1. Michael Jackson, UP
Two weeks on, and the world is still no nearer to getting its head around
pretty much any aspect of the late Michael Jackson, really; from how he
lived to why he died, or where exactly all those small white children in his
house came from.
Since last week’s funeral — comprehensively covered in Celebrity Watch, up to
and including the moment where Jackson’s 11-year-old daughter, Paris
Michael, wept into a microphone on stage as the remaining Jackson Four
stroked her with their single, white, rhinestone gloves — more details have
emerged about the life of the man they are all referring to as: “Have you
seen what they said in the papers about Michael Jackson today? Bloody Nora.”
OK! was first off the block — running “world exclusive” pictures of
“Neverland’s outrageous secrets”. Within these 11 pages of photos and
reportage, the reader’s eye was most immediately drawn to the pictures of a
“wedding” held between two of Jackson’s children, aged, at the time, 2 and
4.
Paris Michael wears full bridal gown and veil, while Prince Michael is in a
tux — always the favoured playwear of toddlers in Los Angeles at midday. The
peerlessly “Brrrrrrr”-worthy caption reads: "On their
make-believe wedding day, Prince puckers up and gives his fairytale bride —
sister Paris — a kiss.” CW can’t even begin to imagine how this would have
subsequently played out on Bring a Childhood Photograph Day at school.
The next day — possibly to distract attention from the nuptials of the
Minipops — Tito Jackson, Michael’s brother, gave an interview to the Daily
Mirror. There were a series of frankly astonishing revelations —
including that Michael had road-blocks set up at Neverland, to stop
his family visiting unexpectedly: proving that, if nothing else, Michael
really was the man who dared to make real what we all merely dream.
The most notable fact from Tito’s interview, however, was that, for a short
period, Jackson became addicted to carrots and ate so many that, for a
while, “his hands turned orange”. Black, white, orange — speeded-up footage
of Jackson from 1979 onwards would have had him strobing like a Mathmos
table-lamp.
On the same day as Tito’s interview, Jackson’s “closest friend”, Elizabeth
Taylor, was admitted to hospital as she “struggled to cope with her grief” —
“Grief-struggling” being the kind of thing that you can get hospital
treatment for if you can chuck $7,000-a-night at a private doctor and sign
7x12 glossies of International Velvet from “Liz”.
“The heart’s gone out of her,” one of Taylor’s friends said after her
admission. What with Michael’s brain still “in a bucket” (copyright: the Mirror)
awaiting post mortem, and Liz’s heart “gone”, it’s all starting to look like
a camp showbiz remake of The Wizard of Oz over there.
There is no precedent for all this. The world really is just going to have to
free style its way through this one.
2. Angeline Jolie, DOWN
Celebrity Watch has long given up on trying to imagine what it’s like to be
Angelina Jolie. The first day it tried, it got so distracted by the
delightful, billowing urgency of its own mouth that it kept kissing its
reflection in any shiny surface it passed, and got no work done at all. CW
simply couldn’t cope with being Angelina Jolie.
And yet, Angelina Jolie copes with being Angelina Jolie so well. Look at this
week’s Jolie quote: “We have so many kids, it’s just year-round birthdays!
It’s one of life's great pleasures.”
Children’s birthdays all year! Holy moly, CW can think of nothing worse. With
six kids under the age of 8, that’s 180 party bags alone! Six MILLION Polly
Pocket shoes lost down cracks in the floorboards, three minutes after the
wrapping is torn off! Dear God! There isn't enough Brad Pitt in the world to
make that better. CW says it again: holy moly!
3. Sarah Harding, DOWN
It's not an award that CW has much cause to hand out — and, really, thank
goodness for small mercies — but, this week, the Girls Aloud chanteuse Sarah
Harding won Celebrity Watch’s “Most Unfortunate Juxtaposition of Anecdote
and Snack Eaten While Recounting Anecdote” trophy.
In OK!, Harding recalls being present at the birth of her godson. CW lets OK!
take over the narrative from here on in: “I saw his crown,” she recalls,
eyes bright as the memories of that joyous day come flooding back. “I’m so
squeamish, but you have to look past all the blood and guts. It was hard to
look at,” she tells us, as she nibbles on pork parcels, and sips a Bloody
Mary.”
4. Lily Allen, UP
This week, the tabloids have had big news: revealing that Lily Allen has a
third nipple. Indeed, within 24 hours of this news being disseminated,
Google was returning 297,000 results on the search-string “Lily Allen
Nipples 3”: the modern equivalent of seeing burning beacons lit up on
hilltops from Dover to Oban.
While the days in which Allen would next be tried as a witch and then burnt at
the stake — accused of giving suck to the Devil — have of course now gone,
Celebrity Watch still feels that we could do with updating our communal
feeling about third nipples. CW suspects most people’s reaction to them
veers between “Ew”, “Huh?” and “Meh”. But really, if you consider it for a
second, they should be seen as further proof of someone’s superiority. Lily
Allen’s so great that she’s got three tits! CW says: “Embrace the
dysmorphia!”
5. Katie Holmes, UP
Holmes revealed this week that she is moving her sister, Tamera, into the
mansion that she shares with her husband, Tom Cruise. Currently, CW has a
similar arrangement with its own sister, and suspects that it has a pretty
good handle on how Tom’s life will change.
He can expect to return home at around 8pm, to find Katie and Tamera in the
front room, weeping hysterically over the credits of Dances With Wolves,
wailing: “They didn’t have to kill the HORSE!” At breakfast time, Tom can
anticipate very tense conversations about where a “certain pair” of
“special” Wolford tights, left drip-drying on a kitchen chair, “might have
gone”.
Pictures of Michael Sheen will be stuck to the fridge, with increasingly
ribald comments made as to what the women of the Holmes family would like to
do with him. And, occasionally, an extremely vicious and amusing
conversation will strike up about the Holmes’ mother, which, when Tom tries
to join in with a similar joke, will be met with cold stares and the reply,
“It’s not really appropriate for you to say that about Mummy, Tom”.
This week’s entire quota of CW “Good luck with that!” goes out to you, Tom.
6. Britney Spears, DOWN
The relentless PR diktat that Britney Spears is TOTALLY NORMAL AGAIN — despite
Spears’ eyes assuming all the blank hopelessness of a sheep in the back of
the slaughterman’s truck; but in hotpants, doing Lucky — runs
into a small hitch this week, with her new advertising campaign.
In the ads for Candie’s make-up, Spears is photographed looking dead-eyed, yet
sultry-shaped, on a bed of cerise-coloured straw. Although it hasn’t
happened yet, CW is pretty sure that it’s only a matter of weeks
before the phrase “as mad as a pink hayloft” becomes popular currency. As a
rule of thumb, anyone who’s previously been sectioned because of their
mental health looks best not photographed in a world where,
presumably, the privet is orange, and the rain comes down like banana
Nesquik.
7. Baywatch, UP
It is news as welcome as the Relief of Mafeking: Baywatch: the Movie
has finally gone into development! Yes! Finally the story of “running down
some beaches in swimwear” can be told over the full 90 minutes of widescreen
Dolby that it deserves. CW doesn’t doubt for ONE MOMENT that the Baywatch:
The Movie scriptwriters have up to six million ideas for lifeguard-based
plot-twists literally coming out of their arses.
But, should they, for inexplicable reasons, occasionally run short of reasons
to get the entire cast repeatedly to jump into the sea, come out, and then
jump back in again, might CW suggest that they establish, very early on in
the story, that all the lifeguards in Malibu are descended from a single,
wise, life-saving fish, from ancient times? And that if their sexy, hidden
scales aren’t immersed in sea water every seven minutes, they just dry up
like a kipper and die? It will make everything that follows much easier.
You’re welcome.
8. Jordan, UP
Fresh from reviving her reputation by telling Piers Morgan about her
miscarriage while crying, Jordan has now revealed the next stage in her
career: a move into pop music, masterminded by David Bowie's management. It
can mean only one thing: a Celebrity Watch pun-storm! Bra Man! Diamond Dugs!
Udder Pressure! Wife in Bars!
9. Lindsay Lohan, DOWN
In a political stand-off only slightly less hazardous to global security than
the one between North and South Korea, Lohan is being sued by a Florida
chemist, who claims that she has “stolen” the formula for her Sevin Nyne
fake-tan spray. We know. Supplies of skin-oranger could be disrupted for months
if this plays out badly.
Personally, Celebrity Watch can well believe that the spray is Lohan’s own
invention. For whenever CW sees a recovering alcoholic selling product that
has “chardonnay” listed as one of the ingredients, CW tends to believe that
they were there right at the formulation stage.
10. Michael Jackson (again), UP
Yes, we know. But having studied satellite printouts and Foreign Office data,
Celebrity Watch is aware that up to 78 per cent of everything in the world
at the moment — TV, newsprint, conversation, thought, merchandise, Google
searches, and, possibly, children created in a test-tube by a dermatologist
— is to do with Michael Jackson. So it was not surprised to see the normally
level-headed Daily Telegraph go a bit giddy on Wednesday, printing a
picture purporting to be a “Ghostly image of Michael Jackson on a car
bonnet”.
Although CW is pretty sure that the bonnet of a Rover 200 isn’t likely to be
Earth’s first-confirmed port-hole window into the afterlife, it can confirm
that there is the image of someone famous reflected in its paintwork:
Ike, the Canadian baby from South Park.
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