Fox (n): carnivore of genus vulpes; crafty person; scavenger; (vb) to confuse; -ed (adj): to be drunk.
Broadband from £5.99 a month with an included wireless router when you sign up to Plusnet - terms apply

Thursday 19 April 2012

Perpetual Pippa.

NEWSPAPERS often get the blame for pointing things out.

Telling the Home Secretary it's a leap year, for one; stoking public outrage over the pasty tax, for another; and that spending £5,000 to build a sandcastle and then knock it down in a story which went around the world as an example of British stupidity is not the way to publicise the Olympics.

Even if the PR does claim the coverage made it "a successful exercise". Twat.

But then that's what we're here for. Observing things and then pointing at the bits that are the most outrageous, amazing or make the least sense, in the hope that by drawing attention to them they will wither or blossom, depending on their merits.

The main downside of throwing muck around is that it forms compost for the weeds as well. Hence the growth of people who become famous for doing not much in just the right place or time that they can grab some of the nutrients other celebrities like to think should be theirs alone.

This phenomenon hothoused Jade Goody, a troubled girl who made the best of some screen time but who became such a creature of the spotlight that when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer she had to sell every last bit of her illness in order to fund her children's future.

In one of her final interviews, Jade broke down in tears as she spoke about her own death. She buried her face in her hands, then said aloud: "Oh sorry, you need the picture don't you?" and turned to face the photographer so he could capture it.

He was as moved and appalled by that as you are. And yes, he took the picture.

It's also given rise to the likes of Chantelle Houghton and Alex Reid, both of whom are famous principally because they were married to someone famous and lapped up magazine deals and exposure to make some easy money.

Now they are mini-celebrities in their own right, they are unemployable in just about any other sphere. All they can raise money from is to continue selling the story of their lives, relationship, IVF battles, pregnancy and inevitably every soiled nappy their spawn will produce.


This is almost fair enough. They've painted themselves into a corner, they couldn't get a proper job with the best will in the world, and we can only blame ourselves for forcing them into these shameless contortions by buying the magazines they feature in.

They're also pretty harmless. Let 'em live their lives, however screwy they are.

But then we have Pippa Middleton, who Time Magazine has announced is one of the 100 most influential people on the planet. A woman who is only young but dresses like she's middle-aged, whose hair isn't as nice as her sister's, who zips about in a BMW she didn't earn the money to buy, and who has a good bum.

As someone who spent a year searching for a book deal it's hard not to be bitter about someone who landed £400,000 to write about throwing parties. Any of us could do that. My chavvy neighbours could do it, and probably write something a damn sight more interesting than Pippa judging by their latest revels:
1. Buy booze.
2. Invite people.
3. Play music.
4. Fight.
5. Repeat until police arrive.
Pippa's a typical Sloane, the kind of girl most newspaper editors weren't able to get anywhere near in their youth, and my but they're making up for it now. She also sells papers because most men in the country feel similar about sporty posh girls.

We females, I'm afraid, buy the papers because we dislike her - she reminds me of the popular girl at school who didn't get zits, who the boys all loved, but who was quite dim and ended up working in Greggs. I read about Pippa purely because I'm awaiting her downfall.

But if she didn't get in the papers in the first place, she would virtually cease to exist. She would still be in her BMW and hanging about with people who own castles, but she'd never cross anyone's radar. She'd get married to a man with lots of money, teeth and hair, and they'd have sporty children who'd go to good schools and always be too dim to go into politics. Oh, hang on...

Pippa is a topic of conversation this week because she got invited to a party by a French vicomte. Entirely coincidentally, he has a new shop opening in London soon and, also coincidentally, he is largely ignored by the French media. In a third shocking coincidence his party included official photographs which were flogged to whoever asked and he also invited a primetime French TV show.

Details about what Pippa got up to at that party have been shared around, and stoked further by one of her friends waving a replica handgun at photographers the next day. The vicomte has now posted pictures of himself and Pippa on the website through which he sells things. What a coincidence!

There's nothing innately wrong with weeds - they're just things that grow in a place you don't want them. Some of them are nice to look at, while others grow like Japanese knotweed and do nothing to make the world a better place.

Pippa does nothing much and is nothing much, but because of her links gets invited to things by people who expect her presence to bring them money, and because the pictures are so good and so easy to get they are used in papers and magazines which, because we all have an opinion about this nothing very much, we buy in our thousands. And then she gets more invites.

It's a self-perpetuating circle of Pippa-ness which she is more than happy to be at in the centre of for the moment but which, if I'm any judge, will one day come back to bite her on that annoyingly perfect bum.

Probably when she finds herself dating just about the only person who wouldn't object to such a lifestyle.

We can but hope.
In the meantime, let's all ignore her.