London (dpa) – Obscurity is a fate worse than media overkill for the new “superstars” crowding the pages of Britain’s tabloids and strutting the stages of celebrity TV shows.
Once your name is up there in lights, make sure it stays there at all costs – whatever the cringe factor, no matter how harmful to your parents, children, friends, lovers. This is the celebrity creed.
“Famous for being famous” is its name, and its devotees range from the no longer youthful Spice Girls to ageing model Jerry Hall, from popstar Robbie Williams to entrepreneur Richard Branson.
Shapely Rachel Hunter poses naked but for a pair of sandals, revealing one day that she has been celibate since Rod Stewart left her nine months previously, to return a day later to tell anyone who cares to listen that she now needs a “real stallion”.
Lovely Liz Hurley confides to a U.S. magazine that Hugh Grant was dreadful in the sack, and then tearfully tells a British tabloid it isn’t true and apologizes to her lover of 13 years.
While “revealing” is all – from bottoms to breasts, intimacies to information – there is little mileage in the veracity.
A story told today is denied tomorrow and, as long as the details are juicy, no harm is done. Suing is counter-productive. The tabloids would have a field day, or even worse might ignore you next time.
And a silicon bag here or a little liposuction there, plus clever side-lighting, can do wonders for a girl the wrong side of 35.
A wooden production of The Graduate currently clunking across a West End stage is kept alive by regular changes in the part of Mrs Robinson, which requires the actress to be nude for 20 seconds.
Jerry Hall has followed Kathleen Turner, and other sex kittens of yesteryear are clawing to be the next to bare all.
Liam Gallagher of rock group Oasis dumps wife Patsy Kensit with tears all round and is soon seen consoling himself with Nicole Appleton of All Saints.
A little later he is observed leaving a nightspot with Rachel Hunter, and a week after that with deceased Kurt Cobain’s Courtney Love. Can even a rock star get that unlucky?
The Gallagher brothers conducted a feud, including a punch-up, in the full glare of the spotlights recently. The concerts were a sell- out, even though Liam decided to absent himself from many of them. Publicity is always good.
Kylie Minogue’s career was slipping until she came up with a dirty dancing music video that was so naughty the television companies had to cut parts of it.
Publicizing that put Kylie back at the top, her cutey pie demeanour in interviews juxtaposed awkwardly with her near- pornographic gyrations.
Sometimes the ploy is so transparent not even the British tabloids will dish it up with a straight face.
When Geri “Ginger Spice” Halliwell was seen holidaying with pop star Robbie Williams in St Tropez, they had to remind readers she was promoting an autobiography and he a new hit.
After all, the last time she ventured into romance – with “star” DJ Chris Evans – she needed publicity for a new single. The romance evaporated with the need, after a week.
The only spice to the tale came from Victoria Beckham – Posh – who coyly warned Geri, a sworn enemy since she split the group three years ago, that she should be careful of flighty Robbie.
“I don’t know if it’s love, but I do know that Robbie loves only himself. I hope Geri knows what she’s doing. Probably they swap notes about their therapies,” she said in one of the better put-downs.
Posh herself is battling. She and footballing hubby David haven’t been off the front pages in ages – vile words from fans, death threats, extortion from ex-minders have all made the news.
Despite all this publicity and a frantic campaign that saw a drawn and evidently exhausted Victoria rushing from one hyped engagement to another, her new single failed to make it to number one.
The tabloids have long since succumbed to the plague, but the serious media are also seriously infected. The Financial Times’ veteran TV commentator Chris Dunkley bemoans a new BBC nature series in which presenter Charlotte Uhlenbroek is the new “star”.
“Reviews (in the broadsheets) of the first programme in which Ms U got in among the great apes … said little if anything about the wildlife and an awful lot about the presenter’s bust, the presenter’s ponytail, the presenter’s smile, and so on.
“Nowhere did I see anybody questioning the content,” Dunkley added. His is almost a lone voice. “Dumbing down” it’s called, and there’s no sense fighting it.
