UP The GMTV ladies
The lighter the entertainment, the darker the machinations behind the scenes,
Celebrity Watch has always averred. And GMTV is no exception.
Last week Fiona Phillips, the anchor-presenter, resigned - immediately
sparking a media freak-out over who will replace her. The PR machines of
Kate Garraway, Kate Silverton and Ulrika Jonsson have all whirred into
action, with a series of briefs (“Jonsson is in advanced talks!”) and
counter-briefs (“Garraway will be passed over, and forced to resign! And
she's fat!”), to the sorrow and disappointment of the outgoing Phillips.
“The press make out that all the women are at each other's throats - but
they'd never say that about [male presenters],” Phillips commented,
tuttingly - before sticking the boot into Kate Garraway (“I don't go to the
opening of an envelope”).
CW takes into account Phillips's comments. It really does. But come on! It's a
£1 million contract! Let's face it - Garraway, Silverton and Jonsson are
going at each other like fighting cocks, pulling extensions, gouging eyes
and repeatedly punching each other in the ovaries and screaming: “Do you
want to hand over to the news in your area now? DO YOU? Because the news is
YOU'RE OVAH!”
But is it worth it? Phillips resigned because, by all accounts, GMTV warped
her into a pastel-jacketed Colonel Kurtz. I've been a madwoman - but it's
just the tiredness,” Phillips has said. “It makes me see the dark side of
everything.”
Given this information, the job does rather make a poisoned chalice look like
a nice cup of tea. Garraway! Jonsson! Silverton! Hang in there for Countdown
instead.
UP David Blaine
The American magician who has made a career out of performing undeniably
amazing feats (entombment in ice, 40-day fasts) - albeit in an inexplicably
annoying way - is to return. He is to undertake another fast - but this time
he will be hung, upside down, “like a bat”, over Central Park. Perhaps DC
Comics will be inspired by this event to create a new character: a maverick
loner, with superhuman powers, who makes the world a better place by
inverting himself, displaying quasi-anorexic behaviour and wearing eyeliner.
UP Billie Piper
The ever-razzy Piper returns this week, in ITV2's Secret Diary of a Call
Girl. As before, she plays a well-dressed metropolitan woman who is into a)
shoes, and b) being a prostitute. Alas, Piper's pregnancy made shooting the
series problematic. “I just wanted to sit on my bum and stuff my face,”
Piper revealed. Had she engaged in such activities the other way round, of
course, it could have been a whole new episode.
DOWN Sienna Miller
Miller has had another bad week. Someone has written “SLUT” on her house -
and in a bad way. Meanwhile, the woman who runs siennamilleronline has shut
the site, saying: “Recent events ... have heightened my lack of interest.”
Miller has let it be known to friends that, these days, “a private yacht” is
the only place she feels safe. Sienna! Private yachts are stuffed with yet
more celebrities and millionaires whom you might accidentally fall in love
with! Get the bus!
DOWN Kate Middleton
“Wait-y Kate-y” is not the work-shy Sloane that the press have been painting
her as. For the past six months, Hello! magazine has revealed, Middleton
actually has been employed - working from home, for the company owned by her
parents. CW doesn't mean to cast aspersions - it really doesn't - but
“working from home” (dossing about, watching Under The Hammer), “for Mum and
Dad” (being paid “super pocket money” simply for being alive) = three hours
a week, tops.
DOWN Solange Knowles
Solange, sister of Beyoncé, is trying to make a name for herself a) in the
world of pop, and b) out of a better rack of letters in Scrabble. As you can
see, Solange has found herself a pair of shoes so extraordinary that they
make a medieval court jester's footwear look like a smart pair of brown
lace-ups. Thus far, the “fashion world” has not attempted to describe these
items. This is because the most accurate summation of them is “a pair of
luxuriant monkey bums”, and only CW has the courage to say it like it is.
UP Matthew McConaughey
In 1999, when the police busted Matthew McConaughey, they found him naked,
stoned and playing the bongos. Amazingly, it turns out that Matthew's
actually the dull, accountancy-material McConaughey. In her just-published
autobiography, I Amaze Myself, the actor's mother reveals that McConaughey's
father died while they were having sex and that, when the paramedics carried
his corpse from the house, naked, the new widow was “proud” that all the
neighbours saw “Jim McConaughey's big gift”. This woman has one hell of a
“bright-side” facility.
UP Carla Bruni
The appearance of France's first lady on Later ... with Jools Holland has
provoked the wrath of the NME. “It's disgusting,” it declared. “Rock'n'roll
is supposed to be anti-authoritarian.” To recap: Bruni-Sarkozy's family
moved to France from Italy after kidnap threats made by the Red Brigade. The
teenage Bruni studied art and architecture, modelled nude and shagged Eric
Clapton and Mick Jagger. Then she married the French President, and released
an album in which she a) compared her husband's love to heroin, and b)
admitted that she cannot be faithful - before giving all the royalties to
humanitarian causes. CW suggests that this all puts the paradigm-busting
activity of, say, the Pigeon Detectives into some perspective.
UP Selina Scott
Kicking patriarchy ass since 1984, Scott is engaged in suing Channel Five, on
the ground of age discrimination. CW says: Go Selina! Kick the butt of The
Man! This, however, isn't CW's main interest, vis-à-vis Scott. For the
ensuing brouhaha has revealed that, for the past ten years, Scott has run a
business selling socks made of goat mohair. That's mohair (spiky) made of
goat (rancid). To sell - profitably - the hair of the goat for the foot of
the man is an extraordinary feat. If we were Five, we would be terrified.
DOWN Pamela Anderson
Anderson has apparently asked Hugh Hefner: “If anything goes wrong, I can
come and live [at the Playboy mansion], can't I?” CW doesn't know quite what
level of “wrong” Anderson is contemplating. This is, after all, a single
mother with hepatitis C who had her honeymoon sex video stolen, then flogged
to the internet. But the idea of a woman spending her Golden Girls years in
an LA mansion surrounded by naked, trampolining 17-year-olds while the
Albert Steptoe of soft porn heavy-breathes into his dressing-gown, sounds a
fairly maudlin fate to us, all told. Surely even presenting GMTV would be
preferable?
these individuals are a waste of space, todays news tomorrows rubbish
gill, rye,