DOWN Britney Spears
This week, Britney has been on a whistle-stop promotional tour for her new
album, Circus. Germany here, The X Factor there. She's been all over the
place - and not in the way she was last year, when she was hospitalised
twice, shaved all her hair off and lost custody of her two children. In
2008, when we say Britney has been “all over the place”, we simply mean she
has been getting a lot of air miles.
The fluffier end of the press has been in mutual accord as to what this
publicity onslaught means. “Britney's comeback!” they all hoorah.
However, what they mean is that Britney's hair and figure have “come back”.
She is slim and glossy once more. But let us be very clear - Britney Spears
has not “come back” in the mental, spiritual sense of the phrase.
Her performances were little more than a blank-eyed Spears walking around in
circles a lot, miming. Perhaps this was in keeping with the theme of her
album, Circus - and she was acting like a deranged lion in a cage.
Maybe she has one leg shorter than the other. Or she could have been
poignantly interpreting the “promotional treadmill” she was on into her
routine. Either way, it was not the trashy, flashy, sex-eyed Britney of
yore.
It was an exhausted-looking mother of two working some manner of night shift
in the pop factory. Interviews show a woman who is just not feeling it any
more. The Sky documentary on Sunday had Spears weeping, “Every day seems
like Groundhog Day. I just want to live on a desert island with my boys” -
not an unreasonable request for someone who's been working since they were
11, is worth £200 million and had a meltdown last year.
And yet, she now has a gigantic world tour booked for 2009, arranged by her
manager/father. Britney looks as if she's about to become our first battery
pop star. CW says: Britney has given us enough pleasure over the years - not
least in the superlative video for Toxic, where she plays a demented vampire
air hostess with the world's hottest wink. We should take her into the
woods, and set her free.
DOWN Rock daughters
Tatler this month sees Leah Wood, Peaches Geldof and Kimberley Stewart posing
naked on the cover. ROCK BABES, the cover line says - even though none are
in a band, write songs or play an instrument. Their fathers - Ronnie Wood,
Bob Geldof and Rod Stewart - have, though; making this an alarming piece of
patriarchal regression, in which daughters are accorded the mores of their
fathers. Quite aside from the pre-feminism reversal issues, there is the
lack of logic. After all, by Tatler's calculation, the actress Jaime
Winstone should prompt FAT SHOUTY COCKNEY BLOKE headlines, Zoe Ball should
get ALGEBRA, and Prince Charles should have QUEEN emblazoned across his
forehead.
UP The Aga Khan. Wow, the Aga Khan! Who knew he was still around? He's so
Seventies - like IRA pub bombs, and cultural validity being accorded to Dave
Lee Travis. Anyway, it looks as if it's still fun being the Khan of Aga, as,
this week, his filly, Zarkava, was named Horse of the Year. And who can
blame the judging panel - faced with the magical majesty of a horse that is
only 6ins long, and clearly in constant high spirits, even though it lives
in a pencil case! How jolly. That's one useful horse.
DOWN David Beckham
In this time of global unrest, it was alarming to see top soccer-ball star
David Beckham - peaceably attending a basketball game in Los Angeles -
coming under sudden attack. As these pictures show, someone appears to have
launched a child at Beckham - possibly from a nearby trebuchet on a grassy
knoll. Despite coming within 3ft of the alarmed Beckham, the child
subsequently failed to detonate, and was later removed by the bomb disposal
squad for further tests; and 20 minutes on the Naughty Step.
DOWN John Barrowman
Barrowman - the American-sounding one from Doctor Who - went on a modish,
young person's show on Radio 1 this week. During the interview, Barrowman
joked that he was going to expose himself. Much squealing ensued, ending
with Barrowman saying: “I got my fruit and nuts out!” Subsequently, the
Daily Mail and its readers have had a field day. “Another day in the gutter
for the BBC!” the paper roared. “It makes you want to cry,” Carol Vincent
from Ventnor posted on the website. All despite that this happened ON THE
RADIO, the nakedness being subject to the listener's imagination and no one,
therefore, having seen anything at all. CW has news for people so easily
shocked - other than, of course, that this is a world of infinite suffering,
millions of children scream out in hunger, injustice stalks the streets like
a mad, red-eyed horse, and that you should, perhaps, keep your shock powder
dry for slightly bigger events. And here's the thing: we are all constantly
naked under our clothes. There is nakedness that you cannot see but which
could be described to you, ALL AROUND YOU. You are SURROUNDED by it.
Furthermore, we're only here because our parents totally had complete SEX with
each other - during which they, too, were probably NAKED.
DOWN Mariah Carey
Carey has launched her own perfume, in which, apparently, “her crystalline
high notes are translated into sparkling Bellini accords”, and a “surreal
softness is recreated with sun-kissed woods wrapped in white musk”. We think
they mean that it smells flowery. Alas, the name “Mariah Carey's Luscious
Pink” shares, along with “Sarah Jessica Parker's Lovely”, the unfortunate
inference of sounding a bit, well, you know. A bit like they're talking
about their down-belows. “I want to smell like Mariah Carey's Luscious Pink.”
“I'm sorry, but I can't help but feel very alarmed about that.”
UP Catherine Zeta-Jones
People knock The Zeta because she's a girl from Wales who got famous, married
into a Hollywood dynasty and now swans around like she's never heard of
Barry Island, Monday mornings or rain. To be frank, this is why CW likes
her. Consider this quote, from a recent interview, on how difficult it is
having seven houses around the world. “The worst thing...is that when I have
an outfit and I think it's going to look great with a certain pair of shoes,
I remember they're in Majorca or Bermuda. So that's why I have to buy
duplicates.” This is exactly the kind of thing that the Elizabeth
Taylor for the Haribo Tangfastic generation should be saying.
DOWN A-Rod
Newly divorced Madonna has been serenading her new “soulmate” - the baseball
player A-Rod - at her concert last week; thus making him one of the
“hottest” men on the planet right now.
However, CW does not believe that A-Rod is Madonna's new “soulmate” at all.
For consider the laminate around his neck. It's just for “Hospitality”! In
the laminate hierarchy, that's the laminate that, like, Keith Chegwin would
get. Or Fearne Cotton's sister's friend. That's not the laminate of a
“soulmate” - it's just access to a bowl of nuts in a sideroom. CW firmly
believes in its ability to divine the state of a relationship from the
passes doled out by a tour manager. And if A-Rod hasn't got “Access All
Areas” then, well, he hasn't got “access all areas”. We think you know what
we are saying.
UP Tilda Swinton
Last week action hero Jean-Claude Van Damme's made a transportative
explanation of what acting is (“Inside that seed is the kind of liquid cream
substance of the man I am”). This week, the Oscar-winning boy/girl
copper-top maven, Tilda Swinton, has tried to outdo him. “Every good
performance contains something that's not fake,” she explains. “Imagine me
hiding a mole under a pillow, then piling more pillows on top. If I don't
kill the mole then, sooner or later, the mole will find its way out. It's
the same with acting.” CW genuinely believes that actors being able to say
these kinds of thing are what we fought a war for.
DOWN Madonna
Poor old Britney Spears. In an interview this week, Madonna commented on
Britney's continuing fragility (see No1, right), saying that she feels
“maternal” towards her. Maternal? Towards the girl that Madonna
got off with on the 2003 MTV Awards, in a faux-lesbian publicity tongue-off?
That's not very motherly, is it? But then, perhaps this is the modern way.
Maybe CW should abandon its own childrens' bedtime routine of biscuits and
Ludo, and start screaming, “You bitches are SMOKIN'!” while 20 backing
dancers, controversially dressed as Chinese flamenco gimp-Jesuses, dance in
an arrowhead formation across the bedroom.
