10 UP Karl Lagerfeld
Imagine, for a moment, that you are Karl Lagerfeld. It’s OK. Don’t worry —
Celebrity Watch is fully qualified to do this kind of visualisation therapy.
So. You ARE Karl Lagerfeld. In the past five years, you have fake-tanned
your face the colour of a cheap pine table, taken to calling sundry
supermodels “fat”, and perpetually cooling yourself with a 19th-century
ladies’ fan.
Then, this week, you appeared in public with a small, toy bear, made of white
leather, dressed to look like you. And yet everyone around you behaves as if
it’s perfectly normal. They don’t blink an eye. They don’t even mention
it.
You’re hurt by that, aren’t you, Karl? You feel as if no one really cares
about you. You suspect that you could go so mad that you cut off your own
bum and use it as a fascinator, but still everyone would just say: “Oh, he’s
so fashion”.
Well, CW cares, Karl. CW cares enough to say: “With your creepy Tiny Karl
Bear, you look totally deranged. CW has now proven to be your only true
friend. Can we have a free handbag?”
9 DOWN Piers Morgan
It doesn’t do to habitually over-state the oddness of the celebrity world. If
Mariah Carey “doesn’t do stairs”, is that really so
bizarre? If CW had sold 200 million records, it wouldn’t do stairs, Mondays,
the first two years of its children’s lives, or any of the A406 between Kew
and the Hanger Lane gyratory.
But the latest career move from Piers Morgan — fronting the launch of Burger
King’s £4.99 “Flame” aftershave — really is
odd. Because, as anyone who has been to one will know, the smell of Burger
King is of fat — the stale, oily vapour that makes air-vent grilles look
like Fuzzy Felts. This is what Piers Morgan is saying he smells of. It’s
almost like he’s bullying himself.
8 DOWN Britney Spears
Here’s Britney Spears, talking about the delights of watching her two young
sons discover their own, distinct personalities, and slowly grow into
themselves: “They’re going to pre-school now. Seeing them in their
classroom, and Jayden being bad, or not listening, it’s like — those are
mine! They’re starting to learn words like ‘stupid’, and Preston says the
F-word sometimes.”
Ah, maternal pride. Soon those boys will be able to bring her a cat they shot
themselves for Mother’s Day. There’s everything to look forward to.
7 DOWN David Beckham
Another week, another gigantic poster of David Beckham in his underpants,
unveiled to an increasingly startled world. Why do you keep showing us your
pants, Dave? Wuh-hy? Really, it’s no different to when Susan Boyle flashed
her thighs at everyone — just with better styling.
And it’s the styling in these latest dispatches from Beckham’s pants drawer
that have caused CW some alarm. Heaven knows, CW is aware that there are
only so many ways you can present a man in pants. They’re stylists, dearie,
not miracle workers. But putting Beckham at the end of a gigantic rope? It’s
a potential PR disaster. For what does one always find at the end of a huge
rope? An anchor. These pictures are subliminally telling us that David
Beckham is a big anchor. Is that wise?
6 UP John Le Mesurier
When CW was little, it thought that John Le Mesurier from Dad’s Army
was the poshest person who ever lived — posher even than Joyce Grenfell,
whom CW presumed was actually the Queen. But this week, CW learnt that, in
actual fact, it didn’t even know the half of how posh Le Mesurier was, when
it discovered that Le Mesurier was christened John Charles Elton Le Mesurier
De Somerys Halliley. He probably had a pet falcon that he took to air shows,
too (see Emanuele Filiberto).
5 UP Boris Becker
You know when you were a child and you believed that ballerinas lived in pink
houses with tutu net curtains, and that bakers would obviously live in
houses that looked like a bun? Well, look! Your beliefs have finally come
true!
Boris Becker got married this week to his fiancée, Lilly Kerssenberg, in the
mountains of Switzerland. The important thing here is that the reception was
held in a giant marquee, where the floor had been covered in AstroTurf “to
resemble a tennis court”.
Yes! Yes! There must be more of this career-themed wedding reception trend! CW
wants Zara Phillips to get married in a barn full of hay and horse poo, and
Michael Phelps to preside over 300 guests, in evening wear, slowly drowning
in an Olympic-sized pool scattered with vol-au-vents.
4 UP Barack Obama
Is there nothing the big B.O. cannot do? He’s the first black man in the White
House, a bestselling author, a creditable stand-up comedian (“I believe my
next 100 days will be so successful, I will complete them in 72. And on the
73rd day, I will rest.”) and, let us never forget, a powerfully hot piece of
ass.
And now it seems that Obama is beginning Phase Two of his career — pop
stardom! — with his cover version of Lionel Richie’s classic love song, Hello.
Although this news has not yet been officially released, as you can see
from this picture, there can be no other meaning behind a gigantic clay
sculpture of Obama’s head, fairly obviously crafted by a blind woman during
an evening class. CW looks forward to Obama subsequently tackling Dancing
on the Ceiling, where he will actually dance on the ceiling, because
he’s basically magic.
3 UP Emanuele Filiberto
Celeb Watch is obsessed with minor royals. Obsessed. It believes that the
trillions mankind spends on searching for extraterrestrial life would be far
better funnelled into studying obscure European royal families — who are
equally fascinating and alien, but live a lot nearer, in places like Monaco
and Berlin.
This week, CW’s favourite minor royal is Emanuele Filiberto, Prince of Venice
and Piedmont. Let’s look at him for a moment — pictured on an average day,
at Turin’s World Air Games. You will note that Emanuele has a falcon — “the
regal bird”, as Hello! helpfully notes — on his knee.
Of course he has a falcon on his knee. On your knee, you might have a plaster,
or a cup of tea, or a child. Emanuele has a falcon, which he takes to air
shows. Because he’s a prince.
2 UP Mona Lisa
Oh, what a difference 500 years make! Until this week, the world had regarded
the Mona Lisa as an immortal rendering of womankind’s deep, galactic
mystery. Nebulas wheel in la Giaconda’s eyes. A knowing, vinous smirk plays
on her lips.
Is she flirty? Flinty? Cheery? Weary? Or could she be everything — and more?
Part pulchritude, part puzzle, and 100 per cent classy bird. That was the
Mona Lisa.
Now, however, it has been revealed that she might be just one of six Mona
Lisas — the others of which were all nudey. One of these nudes has just been
rediscovered, after lying in an attic for hundreds of years, and the
inscription on the back claims that Mona Lisa was, in fact, the mistress of
Francis I.
From serene mystery to topless tart in a single day. CW can’t wait for the
year 2509, when everyone will presumably be looking at a faded copy of Nuts
and discussing the enigma in Jodie Marsh’s eyes.
1 UP Coleen Rooney
Like Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Celebrity Watch is
always thrilled when it finds somewhere new to wear diamonds.
Well it remembers meeting Peter Andre in 2006, and the frisson it experienced
on looking at Andre’s head. At the time, Andre was doing pioneering work
with around 200 small diamonds that he’d had glued to his woolly hat.
CW felt it was in the presence of one of the great visionaries of bling. A
Sultan of Bling, maybe.
But it doesn’t have to be just diamonds, of course. Emeralds, agate and
zirconium . . . any senseless, extravagant application of precious or
semi-precious stones inspires admiration in CW. Courtney Love’s forthcoming
fashion line will apparently feature a ruby sewn into every item. Shamingly,
CW has no idea what the washing instructions are on a ruby. It presumes
tumble-drying to be a no-no.
But while there may be some vestigial logic in hiding a ruby in the lining of
a dress — perhaps as couture’s nod to the fleeing refugees in the Second
World War who sewed family jewels into petticoats — there are things that
even CW would blanch at applying gems to. A sofa, for instance.
But then Celebrity Watch is not Coleen Rooney. Or, more pertinently, Celebrity
Watch isn’t married to Wayne Rooney — and therefore doesn’t face the
perplexing dilemma of just how to spend his estimated wages of £123,795.73 a
week.
Let us not, then, be the ones to cast the first semi-precious stone over her
decision this week to spend £10,000 on a crystal-studded sofa,
to celebrate the couple’s first wedding anniversary.
Of course, once you’ve accepted that buying a crystal-studded sofa could be a
simple act of practicality — perhaps there was £10,000 in tenners cluttering
up the hall console, and obscuring access to the keys to the hovercraft —
then Rooney’s next act could be filed under “mere logic”. For she had the
sofa customised with extra Swarovski crystals, just in case, we
dunno, the sofa wanted to go to a ball or something.
This crystal-encrusting of household furniture has served only to remind CW
how pitifully unimaginative it is when it comes to the possibility of making
quotidian items look like a drag queen on Christmas Day. All CW can think
about (boringly, tediously, like some old lady) is that sitting on a
crystal-studded sofa would feel like when you’ve eaten Ryvita on the sofa
and the crumbs have gone everywhere, but much, much worse.
