place for comedy to be. As for less sophisticated people being inspired and missing the subtleties of Tiernan’s point, stupid racist people can be inspired by a pint of milk, we can’t hobble intelligent discussion in case a few missing links miss the point.

Race, especially in a country going through the teething pains of multi culturalism like Ireland, is something that demands to be talked about openly and honestly. Earlier in the Q&A session he made fun of an audience member’s accent who happened to be from Africa, causing a collective clenching of the audiences cheeks. He pointed out that if the man had been from Dublin they wouldn’t have minded. The audience laughed at this because he was right. Would it have been more tolerant and helpful to ignore the way the audience were treating that man differently just because it stemmed from the audience’s gaucheness rather than their hatred? Tiernan is Irish; one of the unexpected upsides of being an occupied people for six hundred years it that at least we escape post colonial guilt. When Tommy takes the piss out of an African’s accents there’s no ghost of white man on the plantation or last days of the Raj. If a British or American were to do the same, they would have their own context to explore. Tommy was one man gently taking the piss out of another.

And surely that is the point of comedy- to take the piss. Comedy is societies release valve, it allows us to acknowledge subjects that we can only safely deal with in the bubble wrap of a joke. If you can’t joke with someone, you’re suggesting that they can’t handle it, they’re different; the ultimate insult to anyone. When something dreadful happens, it’s your gut reaction, a survival instinct, to find the funny in it, even if it’s just the crappy text messages that circulate after a major disaster-there’s a point to them. The world is cruel, random and unfair, the only way we can claim some of it back for humans is by laughing at it. Why shouldn’t people take the piss out of the Holocaust, Jew or not? Is there a correct way to respond to the murder of millions of innocent people? Is it not crasser to single the Jewish people out as too delicate, too sensitive that they’re unable to have a sense of humour? Real racism, real cruelty happens not when people think they’re better than other people, but when they’re not acknowledged as people at all. Joking with someone is surely the most humane, beautiful, honest part of our interaction on this planet, a knowing look, a rueful acknowledgement that life can be a bit shit but we’re all in this together.

However, are missing children, minorities with no voice of their own and victims of head injuries deserving of Tiernan’s savage wit or lazy targets for a comedian rapidly getting bored and indulgent? Can comics rant on stage with impunity about whatever weird ramblings are tugging at their cerebral cortex? Luckily not. When Seinfeld star Michael Richards was caught on camera phone calling a noisy member of the audience a nigger and ranting that he wanted to bring back lynching, it effectively ended his career. The clips shows a struggling comedian and a frustrated man trying desperately to win back the crowd by being shocking rather than making anything close to an intelligent point. In the clip the comic is humiliated by a member of the audience who delivers the one line that silences all comedians; “You’re not funny”. No matter how racist you are there’s no answer to that. When Tiernan recently appeared on television and make a series of wisecracks about travellers there was silence from the audience and complaints from the viewers because they didn’t relate to his point and didn’t appreciate him thinking they would. Most normal audience members aren’t morons, just as most people are not closet racists waiting for their anti Semite Spartacus to tell it like it is, they won’t sit there and think, oh so Jews are bad then? If they really think you mean it, you will get booed and jeered off stage. Because real racism, real bigotry, is not loud, it doesn’t shout on stage or make quips to interviewers in front of film crews, real bigotry exists in silence, in the darkness of politeness, good manners and secret BNP list that no one wants made public.

The comedian has a sophisticated, delicate contract with the audience to voice their unprocessed thoughts, hopes and fears; if the comedian blinks and suggests something they don’t agree with the contract and spell is broken. That freedom for one person to stand in the glaring, probing spotlight and speak his or her truth to the darkness is surely worth defending by the audience and respecting by the comics. The fear that real honesty means that we’ll all be exposed as bigots certainly says more about the critics than the comedians.

The Fall of Keisha

2009-09-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

Have you now or at anytime ever been a member of the popular music band The Sugababes?

Now think carefully before you answer because I was sure I hadn’t and then I remembered I actually was for a very short period in 2006, though that may have just been an alcohol induced hallucination; the girls kicked me out because they didn’t like the blue grass/roots direction I was trying to take the band and Mutya was jealous of the purple unicorn I was given for press interviews. So I was pretty surprised to read-ding dong the witch is dead, Keisha Bucchaman, the last remaining original member of the group, the Alf Stewart if you will of the original line up, has been asked to leave, making Amelle free to return to the group, like a wounded fawn, after her recent few weeks AWOL. Beautiful doe eyed Keisha has been unmasked as being a bit of a madam, which is disappointing for me personally, being the prettiest I assumed she must be the nicest-twenty nine years of American television wouldn’t lie to me. But in a shock twist it turns out her face was lying to us all along and she was allegedly bullying her former band members. Thankfully the despot has been overthrown, the mighty has fallen, the mighty Keisha, the ultimate mean girl at the back of the bus has been toppled- mission accomplished!

And it all started with such promise. The ‘babes” first slunk into our lives in 1998 with an average age of leave me alone and stop ruining my life Mum, Buchanan, Mutya Buena and Siobhan Donaghy really should have been doing homework not starring in cutting edge music videos and perchance that was the problem. Siobhan, like a pale woodland spirit, wafted through the Overload video and then after a brief press release explaining she was leaving for artistic reasons, was gone forever.
With indecent haste she swiftly replaced by blonde scouser Heidi Range, who having seen action with Atomic Kitten, witnessing Kerry Katona in her wild eyed prime, was well able to stand up to a pair of gobby southerners . They were almost a happy family until Mutya slipped up by starting one of her own and getting herself pregnant. Sugababes can smell weakness and a little more than a year after having her daughter, the Babes were searching for a new member. Enter the hero of the hour, fragile but lovely Amelle, blessed with a face like a Disney Princess and a voice like someone who could quite probably sing on a Disney soundtrack, she fitted in immediately.
After a quiet start she quickly became the People’s Babe, with a troubled personal life ( arrested for GBH- charges dropped, sister accusing her boyfriend of raping her- charges dropped, boyfriend attacked with samurai knife, the usual stuff) she was the one we could identify with. However, the Sugababes curse hit again, the girls were doomed to find happiness only fleetingly.

A fierce new haircut, a smash collaboration with a grime star and a lot of close ups in the new video and she felt the wrath of Keisha the alpha King Babe herself. Last week, with Amelle missing and her mother contacting the police fearing she had been kidnapped (as you do) we thought, that’s it, we’d lost another one. It’s like Siobhan all over again. Why do I bother getting attached, remembering their name, when they just leave? A replacement was even named in the form of Eurovision star Jade Ewen. Then in a piece of news that made me feel like Ebenezer Scrooge, when he realizes it was just a dream, the spirits had done it all in one night, it turns out, Amelle was safe all along, not kidnapped, and that it would be Keisha leaving the band after all- hurrah hurrah- buy the biggest turkey in the window my young boy and keep the change!

First Obama elected and now the nice girl beating the class bully, somewhere little Siobhan and Mutya are peering bleary eyed from an open front door realising they are safe at last, safe at last. Actually, I would love to see Mutya, Keisha and Siobhan meet up in some dodgy North London boozer, like criminals returning to a safe house after a heist , turn to see the new Sugababes line up playing on a tinny TV set and look at each other with baffled confusion. The band is Darwinism in bodycon mini dresses, unstoppable, constantly evolving, dispensing with deadwood with efficiency of the artic polar bear, protecting it’s next number one. They will never end. Ever. Imagine a Louboutin heel constantly crushing the toe of the new girl hogging the paps attention and that is the future of British pop. Well, at least it’s better than The chuffing Saturdays…

I bloody love Kanye West

2009-09-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

You’re in trouble, you need help, who are you going to call? Kanye West that’s who. Even if he lost touch with ground control many, many moons ago and is floating around, alone, somewhere in a universe entirely populated by his own ego and really jazzy sunglasses. His disdainful abandonment of earth’s customs was showcased this week when miffed that Beyonce didn’t win Best female video (despite going on to win best video, the nomination categories for MVA’s being nothing if not comprehensive) he stormed the stage like an angry Renaissance king, yanking the mike from the startled winner Taylor Swift, to voice his disproval to his kingdom. The MTV Music Awards suddenly turned into a really really good episode of Sunset Beach, Beyonce using her acceptance speech to invite bashful little Taylor back on the stage to have another chance to thank her Mom and Jesus or something really boring like that. A huge public outcry has ensued, with even President Obama taking time off from trying to introduce universal healthcare to the American people to call him an asshole. Reports that David Cameron called his actions well wack haven’t been confirmed. All this forced a shamefaced Kanye to make a humble appearance on Jay Leno to apologise, blaming his actions on over work. Such were his PR’s desperation to get the public to feel sorry for their Sun King; they even dragged his dead mother into the story with Kanye regretting how he had let her down. Of course it wasn’t over work, or even delayed grief that inspired Kanye to turn to Amber Rose and say" You know what would be a great idea, liven things up a bit?!" He did it because he’s absolutely mental. The man is no stranger to voicing his wrath, he hijacks music awards the way you or I butt into longwinded friend’s meandering sentences. The first time we witnessed the fitness was when he didn’t win a VMA for his video for "Touch the Sky". With an endearing mixture of arrogance and sheer bafflement he attempted to argue the award from the actual winners like MTV had suddenly included a debating section to the evening, he pointed out that his video had canyon jumping, cost a million dollars and had Pamela Anderson in it- PAMELA ANDERSON!! Looking at him, I experience the same feeling of envy and quiet awe when I see a child pull a really big, magnificent strop. I think; I remember when I could do that, that felt good. Kanye is still in that magical place. Instead of bitching with his friends that the wrong person won or complaining to his management afterwards, he simply breezes on stage demanding a recount. You know all those terrible thoughts you have in your head, when you secretly think you saved a night out from calcifying boredom, or you without you your company would have folded years ago, well, Kanye not only says that out loud, he’s confused why we haven’t already noticed it first. He has publicly declared what he does isn’t just music it’s medicine. He also went on record as saying he would be in The Bible if it was written today and completely oblivious to the consequences announced at a Hurricane Katrina telethon that President Bush doesn’t care about black people. Come on, let’s be honest, does he? He’s even written a book "Thank you and You’re Welcome" offering us mere non Westians the chance to benefit from his philosophy- Believe in your flyness , he urges, conquer your shyness. God, maybe he should be in the bible after all.

Taylor Swift will be fine, she’s more popular and liked more than ever ,(who's heard of her before?) Beyonce got the chance to be magnanimous in a really amazing outfit so everybody adores her more than ever and poor Kanye is probably going to have to go on a little holiday. We need more Kanye’s. We need more Lady Gagas. She did, admittedly arrive at the Award ceremony in an outfit so bizarre that it looked like her family were being held hostage and wearing it was part of some signal to keep the negotations going but isn’t it a refreshing change from some dull poppet in a vagina skimming Versace gown? Yes, some people find her annoying but how nice to be annoyed by a young blond American pop star for taking herself too seriously rather than depressed by one who is genuinely not sure what that word means. She decided to finish her performance on the show by pretending to stab herself as she played the piano. Bloodstained performances and bullying weedy country stars, not a great example for the young people of today, I grant you, but if they’re looking for moral guidance from MTV they’ve got bigger problems. It’s only rock and roll ,after all, but I really like it.

Let's just escape to the moon!

2009-09-10T08:37:00.000-07:00

So hello there showbiz pigs, here we are back at the trough again, ready to nuzzle another helping of celebrity reclaimed meat. This week it mainly seems to be about that old staple; sexual assault. Rape is the new black. It’s just not daring, without some vaginal tearing. How times change? Do you remember, back in the day, when any starlet worth her FHM front cover had at least one tale of a teenage eating disorder? Then it was “my secret coke hell”, now all that seems rather twee and taken for granted, like Vera Lynn hinting that it was a dram of sherry that got her through the Blitz.

Jack Tweed, in the most inevitable story since Kerry Katona last did something really stupid, has been arrested on suspicion of rape. The alleged event took place at his Essex bachelor pad after a particularly strenuous night on the tiles at a West End nightclub. I think we’ve missed a trick here. If sleaziness could somehow be turned into renewable energy, that sentence alone could fuel the greater area of London for about two years. Jack has occupied a special place in British culture of late, being the first male WAG, a male z-list celeb famous for whom he went out with. Naturally a man in such a glamorous role attracts attention, girls would mutter-“I must have him, he married someone who died of cancer, if I bag him Mahiki nightclub is my kingdom” And strangely this heady mixture of sudden notoriety, money and a young man with a history of criminal violence proved to be less than successful. Let’s hope Jade’s Mum’s psychic doesn’t fill her in on this latest development.

Meanwhile, Katie Price has revealed that she herself was raped more than once, via that age old oracle her OK advice column. Her new man Alex Reid is currently filming a movie that newspapers alleged featured a scene glamorising sexual assault. Katie hit back at the claims, arguing that the photos were taken out of context. Call me old fashioned but I think, even if a scene just looks a bit rapey, it’s never a good sign. It’s not like a trick of perspective or a weird way the light fell at an odd angle. Nobody has ever complained about a picture and then suddenly realised that if you hold the picture back a bit, he’s making her a cup of tea, how silly! She says she revealed this episode from her life to prove Alex’s innocence, as someone with her history would never stick by him if it was true. This vague reason for revealing such a traumatic experience from a woman who has already released two autobiographies and who, at the moment, has never been less popular, makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Without revealing what actually happened to her or how she overcame it, or even how it made her feel, she’s not offering any help or guidance to similar woman in her position. She is however requiring us to feel sorry for her, to care about her; you can’t be mean about a rape victim and come out feeling like Audrey Hepburn. People don’t like being forced to feel sorry for someone, it’s like the attention seeking girl at school who had a panic attack every time you stood up to her. Her shrill appearance on This Morning to discuss the story had all the non blinking paranoia of Heather Mills in her prime. Now, nobody minds being cynical about vegans, they’re fair game (tofu game of course…) but she’s doing an active disservice to similar women by revealing this portion of her past in such a tactless manner. The very fact that she isn’t discussing it as a separate manner, independent of her celebrity, her divorce, her Jordan persona is inappropriate in the extreme. The doubt she has stirred, albeit unintentionally, has helped perpetuate that most revolting suspicion and terror of victims of sexual assault, that the verb “claimed” cancels out the harrowing word at the end of that sentence.

The awquard, hesitating way the press is reporting the story is also disquieting. The use of “allegedly” and “apparently” suggesting that she hasn’t quite proved her story yet. But how do you report the sexual assault of a woman who personifies for many the notion of women as sexual objects, there for the taking? Jordan was always up for it, gagging for it, loved it, the willing wink to come and get it. The porn industry, be it, hard, soft, or the onmipresecent flash of flesh that has spread through our everyday mental landscape is based on the sexualised image of the submissive, young woman. Beauty has always been used to sell things, but a society jaded by extreme images from the internet, filtering through to every aspect of our visual lives, needs an extra kick to keep things interesting. The promise is that you can have that doe-eyed page three girl or that pouting teenager in the jeans ad, whether they like it or not.Also in the news this week, in a story almost ignored by the press, was the American fashion designer found guilty of raping at least fourteen young aspiring models, whose careers he had promised to help .The trial reports are heartbreaking with tales of sobbing teenage victims holding each others hands in solidarity. It’s the hypocrisy of this story that I find revolting. Anand Jon Alexander was sentenced to fifty nine years for attacking them but the industry that was going to sell those very same girls, at the very same age as sexual objects doesn’t wonder if it’s morally any better? If our media encourages us to imagine dominating, controlling,taking, young beautiful girls, no wonder it feels uncomfortable reporting when someone takes them at their word. How after all, can you be a sexual fantasy and a human being as well? How can you be a sexy teenage temptress and a scared fourteen year old child in a courtroom? Katie Price created her Jordan persona so that it would be easier to sell herself as a guilt free sexual fantasy devoid of feelings or respect. So it’s Katie when we’re supposed to like her and sexy Jordan when we’re allowed hate her. Maybe, all women are going to need their own double indentity soon.

What would happen if Pinnochio lied about getting his nose fixed?

2009-09-02T05:04:00.000-07:00

Demi Moore has never had plastic surgery. Ever. Now, there are barefaced lies and then there are botoxed to within an inch of its collagen plumped cheeks tall tales. It’s like if I shaved off all my hair, then complained that my new fringe was getting in my face and you had to look me right in the eyes and hesitantly offer to lend me a hair band. Its part of the usual evasions given out by Hollywood stars- No, I’ve never had surgery, I’m just lucky; oh you skin obeys gravity does it? I gave up dairy and the rules of physics years ago; my publicist did a deal with Isaac Newton. No, I never work out; I’m just too busy having a better life than you that I don’t put on weight. I gorge myself on deep-fried fat people and nothing! Yes, I have the perfect marriage, ok, my husband is gay and my religion means that I believe in space aliens but you’re missing the point. I’m your genetic superior. It’s the strange double think that Hollywood uses to convince us that Jessica Simpson is a girl next door and Britney Spears is now sane because she’s been trained to brush her hair.

Forty seven year old Demi not only looks like a twenty year old, she looks like a completely different twenty year old to the one she was when she actually was that age. Gorgeous, beautiful Demi was the belle of the eighties. Her doughy cheeks and sparkly eyes broke a million stone washed denim achy breaky hearts. She’s still stunning; she just looks like a different stunning person. Not in a bad way, just like if her face was a flicker book you’d go old, older, Oh “Ghost” god, I haven’t seen that in ages, older, Oh whoops it’s a new book, hang on who is this? I feel like I should defend her because we’re friends. Twitter friends that is. Demi, Denise Richards, Paris, all the gals’ tweets cheer me up as I slowly become sentient over the first morning’s coffee. The time difference means as I’m murderously turning on my computer in rainy London, my LA twitter friends are lazily snuggling into their Egyptian cotton sheets, twittering their thanks to God for an another awesome day on the beach. The sad thing is that in Demi’s tweets she seems so sweet and completely earnest. She appears genuinely indignant that anything other than yoga and running on the beach could be the reason why she has managed to dodge the aging process. Of course we’d all like Demi a lot more if she admitted that to avoid becoming invisible in Hollywood and to feel better around her much younger husband, every now and then she had bits of her face cut off. The same way we’d all have liked Victoria Beckham if, during the Rebecca Loos unpleasantness, she’d wandered around in her pjs for a while muttering. I’d love it if she did a full interview revealing the real reason for her eternal youth; the occasional sacrifice of the odd virgin and a bit of bathing in the unfortunates’ blood. That would be some “OK” home shoot. She could even bring out her own home sacrifice kit and sell them on QVC. Apparently it really closes those pores right up.

Meanwhile even Kerry Katona’s nose is jumping ship and apparently quietly rotting away. The woman whose job it is to make us all feel better because at least we’re not as bad as her was caught snorting cocaine by a tabloid and has been dropped by supermarket chain “Iceland”. She’s also been held by the police after allegedly attacking her former accountant. Maths is the least of your worries Kerry. Her husband was caught getting a bit too friendly with a stripper on their make or break holiday away and now Kerry faces losing custody of her children after allegations from her nanny that she is an unfit mother. Meanwhile, Brian McFadden, the father of two of her children is flying over to Dublin from his base in Australia to attempt to gain custody. Notice there’s no story running about an absentee Dad leaving his children with an unhinged drug addict. Had he to be reminded he actually had kids? I remember his first solo single was about wanting to spend time with them so you’d thing when he performed that on stage it would at least jog his memory. Apparently Kerry picks away the black, rotting, coke addled nostril flesh from her nose with a tweezer. Just pause on that image for a while. She’d probably offer to show it to you as well; in return for love. Never mind the glittery phantasms of the Hollywood publicity machine, that my friends, is the foul rag and bone shop of celebrity British style. Peer into it's heart of snotty darkness and wonder.

Goodbye Edinburgh 2009

2009-08-26T07:35:00.000-07:00

By you time you read this the Edinburgh Festival will be getting ready to shop up for another year and drained comedians, like dead eyed soldiers that have seen action, will be quietly, sombrely packing their kit, like the unloved raggy dolls they are, and heading back to their civilian lives. For some it will be a return to the grind of circuit gigs and telly writing, for more the iniquities of temp work and supply teaching will be curling its frustrating finger, like a parent calling their child in for their bath. After a brief, beautiful bloom of a month’s constant gigging, vinegary chips for your dinner and nights that reluctantly end at four in the morning, performers return like sarcastic Persephones to the dark, dank realms of the real world.

If you’ve had a good festival and appeared in a well received show in a big venue, then Edinburgh is an experiment in mini celebrity; people unheard off outside of the sweaty, incestuous embrace of the comedy circuit, are reviewed in the daily papers and websites, their faces are plastered over the city’s hoardings, their passes get them into the private bars; they even have their own harem of teenage drama students flyering for their show. It’s bit like being a cross between a medieval monarch and an X Factor finalist for the month, but with more literary fiction references and self doubt. The festival is a month long office party and, without meaning to be crude, one bad STD, could knock out the entire comedy industry; however, it is a world as class obsessed as any Jane Austen novel. A whole Edinburgh etiquette has to be observed by performers’ in this casually, regimented society. Much like a Regency ball, successful comics can only be approached if they have made eye contact with you first, any drunken misdemeanours will be noted at the next night’s gatherings and shameless networking and social climbing will be recognised and, depending on how successful the person is, condemned or invited over for a drink. Any hopeful Becky Sharpe armed with only a venue pass and a glint in her eye, will hope to bag herself the next big thing, after all a single comic in a big venue with an eight o’clock show is usually in want of a girlfriend. If she succeeds she may unfortunately discover that her Edinburgh prince turns into a London pumpkin once the train leaves Waverly station and eleven months of grotty stag night gigs await their royal return.

Former ladette, Denise Van Outen is appearing at the festival this year in the show "Blondes". Blessed with a glorious singing voice and the face of an angel, her actual comic timing is leaving a lot to be desired with her show winning the dubious honour of containing the worst joke of the festival. Sad for her but confirmation that’s there’s more to being a comic than reeling off jokes written by other people and being known for being a bit of a laugh. The thinking behind it is clear as a smug TV producer’s glass of gin, Denise, the cheeky Essex girl, come on she was hilarious on The Big Breakfast, how hard can it be? Quite hard indeed as the legions of comedians can attest to over even smugger folded arms and indignant, rolling eyes. It was always going to be hard for a successful, glamorous TV presenter to have a go at stand up even in the gentler confines of a one woman cabaret style show. Nobody wants to hear a stunner complain about the hardships of being beautiful, we don’t want to know about the highlights we’re more interested in the dark roots. If she’d spilled her guts about being a "babe" approaching her sell by date, her failure to crack the US, with younger, skinnier girls snapping at her heels, screaming at the crowd that Cat Deally had stolen her life, now that, that would be stand up.

In need of a good joke is fellow blonde Melanie Griffith after admitting herself back into rehab for the third time. It’s reported that people close to her got suspicious when the fifty three year old became obsessed with the colour yellow insisting that everything and everyone in her presence wore the uplifting colour. Yellow, which ironically represents good health, was also the favourite colour of Vincent Van Gogh, who also became obsessed with it just before he shot himself. Let’s hope favourite colours are all Vincent and Melanie have in common. Although, it might be nice for Melanie, at this tough time, suddenly discovered a genius for expressionistic oil painting and it would be lovely for Vincent to realise, that he wasn’t dead afterall, but in fact married to Antonio Banderas. What a turn up for the books that would be? Hang on- "And it was all Yellow- The Mel and Vincent Story" I think I’m on to something, if we could get Coldplay involved, there’s definitely a one woman Edinburgh musical in that. Now, has anybody got Tess Daly’s number?

Best of both worlds!

2009-08-16T18:34:00.000-07:00

The nineties were in many ways a simpler times, the Spice girls were the girl group that encouraged boys to get with their friends unlike the Pussycat dolls who look like they want to give their friends an eating disorder and their boyfriends an STD, terrorism was just something the IRA did and Brit actors were yummy and funny. King of them was Jude Law, dazzlingly handsome with a smile that made you want to attack your parents for not living in North London or you would definitely be going out with him. Cut to fifteen years later and sadly things have not turned out as, we assume, he wanted. Split from Sadie, cheated on Sienna, he’s now got a New York model knocked up and is facing the mother of all paternity pay outs. And he’s in a Shakespeare play- boring. Samantha Burke, Jude’s baby mama, informed the Alfie star (the most recent movie he was in anyone can remember) of their special little arrival using that most romantic of messages, a modern day stork if you will, a legal letter form her lawyer. What happened to the class of 1996? Ewan Mcgregor seems to have given up acting after the cinematic pile up that was the Star Wars prequels and Jonny Lee Miller has been MIA since since wedge trainers were in fashion. Maybe we could start a fund to get them in a “Trainspotting” sequel, although without the glamour of youth, gentle rounding of middle age spread and dissappearing hairlines, they might just look like real junkies in the park. Some roads are better left untravelled.

Someone else not having a great week is “Grey’s Anatomy “star Kathrine Heigl. Beautiful Kathrine is fast getting a reputation for being a bit of a big mouth. Let’s have a look at the evidence; the gorgeous blonde first broke through with the film “Knocked Up”. When interviewed by Vanity Fair about the movie, she described it as a hard film to love and misogynistic. Right, OK. She then wrote a letter to the Emmys asking them not to nominate her for any awards that year as her storylines were rubbish. Right. She then followed up the “misogynistic” “Knocked Up” with “27 Dresses” about a woman obsessed with weddings ( I think it was co written by Germaine Greer and Camiila Paglia but can’t be sure) and her latest film “The Ugly Truth” where a neurotic desperate singleton gets relationship advice from a man who seems to hate women- Kathrine co produced that last gift to the sisterhood. I think the actress’s actions are so bizarre and seem so wilfully set on offending as many people as possible, I almost suspect foul play. I don’t normally beleive in maleviolent mind control, voddoo dolls, or hypnotism gone bad, but I can’t help suspecting that former rom com queens Kate Hudson or Renee Zelwegger have the most to gain from this upstarts disgrace. Follow the money people. If I next spot Kathryn on television, blank eyed, unrinating on a puppy, while babbling about how much she hates earthlings, I’m calling the police.

Meanwhile sixteen year old Miley Cyrus is celebrating her special transformation from child star to future damaged young nutcase, with a pole dance at the Teen Choice Awards. But then, maybe I’m completely wrong, I mean apart from Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, and Christina wandering around in a pair of arseless chaps, lots of former Disney stars flower into balanced and contented adults.What better way to celebrate that special moment in a young woman’s life than to pop her in some boots and hot pants and have her master a dance usually accompanied by sweaty fivers in your g string so your children can go to college. Miley, as far as Disney, her Christian, conservative parent company are concerned ,is ready for the next stage of her career. The company that also produces her TV series and release her records go to great lengths to promote Christian values, the importance of the family and sexual abstinence before marriage. So as Miley was pole dancing her way to her first pap shot of her crotch she too would have been wearing her very own purity ring. In a turn of events, so unintentionally hilarious,it almost suggests the awards were taking the micky mouse, Miley presented that night’s lifetime achievement award to a certain Britney Spears. That’s right, Disney were able to present a woman, who cannot legally take money from her own bank account with a life time achievement award and keep a straight face. I’m suprised Britney didn’t didn’t start her acceptance speach by grabbing Miley and screaming- “My name is Britney Spears, King of Kings, Look on my Works, ye mighty and despair”. Mad mental Britney would have been the sanest person there

Wait till Donna finds out, she is going to scratch that Megan's face...

2009-08-05T07:39:00.000-07:00

Say what you like about being dead but it’s a great way of moving on. As we gently shuffle off this mortal coil and finally register for that great social networking site in the sky, it was assumed that all our old problems were left behind. That is unless you’re connected to Jade Goody in which case, there are still scores to be settled, OK magazine spreads to fill, and digital TV programmes to record. That’s right, thanks to a “loving” Living TV special, recorded with a renowned TV psychic and Jade’s mum Jackiey clutching the very dressing gown she died in, we now have the latest update from the Big Brother star. Could Jade please come to the diary room one last time?

What did she have to say from her lofty position? A message for world peace? The meaning of life? The real reason behind the Katie/ Peter split? No, that Jack Tweed was a cheat, a bad’un and she wished she never married him and that her Mum had been right about everything. It certainly gives us a whole new terrifying vision of the after life, an everlasting dimension where your husband could still be really getting on your nerves. The psychic claimed that Jack’s philandering with glamour models so soon after her death was upsetting the immortal soul of Miss Goody. Jade wailed from beyond the grave that she should have listened to her Mum and that marrying him was the biggest mistake of her life. So, the “respected” TV psychic would rather ruin the memory of the 27 year old’s final happy days by claiming she was celestially shredding her wedding gown, rather than let her rest in peace? In her wedding pictures, the poor girl seemed genuinely happy, but instead they've decided to ruin those perfect memories by suggesting that Jade was now reassessing their relationship over some heavenly double G and Ts. We all suspected he wasn’t exactly Clark Gable but luckily Jade never saw it and she died without having to see the kiss and tells that were as inevitable as trash TV like this. It’s hard to deny Jade’s Mum her anger, the twenty two year old’s latest shenanigans have been insensitive bordering on the mentally retarded, Call me over romantic, but wearing the suit you first wore when you married your now dead wife for a night out on the pull, is at best a bit stupid at worst callous. Doesn’t he own any other clothes? There’s the alleged txt message to glamour girls charmingly asking if they want to “rump” and nights out at “Faces” night club in Essex, a kind of Wags Jerusalem. Jade you can do better. Surely there are some nice men in heaven you could turn to?

Don’t worry readers, if you find this all a bit confusing, maybe the book Jade’s Mum is bringing out soon, inspired by these sessions, will clarify things. Because grieving mum Jackiey is being helped through by not only her management team, a TV production company but a publishing house as well, eager to celebrate Jade’s memory in the most tasteful and lucrative way possible. You see that’s respectful Jack, you could learn a lot from them.

If you were to find the exact opposite of Jade Goody it would be Megan Fox, startlingly beautiful but with all the personality and humour of an unfair parking ticket. The woman manages to make being a bisexual starlet seem boring. She’s been labelled as the next Angelina Jolie mainly because she’s got brown hair and lips that look like they’re planning to take over the rest of her face. Her contribution to the screen so far is “Transformers” but calling yourself an actress because you’ve appeared in a film that bad is a bit like claiming you’re a Grand Prix driver because you walked by a car accident once.

She was until recently engaged to former 90210 star Brain Austen Green. I love Brian because he reminds me of a simpler showbiz time. Do you remember; the nineties? When all a young starlet needed was a babydoll dress and a nice new flowery hat, before size zero models and actresses checking into rehab because all their tattoos had exploded. The engagement is off and Megan will date other people, while Brian cannot. This is to allow her time to figure out what she wants, what she needs of course is a swift kick up the arse. Oh Brian, you don’t need this nonsense, you went out with Tiffany Amber Thiessan for crying out loud, the pretty one from Saved by the Bell, you brought Hip Hop to 90210, forget Enimen, you were the first great white rapper. What would Dylan do Brian, what would Dylan do?

Oh God, please don't let him be the next Prime MInister, the man's a moron..

2009-07-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

There are three signs that something is no longer cool, Firstly if your Mam knows about it, and secondly if part of that trend is on sale at a family department store. It was during the school holidays of 1992, my mother attempted to buy a pair of smiley face adorned Eclipse baggy jeans from Primark, the uniform of every self respecting raver in my town thus, in one mindless action, ruining dance music for me for ever. I would never look at Two Unlimited in the same way again. I was reminded of that feeling of embarrassment and confused rage when Dave Cameron made his appearance on Christian O’ Connell’s radio show recently. The leader of the opposition faced this formidable broadcaster, seen by many as the next Jeremy Paxman, if everybody in the world suddenly died, for what was sure to be a battle of wits; come on, we’d all seen the grilling O’Connell had given David Hasselhoff. It turns out the Eton educated Tory leader knows exactly how the people feel, we’re pissed off with politicians, Twitter is well whack and people who twittered too much were twats, yeah get me bruv? Yes that’s right, he swore on radio! He cares so much about young people today he just let rip, went crazy and showed us the real Dave,Street Dave. Wow, he’s mad, bonkers even, I bet he even listens to Dizee Rascal on his ipod and thinks, that’s right Dizee, I’m just trying to lead parliament, ain’t nothing crazy about me. And in that moment her ruined swearing for me, forever, because that’s the third sign that something is no longer relevant, when a politician does it in an attempt to appear cool to younger voters. Blair did it with Britpop and now Cameron has done it with an entire way of speech. Thanks Dave. What will be next in his attempt to patronise, I mean appeal to young voters? Is he going to rename the opposition, the Conservative Brethren? Referto his constituency as his manor? Threaten to knife Gordon Brown during Parliamentary Questions? Thanks Dave, you’ve just made knife crime un cool as well, thanks.

But then, no one likes getting older. Not anybody over eighteen anyway but until recently it wasn’t a fireable offence. Or so Arlene Philips would have assumed until the Strictly Come Dancing judge got booted of the BBC show for the unforgivable sin of not being dead, the only alternative to getting older that I know of. The sixty six year old dance veteran has been replaced by last year’s winner Aleisha Dixon, which is a bit like Simon Cowell being replaced by Ray Quinn. Being a woman on television nowadays is like a cross between “Logans’ Run”, where everybody over the age of thirty is killed and HG Wells “The Time Machine” where the world has split into frolicking lovelies swanning about above ground and ugly trolls toiling underneath. In TV’s case, they’re either bland blondes simpering into auto cues or old hags popping up every now and then on Loose Women. This week has also seen Jo Whiley, respected music journalist, replaced from her mid week slot by Fearne Cotton, whose knowledge of music extends as far as having met some at a party. That’s right, Fearne probably brags about having met some music at a party. I think Old Father Time herself, forty four year old Jo should take advantage of her androgynous name and continue presenting the show with a deeper voice; it could buy her another five years at least.

But at least she’s not Jessica Simpson, spare a thought for the poor girl. Go on any thought. Even if it’s “Oh, I think it's going to rain again”. The poor girl’s been given the heave ho, the old elbow, been let go from her relationship with her most recent beau, American football star Tony Romo, the day before her 29th birthday. The big bash, which had been given a Barbie and Ken theme, had to be swiftly cancelled when it emerged that Barbie was now facing the world alone. The reason given for the split was txt messages from Jess’ ex John Mayer found on her mobile. That’s the same John who Jennifer Aniston dumped because of his constant twittering. John Mayer is a bit of an enigma, not really known outside of the US, he is a respected and talented musician yet mainly known for dumping gorgeous women empirically out of his league. One wonders where he finds the time for music with all the heartbreaking and general abuse of modern technology he seems to get up too. Let’s hope John Mayer never finds out that Dave’s been up too, insulting his beloved twitter. He’d either thump him, or worse get Dave to fall madly in love with him and then dump him cruelly and publically. Be careful Dave, you don’t want young people’s vote that much.

Team Price

2009-07-15T08:59:00.000-07:00

Is Katie Price, the next Princess Diana? I know we thought it was Jade Goody was for a while and then we got all distracted by Jacko for a bit but I think this might be the one. There were definitely echoes of that famous Martin Bashir interview on Saturday when Katie issued her personal message to her people, like a modern day missive from St.Katie to the Corinthians; and the Lord said you should never cry over a man. Whereas Diana fluttered from under her navy eyelashes, Katie, eyes lacquered like some ageless She Who Must Be Obeyed stared straight at Piers Morgan like he was fly and she was feeling peckish. Diana just had three in her marriage, Katie and Pete had an entire production crew.

Times have changed though, at least Bashir, unlike Morgan didn’t ask Diana to defend her self from the label “slapper”, licking him lips as he savoured the word, like an old drunk slowly eating a bacon sandwich. Who even uses words like that anymore? He presumably means the type of skantily clad women tabloid editors like Morgan fill their newspapers with. Look at her wearing the clothes that she knows we find sexy, and a mother of three - she’s a mother and a whore, I’m confused, I hate her, I want her- ahh – Mum!

And wither now for Pete?-in love with Katie but unable to live with Jordan. He has been seen out and about with fellow zeleb Chantelle Houghton of Celeb Big Brother “fame”. The fact that Peter and Chantelle share the same agent and Chantelle is attempting to relaunch herself, is I’m sure a happy coincidence. You’d think post her marriage to Preston, the ex- Paris Hilton look alike would have had enough of selling her soul for a photo shoot in Now magazine, but old habits, it seem, die hard. Chantelle has been hailed as the next Jordan so it makes sense that she would inherit him. If theirs is a genuine meeting of minds then I’m the real mother of Michael Jackson kids. She’s given an interview denying the romance, where she poses in her undies, so you know she really means it; nothing says sincerity like visible bra straps. The magazine editors have been canny enough to get her to pose in white underwear though, so that means she’s the good one. It could be worse Peter, I think your agent represents Calumn Best as well, so count your blessings. Katie, Chantelle, Peter, it’s like “All About Eve” sponsored by Nuts magazine, although if Katie Price promised everyone a bumpy night, it would sound more like a sexual threat than a witty one liner.

The lady herself has just returned from a holiday in Ibiza amidst talk that her drunken shenanigans, desperate need for a new bloke and general bad behaviour could cost her millions in advertising revenue and possibly custody of her children. It certainly puts your last Saturday night escapades in perspective doesn’t it? The papers didn’t explain how a recently dumped mother of three should take her very public rejection but I’m sure we’d all love to know. Katie’s problem is that she comes from a generation of women bred to act like they don’t care. Her’s was the first to experience the joys of alcopops, laddettes, drink till you vomit and then collapse underneath somebody, as long as you don’t act like you care then that’s ok. Independence, self reliance, indifference your only defence from a world that you had already decided didn’t care. Kate has been labelled cold, nasty, and cruel to Peter. She always struck me as someone terrified by how much she actually needed him. What is she to do, a woman who proudly wears her toughness like an armour of orange fake tan, when the man that finally sees the real Katie, pale vulnerable and real, rejects her?

Her questionable revelations about a recent miscarriage may stick in my women’s throat as an ugly attempt to counsel sympathy, or the desperate act of a woman wanting to be seen as a person rather than a tabloid sentence. Even her monotone description of her heartbreak seemed hollow. We didn’t want to see her glowing and groomed, we wanted snot, messy hair, why did he leave me sobs, not cold defiant self confidence. Like Kate McCann had learned before her, we like our heroines vulnerable. Katie Price isn’t nice, she’s far from sweet and her attacks on Pete; the bitter swipes and accusations, have all the necessary ugliness of survival. Because make no mistake, unlike that other Princess, the coy vulnerable victim that demurely batted away the tears, this one will most definitely survive.

I love Jennifer Hudson

2009-07-08T07:14:00.000-07:00

So, that was it-what a final show. Now when Michael bumps into Princess Diana in that great big eighties theme night in the sky and during a Duran Duran slow set the topic of funerals comes up, MJ can hold his head up high. Yes, Diana may have been coronated the Queen of Hearts and serenaded by an Elton John with a twitchy eyebrow but Jackson has just been ordained saviour of the world.

Turns out he was not only the greatest entertainer ever known, best friends with Brooke Shields and a lover of KFC; he was also the most generous humanitarian of his generation. Yes, the man who blew his fortune on the type of crap you’d usually see for sale in pound shops except it cost millions was actually a charity man. The money he donated to hospital wings , the foundations he established, the secret donations he slipped in impoverished bank accounts, like a moon walking Father Christmas, was probably nearly, nearly as much as he spent on private funfairs, personal zoos, big vases and awkward lawsuits. His philanthropy to the legal professions must mean he has at least a library dedicated to him by now somewhere, albeit in a very, very specific legal field. And that is before we get onto the innovations his patronage funded in the field of cosmetic surgery. Where were their representatives? I think in honour of their role in his life they should have taken his beautiful gold casket at the start of the performance and then in a big reveal at the very end, brought it back completely and utterly bashed up, misshapen and unrecognisable; it’s sadly what he would have paid for.
Cynicism aside, it was heart warming to see so many celebrities singing their devotion to him. He was loved, they trilled, they’d be there, they warbled, he was not alone, they promised, I’m sure the singer who died, let’s be honest, most definitely alone-ish, surrounded by paid yes men, drugged up the eyeballs and broke would have appreciated the sentiments.

What was missing in consistency was made up in sheer God Bless America, Uncle Sam, this is the best goddam country on Earth chutzpah. There was nothing reserved, quiet or reticent about this affair. Get the cute pictures of him as a kid, book the gospel choir and finish with his daughter sobbing that she loved her Dad, we are going to have emotions and we are going to enjoy then. Mariah was there, clearly moved and actually fully dressed so you know she meant business, then there was Usher, proving what a talented singer Michael was by boring us to death with his version of “Gone too Soon”, then there was the mighty Jennifer Hudson, The “Dream Girls” star who’s let’s remember entire family had been murdered in the past year, brave, beautiful, belting out a classic and oh my days pass the tissues, heavily pregnant. I now love Jennifer Hudson, with a sincerity I thought only Jo Wood could inspire. She makes me wish I could turn into a one woman gospel choir and just follow her all the time around just bigging her up. She summed up what the service had that was so thrilling- big old embarrassing, non ironic, sincere emotion. People wanted to love Michael, and now dead, it no longer matters what he was really like, he can become whatever they want him to mean. If a broken, lost man can be reclaimed as a symbol of love and inspiration to millions, than so be it. I just wouldn’t like to be the little boys that accused him of molestation or their families as they watch his canonisation.

I cannot imagine the same thing working in the UK. The British just don’t do non ironic displays of emotions and passionate declaration in their faith in God. Americans have Kanye rapping about Jesus, the UK has everybody wishing Cliff Richard shut up. Even with Princess Diana, we were more upset that she had been messed about in her life than we were celebrating her magnificence. In the US, they know for certain that MJ is enjoying salvation in the Lord, in the UK we knew for certain that Prince Charles would be feeling like a complete shit. MJ’s bother urged us to smile through our fear and sadness, Diana’s started laying into the Queen. When Britain’s closest pop equivalent, Paul McCartney dies, which he will one day, those perky aloft thumbs won’t save him forever, the most he can expect is a BBC special, a barrage of Heather Mills jokes and possibly a drum solo from Ringo. Keep munching those vegetables Paul.

Dedicated Follower of Farrah

2009-07-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

If you’ve been waiting for a chance to invade another country, accidentally drop an atomic bomb or finally lodge that dodgy claims expense form this is the week to do it, because unless your second name is Jackson, nobody will care. Great news for prurient fans of the bizarre, but bad luck for everybody else including the golden girl of seventies television Farrah Fawcett, who also passed away last week. In a death as badly timed as Mother Theresa’s, the Charlies Angels star lost her battle with anal cancer on Wednesday with Ryan O’Neill, her long time partner, and their son by her side. She first found fame in "Charlies Angels" but left after the first series when producers ignored her request for more creative input and a percentage of the lucrative merchandising revenue. Proving that she was more than a haircut, she enjoyed a long successful career, becoming queen of the TV movie world, receiving numerous Emmy nominations, lauded stage appearances and working with directors like Robert Altman.

While she never had an iconic film role after Angels, her place in popular history was guaranteed with her legendary swimsuit poster, the biggest selling of all time that seemed to sum up the spirit of the seventies. Like a silent movie actress, Farrah, all toothy smile, tumbling hair and lean tanned limbs captured, confident,optimistic youth itself; healthy, happy, as sexy and joyous as a summer’s day. She wanted to finally marry Ryan on her death bed, the star she first started dating when the two were at the height of their blonde seventies pin up fame but sadly ran out of time and never regained consciousness.

Back at camp Jackson, because Michael’s still dead, and will be dead for as long as tabloids can wring front covers from the story, it’s been suggested that Michael Jackson’s children may not be his biological offspring. Yes that’s right, the great blond haired, white skinned elephant in the corner has been acknowledged; not only do his children look nothing like the late King of Pop, they look like they’re from an entirely different ethnic gene pool. In a further Virginia Andrews style twist to the tale, it’s also been suggested that Debbie Rowe, Jackson’s former nurse and wife may not even be the children’s biological mother but rather acted as a surrogate womb for anonymously donated sperm and egg. In Martin Bashir’s interview with Michael the star talked about their birth in the same way you or I would describe picking something up at Argos. The babies were born, he cut the umbilical cord and then literally, by his own admission, he ran out of the hospital. When a shocked Bashir asked when the mother got to finally meet her newborn child, Jackson, waffled, did a few verbal moonwalks and swiftly changed the subject.

It’s been suggested that Neverland will be soon turned into a sort of Graceland, a Michael interpretive centre if you will, for his legions of dedicated fans. Which sounds lovely until you remember that Neverland was also the scene of the alleged child abuse that ravaged his career and reputation. Surely turning a house where several young boys claimed to be groomed and sexually assaulted into a tourist attraction may seem to some as bad taste. Where as tourists visiting Elvis’s pad can marvel at the Jungle room where he swung with his entourage and giggling groupies, wouldn’t the Jackson version be a hell of a lot grimmer. "Yes, here’s the Macaulay Culkin suite where as you can see he covered the walls with lots of pictures of young boys, oh, all those hidden bottles of alcohol and stashes of porn, ignore them, now onto the Shirley Temple shrine…great!"

London seems to be coming up with it’s own organic tribute to the man with his music being played sporadically through out the sun baked city. Every now and then a car passes, blasting some disco classic and everybody feels like they’re in a scene from "Fame", like the city itself is having a seventies moment. So girls flick your hair for Farrah and grab your own Ryan O Neill, (because every boy secretly thinks they can do a mean Billie Jean) and celebrate the summer, the heat wave and being happy and healthy, and a golden time before everything started getting weird, broken and sad.

RIP Michael Jackson

2009-06-26T05:22:00.001-07:00

Where were you when you found out the King of Pop had moon walked to that great fairground in the sky? It’s bizarre to think that Michael Jackson is dead. It’s a bit like learning that Mickey Mouse just died in a car accident or that Peter Pan passed away after a short illness. It’s baffling, the brain contracts as you try to imagine the two ideas in the same sentence, then you realise the problem, you had forgotten that Michael Jackson was actually real. He wasn’t from a cartoon or a character from a film you used to like in the eighties but an actual human being. He had morphed into a brand, a piece of pop culture, like a McDonald’s Happy Meal, you’d be forgiven for forgetting he had a heart, let alone one that could stop beating.

What are truly sad are the clips of the young Michael being shown on the news, the innocence, the desperate need to please. The jittery energy that at the time was endearing now seems unnerving and slightly haunting. In light of the physical and mental abuse we now know he was suffering from his father and the odd unsettling life we know lay in front of him, this image of the smiling big eyed boy manically singing for our entertainment is disquieting and slightly chilling. What a sad, lonely life the whoop, bopping boy had ahead of him, eventually dying exiled from his Neverland, in a rented house, attempting to revive a disgraced career with comeback gigs he was physically incapable of, exploited as ruthlessly is his fragile last days as he was in his younger years. In a career that soared from the sublime sound of Mowtown, swooped over the shameful era of black artists boycotted by MTV and ended in an America with a Black President in the Whitehouse, Jackson’s life bridged two different worlds.

Michael, the first black artist to play on MTV, was the African American male Middle America would let date their daughter. He was bland, he was safe he wasn’t the scary Blackman they saw on the news, huddled at the gates with an angry look in their eye. Instead of the intimidating alpha machismo of the racist stereotype he was an effete, high pitched androgynous No-Where man. In an America and Britain still reeling from race riots he was safe halfway between black and white, male and female, adult and child. It was this willingness to blend in, to acquiesce, that made him acceptable and paved the way for other black artists who would never have to dream of such compromises.

Michal could be seen as the personification of the American dream gone rotten. The soul, the sweat, the heart of the early Jackson Five magic, gradually morphing into the slickly produced mainstream pop of Reagan’s eighties, till Michael’s creativity became lost in a blizzard of expensive videos, overproduced emptiness and the soul corroding oblivion of spend spend spending. His music was the sound track for the "Greed is Good" eighties, buy Michael, buy Pepsi, buy America, buy happiness, and just as the banks and the dream of unrestricted consumption collapses around us Michael their poster boy dies frail, feeble, and broken, like the personification of the dream the decade he dominated promised.

He’ll be remembered as Michael the pop icon, the music, the videos, the money but that little boy dancing for our pleasure, what became of him?. What happens to the soul of a man who is never told no, who’s every whim is indulged, encouraged and sated, who spends an adult life never having to deal with consequences, responsibilities even morals because he is making the people around him so much money. The dark, disturbing excesses a human being is capable of descending to was glimpsed during the accusations of child abuse that money and expensive lawyers silenced. His life turned into a cautionary gothic fable about what happens when one’s every wish and desire is granted, the result is unsettling, horrifying and disturbing.

In The portrait of Dorian Grey, the anti-hero’s record of madness and excess is revealed in a hidden portrait in an attic; Michael Jackson wore the consequences of his life unchecked on his horrifically butchered, betrayed face. It is a portrait for our times, of what happens when you sell everything and know the value of nothing. His face became a grinning skull of an empty man and empty generation who sold their soul a long time ago.

Gordon Ramsey is a cock

2009-06-17T09:16:00.002-07:00

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a lazy writer in need of a good opening line can always rely on a bit of Austen. Luckily for me, it also a truth universally acknowledged that a celebrity in need of some publicity is also in need of a good celebrity scrap, so that’s alright then
. From the first nudge lining up for nursery to the full blown Venetian court of intrigue that is secondary school, a bit of "did you hear what she said about you" a little drop of "I shouldn’t say this but" has always been relished. It’s natural, it’s healthy, it’s good. That’s why I cheered at news that "rivals" Cheryl Cole and Dannii Minouge are to be reunited for the next series of "X Factor" with pay disputes adding fuel to the acrylic fire. Dannii has reportedly only signed for the next show if she got paid the same amount as the Girls Aloud star and Cheryl is reportedly fuming that her social inferior is earning as much her. Watching them fight over their relative status is endearing, like watching two toddlers scrap over a favourite blanket. Since their role on the show seems to be nodding blankly and trying to look concerned at the sad bits, I’m surprised they don’t just pay them their bus travel and lunch in the canteen. Has anybody in the entire history of the planet ever lost sleep wondering what Dannii Minouge thinks of them and I include Dannii’s family and ex husband in this, let alone considered her pearls of wisdom worth a reported half a million pounds? There are judges in Texas that don’t earn that and they have the power to give the death penalty. Actually maybe, that is the excitng new change to the format Simon Cowell has been hinting act. I can see it now, Cheryl, blinking back the tears as she reveals "Sorry, I love you but I’m going to have to put you down babes" as the contestant slowly walks towards the lethal injection room with Leona Lewis belting out "Run" in the background, I would watch that.
Of course, I hope that they genuinely do loath each other rather than it being another dreary publicity stunt and way of pitching women against each other yet again. Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell can work together and be mates but whenever two women are in the room together we assume they’re plotting each others down fall like bad Jackie Collins characters, It’s reported that the show’s producers are terrified of the pair bumping into each other behind the scenes. That’s right, not worried, not a bit concerned that it might be a bit wierd, they live in actual terror of such an event unfurling. Much like the simmering tension of the Cuban Missile crisis, or maybe the knawing forboding of trench live in World War One, that’s what X Factor producers live with every time these two women enter the same building. Age shall not waery them , or years condemn, those brave brave media men and women.
However, if there is a genuine Alexis Colby/ Krystal Carrington style malevolence between the two I demand to see that on air. Cut the boring singing bit and just have lots of shots of the girls tapping their acrylic nails and glaring at each other. Or maybe they could have their own ITV2 costume drama spin off series where they could sit stiffly beside each other like two Oscar Wilde heroines, but with better tans, trading witty barbs while delicately drinking tea. "When I see a spade, I call it a spade Cheryl" "Well when I see it a spade, I telll it how amazing I think it is Dannii" They could call it "The Importance of Being Orange".
Speaking of Australia (because we were just then kind of for a minute…stay with me) Gordon Ramsey has been causing a stir down under after a misguided attack on Tracey Grimshaw, one of the countries most respected broadcasters. After appearing on her show to publicise his tour, he launched a vicious and bizarre attack , comparing her to a pig and suggesting she was a lesbian. Refreshingly for a place that is often portrayed as what would happen if a can of Foster mutated into a country, the response was distinctly unimpressed. Akin to some foreigner arriving on our shores and slagging off dear Fern Britton (even with her endless weight loss stories ,you’ve lost weight, we get it,stop talking about it ,my brain hurts) the country rose up with such anger that the countries Prime Minister issued a statement defending her and condemning the TV chefs remarks. Which is wonderful, akin to Gordon Brown arriving at Fern’s doorstep and bowing "Madam, Recent Celeb magazines have gone too far, I fear you have been insulted, you have my sword my Lady". The lady in question responded by voicing her surprise since when she interviewed him, she never mentioned his alleged affair, the dodgy lies in his recent auto biography or his recent bankruptcy, thus neatly publicising all those very same things. Moronic Ramsey issued a swift apology, game, set, match, I would think. The message being, when it comes to a war of words, mess with an angry woman at your peril, something Jane Austen knew, Cheryl and Dannii know and Gordon Ramsey is slowly finding out.

Watch your bag, Lohan is about...

2009-06-17T09:16:00.001-07:00

How much fun would it be to Lindsay Lohan’s best friend? Very fun. As much fun as walking into a crowded communal kitchen at work , opening up the fridge and using milk that does not belong to you, that’s how much fun. If you were ever bored, you could just pick up the phone give the erstwhile movie star a little tingle and enjoy the free entertainment of living vicariously through her life for the next half hour or so. You might never have to leave your house again, secure in the knowledge that you had a pretty good idea what falling asleep in your own hair matted vomit was like anyway.In the last six months Lindsay has split from her girlfriend/ stabilising influence Sam Ronson, lost half her body weight, turned to night club appearances as a way of raising cash and been accused of international diamond fraud. It sure beats the usual, oh you know, busy, fine, just working really…
The Freaky Friday star ( Do you remember? Ages ago, Jamie Lee Curtis was in it I think) was in London recently to take part in a photo shoot wearing Dior diamonds for Elle magazine (pay attention to this bit, like a good episode of Murder She Wrote, it’s importance will be revealed later). This sojourn in London coincided with a series of night club appearances her ex Sam Ronson was making in the city .Maybe it was a trip to London Dungeons, maybe it was a tour on an open top tour bus but something about the city worked some magic and now the pair are together again. They are back as each other’s top friends on Myspace, which is to a certain age group,is as good as engaged, and are returning to Hollywood in love. Unfortunately, Lohan is not returning with much else as her wild behaviour has made her virtually unemployable in the City of Angels. Lindsay Lohan is to annoying people what Susan Boyle is to singing Elaine Page songs and going a bit mad. The Herbie star ( do you remember? Herbie: Reloaded, ages ago, marked the sad day Matt Dillon was not longer fanciable) and has managed to annoy most of Hollywood, which is a pretty big achievement considering this is a town that still employs Russell Crowe . Back in her glory days, when she mixed some acting in with being photographed without her knickers ( who hasn’t gone commando once?Come on, I know I have but then I had just wet my pants and I was at primary school and I was five), she managed to be so obnoxiously disruptive on the set of "A Prairie Home Companion"( No sorry, not a clue) that the films producers sent a public letter to her lambasting her for her irresponsible behaviour. Yes, even Hollywood, the industry that glamorises guns, mainly produces movies based on comic books and is responsible for us knowing who Pauly Shore is, told Lindsay to grow up. She now resorts to public appearances in nightclubs and various fashion and business sidelines to raise cash. Have you ever opened your wardrobe and thought, damn what I really want to wear are some overpriced leggings, where are they, where are my Lindsay Lohan leggings? Have I left them with my Mischa Barton tank top in my "yer one from Dawson’s Creek" overnight bag- damnit my date with Tod is tonight! There’s also Lindsay fake tan, which from a pale freckly red head takes guts if nothing else.
It’s enough to turn a girl desperate, which brings us back to the Mean Girl’s photoshoot in Islington last month. The diamonds have gone missing, Dior are furious, Elle are embarrased and Lindsay is in LA. Freckles (her possible prison name prehaps?) has a history of forgetting to return the clothes on fashion shoots, and along with her convictions for drink driving , drug possesion and the stints in rehab, is barred from wearing certain fashion lines due to her absent minded fingers. What a gal, she’s like an Elizabeth Taylor on street crack. Don’t worry Li Lo, give Jessica Fletcher a dingle she’ll clear your name.The whole affair all like some big Hollywood movie, with the big obvious difference being of course that Lindsay Lohan is in it.

B N to the P (yeah you know me!)

2009-06-10T09:24:00.000-07:00

I have a theory that left wing politicians, protesters, student groups and comedians are secretly delighted at the relative, recent triumph of the BNP party in the recent elections.
Let’s be realistic, the BNP party pose as much of a threat to mainstream politics as a spotty, gibbering fourteen year old Nuts reader to a drunk Angelina Jolie in a late night taxi cab, illegal or otherwise. Despite the recent expenses scandal, the plummeting economy and the evaporating jobs market, the far right party received only 6.3% of the vote in an election that only about 40% of the population voted in. In many areas they saw their vote go down and their leader only scraped into his seat due to an excessively low turn out in his area. Germany 1933 this isn’t.
It is this low turn out, coupled with a simmering resentment with mainstream politics, that created a sort of "perfect drizzle" for Nick Griffen and his little friends to take advantage of. That’s why I find it interesting that the same people who are now falling over themselves to express their wearied, hand wringing shame at the swing to the right are also the same people who a week before smugly insisted that the best way to protest was not to vote. Yes, it’s naïve to think that politicians are idealistic soldiers of integrity, that dream died along with Jimmy Stewart, but it’s equally immature to think that you’re somehow fighting the system by not voting. You only have to look at the recent presidential election in the USA to see the difference newly engaged voters can make. America didn’t go to bed a George Bush loving cowboy and wake up a latte swilling Obama fan, just as Britain hasn’t changed overnight into a country of racists. Political parties don’t actually care if you don’t turn up on ballot day, they will just aim their policies at the people who do and unfortunately they tend to be the people with more strident political views.
However uncomfortable we are with the results, throwing eggs isn’t the answer, in doing so we’re just creating martyrs, great, big, yolky martyrs. The protest organiser at the recent BNP press conference, Weyman Bennet of Unite Against Fascism explained "I support freedom of speech but not for fascists", but freedom of speech that is conditional on wether you agree with them or not is not freedom of speech at all really is it? If they really wanted to expose the BNP for the embarrassment to logic that they are, rather than silence them, we should positively drag them into public life. They could be the "and finally bit" at the end of every single news broadcast. Everyday, for as long as they are in office, they should be asked for their take on the day’s events- Tax benefits for higher income earners, the economic future of the European Union, International relations with Iran, and the camera would just linger on them for about two minutes while the audience could see their brains slowly whirr round while their eyes blinked for help as they slowly tried to bring the topic round to immigration. People would get so bored of them, as they slowly faded from darkly dangerous political underdogs to another tedious grey party with bizarre policies. The more mainstream they become the less danger they pose to anybody, as they’d finally become a track suited, Lidl version of Robert Kilroy Silk. When was the last time you saw a march against him? They should be ushered onto Question Time "So you really said you could tell if someone was really British just by looking at them? What? Really?! Could you explain that for me?" "So you really think white people are treated as second class citizens? How exactly? Where are your figures? Really?" "So you really plan to forcibly deport all non white Brits and turn Britain into some weird Tolkien meets Folk album cover wonderland? Really? How are you planning to that exactly?" By the end of the programme they would have so confused themselves, let alone the audience; they might just run away and never come back.
Which would be a shame for us because we like hating them. They are the dark Emperors to our Rebel alliance, the Ike to our Tina they make everything, if you’ll pardon the pun, so reassuringly black and white. Modern English politics is boring, the first division compared to America’s premiership. They have it easy there, they have anti abortionists, hard line creationist Christians, they even had George Bush for a while, the lucky bastards. What did we have? Duck Island. Duck Island and a few dodgy films on a claim expenses. Pathetic. If we can convince ourselves that the BNP really signal the rise of fascism, then it justifies getting really excited and we become a part of history.
For comedians it is a positive boon. They can feel self righteous as if criticising them they are making an important thrust for democracy, rather than making a point as obvious as the earth is round. Left fighting against the right is about as relevant as weekend civil war re-enactors, the argument has moved on. Communism was a bit of a disaster, nobody likes dictators and unrestrained capitalism hasn’t been doing that well either. An extreme right wing group will never turn Britain into a fascist regime, mass deportation is about as likely as a return to burning Catholics, the cavaliers are not suddenly going to win this time. Instead we have militant Islam that we want to respect but aquardly treats women appallingly, a Chinese government with a human rights record that can best be described as laiizer faire and a planet that’s very slowly boiling. We have a government that’s slowly weeding out our civil rights with mandatory ID schemes, detention without arrest and a police force that can get a bit bullet happy with out any consequences. But to protest about that would involve actually following the interminable slow moving draggings of parliament, reading newspapers, even voting- it’s much more fun to throw eggs at racist northerners. That’s why people like hating the BNP, it’s like disagreeing with an elderly grandad at Christmas, while your Dad in selling your inheritance from under your feet

Lesbian for attentshiun..(really try and you can make that rhyme)

2009-06-05T04:38:00.000-07:00

Following complaints Simon Cowell has announced that there would be serious changes to next year’s “Britain’s got Talent” format. They have decided, due to lack of public interest, to scrap the “talent” section of the show and focus on the part that has caught the public’s imagination, character assassination. Ten random people will be picked for their ability to interest and pander to the public’s smug good opinion of itself, built up by the media and then torn apart by the tabloids. It will be a bit like a Soviet Russia show trial but with added Ant and Dec. Whoever makes the public feel better about themselves at the end wins and the entire series will be sponsored by the Priory clinic. Ha ha ha.

As I write Susan Boyle is in still in residential treatment following the show’s life final. Named as the favourite to win after her show stopping first audition, the public no longer saw her as the show’s underdog and quickly lost interest in her. She was popular when the public felt they were showing how compassionate, idiosyncratic and original they were in rooting for her, but when everybody liked her the joke wore a bit thin. The change in public opinion was summed up in a message left under the You tube clip of her performance in the final; dressed in a gorgeous glamorous dress and with a new hair do, Susan just “wasn’t the woman we fell in love with anymore”. The British public didn’t want a confident middle aged woman getting a second chance at life, they wanted a freak with big eyebrows that they could patronise and feel sorry for. She was a bit like the slow girl at primary school that the popular girl on a whim decides is actually really nice, but then dumps just as quickly when she turns up at her house. Newspapers claimed she began to crack up the week before the final, unable to sleep, eat and having imaginary conversations with her cat on the phone. Although in Susan’s defence, I’d probably fake conversation with a kitten to avoid making small talk with Amanda Holden –sorry, hold that thought Mandy, I really need to take this , Mr. Whiskers has been going through a lot of shit at the moment… I’ve said it before but Amanda Holden as a judge on “Britain’s got Talent” is like North Korean President Kim Jong II being a judge on “The Country it’s be a right laugh to live next door to!”. Producers realised that Boyle wasn’t handling the success very well, when she told a gaggle of journalists that were hassling her to bugger off and after coming second announced she “bloody hated” the show. Again, in her defence, that sounds like a woman finally seeing sense rather than cracking up.

Also speaking her mind is Gossip singer Beth Ditto. The Texan has hit out at American songstress Katy Perry, accusing her of exploiting lesbian culture with her 2008 hit- “I kissed a girl and I liked”. Wow, Katy, how shocking, kissing a girl?! But you are a girl? This is blowing my mind. You, an attractive girl next door pop star are subverting the medias perception of you, undermining patriarchal societies assumptions about female sexuality and introducing lesbian identity as a mainstream force in popular culture, rather than a token projection of male fantasies. What’s that Katie? You hope your boyfriend doesn’t mind? So, you have a boyfriend then. So, you’re not actually lesbian at all, you’re just pretending to be a little bit gay in order to keep his attention for a while because, you don’t want to lose him, as you can’t bare the thought of being single and are willing to do anything, even appropriate an entire culture that has fought for centuries for respect and equal rights in order to keep your man and get a tiny scrap of attention. Drunk, numbly snogging your confused best friend in the corner of a sticky nightclub as you desperately scan the room to see if Derek is noticing while your heart sobs don’t leave me, I’ll do anything, I’ll try dogging next week if you want, don't leaaave meee!… You go girl! Why not for a follow up single “I went to a Mosque and I liked it” or “I used a wheelchair and I liked it”…but sexy! or just go the whole hog and black up. She could use the whole of black histories struggle for equal rights as a way to desperately get her straying boyfriend to notice her for a bit. I can’t wait to hear about it- oh, sorry Katie, I’ve got a phonecall, it’s Mr. Whiskers again, sorry I’m going to have to take this…

Tit Launch

2009-05-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

Big Brother, the show that launched a thousand tits, literally and metaphorically will be returning to our screens this week, brimming with more desperate souls willing to sell their past, present and future for a Heat front cover and five minutes of our attention, bless, it’s almost flattering really.
It’s strange to remember but when the show first appeared on our screen ten whole years ago, it was considered quite trendy. It was the summer of 1999, the world was a different place, we were still giddy from the marriage of Prince Edward and Sophie (do you remember your street party?), Liam and Patsy were the coolest couple in the world and the only terrorist threats were the IRA and the odd dirty nail bomb in a gay bar in Soho- halcyon days! Remember Anna, the Irish lesbian skateboarding nun, Nasty Nick, officially the most evil man in the world (he wrote names on pieces of paper! Try explaining how wrong that was to people too young to remember, they’ll laugh in your face, but at the time, he was our Joseph Fritzel) and Craig, the large muscular scouse man child the last, lonely voice of reason in a house gone mad. But slowly the flatmates have slid from people we’d aspire to be friends with to people we’d cross the road to avoid, even if it meant being run over. Remember how excited we got back in BB2 when Paul and Helen started holding hands? They were falling in love before our eyes, we swooned! Now days in, hitherto strangers are willing to sweatily rut in the diary room chair, like insecure mating pandas, with only the dream of their own OK spread glimmering in their squinting eyes. Live in front of Big Brother, their friends and family and everybody they’ve ever know, or will know, they will vomit up every dark secret, display every personality quirk and oddity, all with the same confused desperate look in their eye, is this right? Will this make you like me? Love me!! Again, it’s almost flattering.
Their lives post Big Brother also hints at the decline in standards. Anna (BB1) now has a successful career in Irish television as a respected broadcaster, Brian (BB2) appears now and then on obscure digital channels, and Kate (Winner BB9) can’t even afford a television set. She has to look in the window of Currys if she wants to see anything or follow the soaps by reading magazine covers in WH Smith. That is a fact.
A bit like soldiers who faced action, contestants never seem the same after the experience, especially on the later "Celebrity Specials". Take Jodie Marsh. Poor girl, she just wants love, or it’s poor relation, a little bit of attention, but she’s like that annoying girl at school who used to fake panic attacks to try to get people to like her. She briefly appeared on Celebrity Big Brother three years ago, but was so nauseatingly unlikeble and unpopular with the other housemates, she emerged even less likeable than when she entered the house to booing mobs. Since, up until that point she was chiefly famous for having slept with Calum Best, this is not faint praise. Her acclaimed autobiography "Keeping it Real" ("A modern day Pepys…but with better tits" Nuts magazine) reads like a who’s who of men whose job it is impregnate girls from Atomic Kitten. The sort of men who view Lee from Blue as the governor. The most interesting aspect of her time on the show was her friendship with pre fame Chantelle Haughton. Jodie promised to take the skinny unknown under her wing; she’d show her how to pose for the lads mags, she’s bring her to the sort of nightclubs where footballers get accused of sexual assault in the toilets, even a personal audience with Abi Titmus was hinted at.It was like watching "Faust" but the devil was bright orange and looked a bit like a duck with beast implants. Now Chantelle, post an OK marriage and divorce, has her very own fake boobs, orange skin, fish lips and footballer boyfriend and Jodie after a brief but very public flirtation with lesbianism, has now decided she’s going to be a bodybuilder. Will somebody please just give these girls some attention, so they can quietly go away? Maybe this year’s Big Brother twist will be that the show will be based in southern Lebanon, or the West Bank, and housemates have to use their natural attention seeking tendencies to work as part of the UN peace keeping missions. Yes, there might be a few casualties but think of the break we’d be giving their families. We could tell the housemates that for every village they defend against gorilla attack, they’ll get an appearance on The Friday Night Project. Jodie, don’t pretend you’re not interested.

After the Fall

2009-05-25T14:20:00.000-07:00

It’s been a relatively slow week in the showbiz world, a shocked community still reeling from the fall of the house of Andre. With newspapers suggesting the whole thing might be a media set up, never before has the term “publicity stunt” inspired so much romantic hope and crossing of fingers. Peter is in Cyprus, Katie is in the Maldives, Harvey is with his Granny in England but whose looking after us? Who’s caring for our hopes and dreams? They may be able to move on from each other but can we move on from them? The list of candidates looking to step into their diamante Jimmy Choos is not encouraging. I can see all the celebrity couple hopefuls now, being lined up by the PR companies like some damned version of Noah’s Ark, all desperate to prove they have what it takes.
Head of the line must be Kerry Katona and her Mark, but they lack the glamour and tend to struggle along like two aggressive Wombles on benefit day. Kerry was diagnosed with Bi-polar depression about a year ago and has recently seized on this like a drowning swimmer clinging on to a new publicity opportunity. Manic depression is of course a condition long associated with great artists, Vincent Van Gogh, Beethoven, Byron, who knew Atomic Kitten would join that illustrious company. Maybe Kerry ,high on the unbearable lightness of being, worked for nights on end on their canonical version of “The Tide is High” like a blonde but slightly less murdery Phil Spector, berating the other Kittens till they got the dance moves perfect. Or maybe, it was in her later work for Living TV, “Kerry Katona, What is the problem?”that she was fuelled with the agony and the ecstasy? Who knows? In fairness to the woman, her childhood does read like the sort of abuse fiction, usually selling for two for one in airport bookshops. You know the sort, they have titles like “Yes Daddy” or “No Mummy” or “Abuse; I was raised by one of those flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz”. They peddle horrific tales of childhood abuse with pastel covers and vintage pictures of children looking fed up- Marian Keyes with added moral sanctimony. I think their target audience is people who can’t read without moving their lips. Bounced from care home, to foster family, to suicidal mother, Kerry could be an ambassador for this peculiar form of literature, her interviews reading like weekly instalments. So were all those gaspingly awful, aggressive TV appearances the result of her battle with a serious medical condition and tough childhood or just further proof that Brian McFadden is a stronger man than we gave him credit for. Maybe we should worry if we’re any better than the people who buy those awful books, watching them. Come back Katie and Peter please!

Another couple leaving our TV screens at the moment is patron saints of students and sick days Richard and Judy. The former King and Queen of daytime television are retiring from the tube after their new show on an obscure digital channel failed to attract any viewers. This is heart breaking, just when we needed proof that some couples can make it work. Richard, like the uncle who tries slightly too hard to be cool and proudly pronounces “The Artic Monkeys” like he’s self consciously saying a word in a foreign language and Judy, your auntie who asks about exam results and if you were seeing anybody at the moment. They were magnificent, as comforting as hot toast and watching TV wrapped up in your duvet and now gone. Why do the TV gods take the good ones young?
Thankfully, balancing up the books is the return of “controversial” rapper Enimen. Marshall Mathews himself is returning to the radio waves with some of his hippity hoppity happenings. After taking a break to marry and subsequently divorce his ex- wife, battle an addiction to painkillers and just generally regroup, he’s back with a new “outrageous” album, that’s almost certainly going to ruffle feathers- oh yes. He is so alternative-he doesn’t care what people think, the multi- platinum, stadium filling, Oscar winning; star of several MTV specials is dangerous! Excuse my cyncism, but the last time I checked misogyny, homophobia and being pro- gun was hardly controversial, in fact in the States it’s practically mainstream. Loose the tattoos and he could use the same policies to run as the next Republican presidential candidate. If he rapped about abortion rights, or was pro gay marriage or even demanded equal pay for women that would be more controversial. As it is he’s George W Bush in a vest top. As for being a dangerous influence, seeing that his main audience is white middle class, suburban male teenagers, I hardly think he’s about to smash the system anytime soon. Richard Madely got arrested for shoplifting once and he’s friends with Jerry Springer, beat that Marshall Mathews.

The End of Camelot?

2009-05-14T07:49:00.001-07:00

The celeb business is a lot like the porn industry- women rule the roost. It’s very rare to come across any story with a male celeb as its lead. Sure, we have famous male actors and singers but we’re not interested in their private life and to express one seems shallow and demeaning to everybody involved. Take for example, Westlife. I couldn’t care less about them, a feeling shared by most of the population. I know so little about their private life for all I know, they may not actually exist, they may be slightly realistic holograms or ghosts that died one hundred years ago. If a member of Westlife got lynched in a forest, would anyone notice or care? Yet, Girls Aloud, their nearest female alternative, I know almost if not better than my only family. The nights I have tossed and turned over poor Cheryl’s latest heartache, the grey dawn that has spread through my window to find me huddled over a cooling cup of coffee wondering whether Sarah was partying too hard, well I don’t care to mention. If you were to show the same attention to male celebs people would think you were mad. Paris Hilton, it’s OK to camply love, Calum Best? people would genuinely question your ability to cross roads. When we do show some interest in the male of the species it’s usually only in relation to the female he has wronged- Jude Law, or Brad Pitt- they’re the subplot never the main star. We love “celebs” be cause they’re messed up, vulnerable but those adjectives only seem to work on women. That’s why we cared about Kerry Katona but not Brian Harvey, why there are no male Jades and unfortunately for Peter Andre, no male Jordan.Where were you when you heard the news? I was tidying my bedroom when the fairytale ended, the dream died, the Swarovski crystal shattered. To the newsreader it was just the divorce of Katie Price and Peter Andre but for a million OK readers, it was the end of Camelot. Call me a romantic, but their sheer awfulness as a couple made me root for them even more. So they met on a reality TV show and sold the story of their relationship before they had even met each others parents but, well, you never know?! There was the matching tans, the matching day glow teeth, their shared love of baring their chests; they had so much in common. Why couldn’t they make it work? It was great; every minor anniversary had at least an OK pull out special and they seem to renew their vows as often as most people checked their face book. Maybe the the camera and TV production crew that followed their every movement had something to do with their demise. Like a small tudor court, the couple were followed and recorded from first date to last slammed door. I’m fascinated by what the last epidsode of their never ending TV series will be? Pete pottering round the house on his own to aqward silence? Newly single Katie’s first desperate night out with the girls? Who will gain custody of the camera crew? Will they divide the kingdoms of “OK” and “Hello” between them? Like the end of any relationship, it’s the unanswered questions that sting.Unfortunately, it was the weird wacky world of “celeb” that did them in the end. Peter was a brave pioneer, ahead of his time in so many ways, in that, without any music career or prospects of one, he swam in the female dominated river of famous for being famous. He could never out Jordan, she would always be the star, he always her “and Peter”. Reports say that it was this living in her shadow that derailed their marriage. If it’s true I genuinely feel sorry for Katie, she but another victim of the “Barbra Streisand Syndrome” where men love the idea of strong women but quickly grow weary of relationships with them. Peter had to choose between his ego and love and unfortunately, his ego in all is orange day glow glory won.Maybe he should go out with Amy Winehouse next. While Katie runs marathons and raises a disabled son, poor Amy can’t even stand up straight. At her semi- official “come back” gig recently Ms. Backcomb herself struggled through her set before abandoning it halfway through. Looking fierce in high heels and a killer dress, the vulnerable star put the aborted gig down to technical difficulties. I think by that she means she technically can’t stop pouring alcohol down her throat. Her ex husband however, is getting over the break up by getting a fellow resident at his rehab facility pregnant. Blake Fielder- Civil, famous for marrying Amy and various assault charges is now sober and an expectant Dad, while Amy, responsible for probably the greatest soul record of her generation is destroying herself with alchol. Sod Peter, I want Katie and Amy together. I think, and mean this is as the highest compliment to them both, they deserve each other.