Up. Kate Moss
It is a fact that cannot be ignored, denied or brushed away with an airy,
“Well that's very much her own business, isn't it? I don't think we should
comment on personal issues” any more: Kate Moss has put on weight. The woman
who was once so slender that she made leggings look baggy, appears to have
put on about a stone and a half, and now has things most women have been
rocking for a while: a belly, breasts, thighs you could disable a man with,
in a good way, etc.
This is, of course, seismic news in the World of Women. For if Kate Moss has
put on weight, then we are all, ipso facto, off the hook! The rules all
change. There is peace in our time, swords will be beaten into ploughshares
and Peter will become High King over all at Cair Paravel.
At the launch of the New York Topshop last week, Moss was smoky-eyed and
serene in a clingy, floor-length, emerald green dress, in which you could
see a distinct curve to her tum. Not a concave curve, you understand - as
seen on skinny Russian teenage models - but a convex one. As if in
acknowledgement that a woman's lower torso has to hold liver, kidneys,
pancreas, spleen and a tennis court full of intestines, and clearly cannot
do this in something that measures 20ins around.
And yet, despite Moss having the temerity to have a waistline big enough to
fit all her innards in, everyone behaved perfectly normally around her.
Indeed, not only was she not thrown down a well - but she was allowed in a
fashion shop! While people photographed her! As a representative! And acted
like it was all OK! In a world where Jessica Simpson's 1stone weight gain
makes CNN, the former EastEnders actress Natalie Cassidy is being hounded
into total dysmorphia for hitting a size 14, supermodel Kate Moss's round
belly is like Rosa Parkes, finally digging in her heels and sitting up the
front of the bus.
Of course, Moss's triumphant entrance into Having An Ass City has not been
without cost. For four months, she has had to put up with the tabloids, and
the Mail, constantly circling pictures, screaming, with almost admirably
brutal rudeness: “IS SHE PREGNANT?” Similarly, references to her “sagging”
breasts have become frequent, accompanied by ludicrously unrepresentative
shots of her sitting down, leaning forward, tilting to the left, etc. But if
anyone can brush these slights off her shoulders, as so much dust, it is
Moss. She did, after all, go out with the pop-rock tramp Pete Doherty. Being
the world's first supermodel with an arse should be easy by comparison.
Up. Gary Lineker
According to the reliable recounting of the Daily Mail, Gary Lineker and his
hot fiancée, Danielle Bux, have just jetted off on their ninth holiday of
the past 16 months. Since the couple started sharing crisps in 2007, they've
gone to Miami, Rome, Vienna, the Amalfi coast, Dubai, and three times to
Lineker's second home in Barbados. While CW is essentially a free-wheeling
libertarian with a firm “live and let live” policy, it finds this statistic
frankly alarming. Nine holidays! The packing logistics are brutal. Lineker
must be spending up to 70 per cent of his life balling socks, stuffing them
into shoes and furling chinos up into a foot-long trouser-tube. Rather him
than us, poor, tormented orange soul.
Down. Angela Merkel
Poor Angela, the German Chancellor, and quite possibly the most powerful woman
in the world. Male world leaders just seem to go a bit funny around her.
Remember when George W. Bush gave her that creepy neck massage at the G8 in
Moscow, while everyone just stared at him in horror? Weird. Now Silvio
Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, has gone equally bizarre - keeping
Merkel waiting on a red carpet while he talked on his mobile phone. In front
of the world's media, Merkel had to pull a series of faces - starting with
“Oh, we all know what it's like when you have an important call to finish!”,
oscillating all the way through to “I hate you, you Italian bastard”, while
Berlusconi gabbled away. To CW's wise old eye, it looks as if Berlusconi
totally fancies her, and is just trying to look excessively casual - like a
15-year-old boy with a crush.
Up. Jonathan Aitken
Holy God, will you look at the life of Jonathan Aitken! It appears to be
governed by some Random Exciting Events generator, programmed by Jilly
Cooper. He's been a broadcaster, Cabinet Minister and a war correspondent in
Vietnam and Biafra. He's an individual who Mrs Thatcher referred to as “that
man who made Carol cry” after a failed love affair. He's had a glass of wine
thrown over him by Anna Ford, served seven months on a perjury rap, fathered
a daughter by Adnan Khashoggi's wife, plus he is the uncle of Miles from
This Life. And now, a book on the Dutch royal family claims that Aitken is
the result of an affair between his mother and Prince Bernhard of the
Netherlands - making him half-brother to the monarch, Queen Beatrix.
Jonathan Aitken is literally the most interesting man in the world.
Up. Mr Asbo
A new public menace is on the scene - Mr Asbo, the angry Cambridge swan. Over
the past few weeks, the swan that locals have named “Mr Asbo,” and not
“Swanny Liston,” which would have been much better, has started attacking
rowers on the River Cam - even capsizing one canoe. Rowing clubs have had to
send e-mails to their members, warning them of the dangers of an angry bird
that can, infamously (in a fact that Celebrity Watch has been repeatedly
informed of by a diverse array of people), break your arm with its wings.
However, much in the way that a haunted house with bleeding walls is
inevitably revealed to have been built on the graves of angry Confederate
war dead, it seems that Mr Asbo has a reason for its psychotic rages. More
detailed reports on the animal's history reveal that Mr Asbo's nest has been
repeatedly vandalised and - in a twist of no little tragedy and unhappiness
- its cygnets were snatched and left on the towpath, with their necks
broken, dead.
Having learnt everything it knows from the blockbusters of Hollywood, CW knows
what will happen next. Mr Asbo has clearly been attacking these innocent
people while drunk, as he uses cheap Scotch whisky to dull the pain of his
loss. But when a close swan friend also loses its cygnets to the cygnet
killer, Mr Asbo will clean up its act, track down the murderer seconds
before he is about to kill an adorable fluffy duckling (cameo: Susan
Sarandon), and then, accompanied by a stirring score by John Williams, break
the killer's arms with its wing.
Down. Jonathan Ross
In CW's house, Madame Tussauds has long been a byword for shoddy waxen
effigies. The last time that CW carted some gawping out-of-towners around
the diversion, it literally had to read the labels on the Beatles to find
out which one was Paul. George, meanwhile, appeared to be manifesting the
kind of glowering evil menace one usually associates with a secret lair in
an extinct volcano.
Still, even forewarned and forearmed, CW was astonished by this week's
unveiling of MT's latest figure, Jonathan Ross. CW has now stared at the
picture for 20 minutes, trying to work out who it looks like. Obviously
having dismissed the answer “Jonathan Ross” in half a nanosecond, CW is
currently favouring “Coleen Nolan of the Nolan Sisters”. Amazing.
Up. Hugh Jackman
Hugh Jackman, star of X-Men and Australia, arrived at the premiere of his new
film by way of a daring helicopter ride. The handsome, muscular actor then
descended from the chopper on a zip-wire,in front of screaming fans, in an
enlivening display of hotness and bravado. Hugh Jackman has long cast a
thrall over CW, because his name seems less a name - and more a sigil or a
promise. Say it fast. Hugh Jackman. Huge Ackman. Huuuuuuge Ackman. CW
doesn't quite know what a Huge Ackman would be, but knows that it would like
to know. It would like to know very much.
Up. Fabrizio Politi
CW's favourite celebrity, Fabrizio Politi - designer yacht maker and former
fiancé of Geri Halliwell - is back, back, BACK in the news, making CW's week
just that little bit more gorgeous. Politi granted an audience to the lucky
old News of The World - inviting journalists on to his yacht, and shared his
heartbreak with them while drinking Cristal champagne, and “puffing on a
Montecristo”. Having revealed that he courted Halliwell by getting the
Uffizi gallery in Florence opened in the middle of the night so that they
could look round, Politi's mood saddened as he revealed that Geri dumped him
“out of the blue”, for reasons that he could not explain. CW can explain it
- the clue came when Politi revealed that he liked to leave “love letters in
[Geri's] shoes for her to find days later”. Papercuts, Politi, papercuts.
Up. Seinfeld
Hot news from across the Atlantic - a pornographic tribute to Seinfeld is
being planned! There are no other details as yet, leaving Celebrity Watch to
“fill in the gaps” - which sounds a bit rude, now we come to think of it.
Obviously, the concept of Kramer's “funny entrances” will be radically
reworked in this new format, and the episode about “double dipping” will
have an intrinsically different meaning. While CW hopes that the little
slap-bass stings between each scene remain, in order to punctuate narrative
shift, it suspects that George Costanza may now be renamed “Engorged”
Costanza. And the title? Seinfeel, obviously.
Down. Rihanna
Rihanna - one of the biggest pop stars in the world - is in the news again.
Last month, the headlines were about an alleged assault by her boyfriend,
Chris Brown. Given this, her latest move is all the more baffling: she has
had a gun tattooed on her side. While controversy rages on the
appropriateness of an alleged assault victim having a weapon tattooed on her
body, Celebrity Watch is more intrigued by the fact that her tattooist works
under the name BangBang, “but his real name is Keith”.
