Own Cole
This is how much I like to think the best of people. I read this in the Guardian (via @badjournalism) and thought, aarrgh, it's awful!
Chelsea are not looking great, as a promoter of marriage and family values: will they keep their heads down until it blows over, or tough it out? I would come out blazing if I were them. I would release a statement saying how much worse the players are at Manchester United. It might not limit any damage, but it would probably be true and it would give us all a laugh.
One thing is clear, however: short of going back in time and leaving him sooner, Cheryl has done this at exactly the right time. It was doing her image no favours, the surrendered-wife-cum-careworker role she had carved for herself. She will be much better loved now, like a Geordie Princess Diana. Plus she can get a hot new boyfriend. Raise high the roofbeams, Girls Aloud!
Then I thought, oh you silly fool, Vowl, you've been tricked. It's a big spoof of the really vacuous kind of celebrity gash that gets chucked into broadsheets nowadays, and you haven't noticed. You'll be made to look light a right plum if you go saying this is dreadful, when it's a clever bit of bait to raise the ire of idiots like you. But then I stopped talking to myself, and read it again.
In the meantime, everything has changed apart from Ashley Cole's own jackass behaviour. Cheryl Cole has gone from quite-famous member of a quite-famous girlband, to international, explosively beautiful superstar. This is heartening to watch; the depressing subtext of so many football scandals is that the wives have no ace to play. Unless you're in a Jilly Cooper novel, and the footballer is going to be dealt a death blow when he realises the love of his life has just upped and left him, what you're basically watching, from George Best to John Terry, is a man who can do exactly what he pleases and a woman persuading herself to forgive him because the alternative is to be exiled. Don't give me alimony, she is about to be exiled from the Garden of Eden. Cheryl Cole makes her own Eden: she has everything he has, in her own right, and more. Money don't maketh the feminist, no, but this looks more like the Noughties than the Fifties for a change, and it's cheering.
And I thought: God, no, you were right the first time. And that disappointed me greatly, because I hoped that it was a spoof and that I'd been tricked. I wanted it to be that cute, and for me to have been tripped up by it. That would have made everything all right. See, the Guardian isn't just printing a load of tripe about the Coles, I could say, it's rather more subtle than that; it's cleverly dismantling the broadsheet celebrity story and eviscerating it for our delectation. It's setting the bar really high and taking a stand against the giggling inanity of celeb coverage, and feeble articles about pop stars and footballers.
But no. No, it isn't. I wish it was true, but it's not.
Breaking news
I get annoyed by lots of things. Some things shouldn't annoy you. Yes, I know, a footballer, with a dick, has split up from a singer, who doesn't have a dick; this is all tremendously exciting and intriguing for everyone, ever, because, as I've said before, news about dicks beats all other news. Would you believe it? People have sex with each other, and have relationships, and sometimes those relationships don't quite work out. Fancy that. If only popular culture could reflect these astonishing events, we might understand them a little better, these miraculous and bizarre things that take place.
It's annoying, of course, that it's all over the TV news stations now, and will be smeared all over the front pages tomorrow morning, and will be discussed ad nauseum by all kinds of awful bloggers, including me. It's annoying that it's a story at all, and that by saying you're annoyed by the fact that it's a story at all, you're adding to the noise and perpetuating the storyness of the non-story. All this is annoying, and yet I still continue to type.
And yet there's something specifically annoying about Sky's decision, above, to use the phrase BREAKING NEWS - in scary black-and-yellow, like it's a wasp about to buzz into your can of lager, or a strip of tape across a low-hanging beam that you might bump your head against while you're walking upstairs, or something like that - about the story. Because breaking is pretty surely what it isn't.
I am no English teacher, and I'm not entirely sure about the grammar of this whole situation, but there's something particularly piquing about the use of the present continuous - I think I'm correct with this, but no doubt I'll be set straight if I'm not - to describe this. Is the story really 'breaking'? Is this news 'breaking'? Surely it has broken? Cheryl and Ashley have called it a day, haven't they? She's not still in the process of telling him, is she? It's not as if this took a lot of time to happen. They were together; now it's confirmed they're not. It's not breaking. It's done, finished, behind us.
Oh you can try and pretend, as TV news and so on do, that there's still something to eke out of this, like a ketchup bottle turned on its lid in a student kitchen, but there really patently isn't. They were together; now they're not. Something has happened. I thought that was what news was? Apparently not. We have to pretend that there are things still going on, stuff still to be learned, so this can be spread out over hours and hours of pointless bastards gassing away on news programmes talking about what might happen, who might do what, how people might reflect on all this, who's going to take sides, who's going to be on Team Ashley or Team Cheryl - maybe they'll drag one of them in to be made to cry by Kay Burley. Who knows? More to the point, who gives a shit? I don't. It's done now, can't we talk about these things as if they've happened, rather than they're still happening. They're not.
The present continuous* just lets you know you're heading into a world of giddyingly vomitous crap in which this bloody story will never be left alone; in which this event, insignificant in all our lives though it really is, is stretched out into some never-ending poxy saga in which we learn nothing new about anything ever and discover that, yes, the thing that has happened has happened, and now we're left gazing at a bunch of flowers by the side of the road, pretending that a car crash is still actually going on, right in front of us.
Please, can it end? Will it end? When can we start talking about this as if it took place in the past, which it did? When can we start getting on with our lives without these two fuckwits looking a bit glum in photographs on our front pages. Ooh, I wonder why they're glum - couldn't be anything to do with the fact they've got half a hundredweight of sweaty photographers pointing massive fucking cameras in their faces as they clamber all over their front gardens and bellow at them like they're performing fucking seals? Surely not, surely not.
No. We're stuck with this. Stuck with this, in the never-ending present tense that stretches out to the horizon and never diminishes. This endless bloody story, dragged out until we're sick of it, until it's rammed down our throats and we choke on it - except I'm sick of it already. Make it stop. Make it be in the past. Please. Someone. Make it end now.
* I think I dislike this tense for another reason. It's the one in which computers talk to you. "Loading..." they smarm at you, when they're quite obviously not loading anything and are just pottering around, making whirring sounds and blinking a bit, like the lazy bastards they so clearly are and always will be.
Mail once again shocked by passing of time
Last year, the Mail was horrified to learn that 1970s heart-throb Richard O'Sullivan had grown older than he used to be in the 30-odd years since he was at the peak of his fame:
Old Man About The House: Frail 70s heart-throb Richard O'Sullivan looks unrecognisable
Unfortunately, during the past year - in which time, presumably, no-one at the Mail has gained a single grey hair or wrinkle, or started forgetting where they left the car keys - Mail writers have not learned about the ageing process. Nor have they learned that it's not an especially pleasant thing to do to write things like this. Because here's today's bit of sawdust to fill up the website:
Can it be him? Well, it appears to be the same human being, and he actually looks pretty much the same, but...
But while the re-runs of Friends will forever immortalise him as the youthful Joey Tribbiani, time has not been so kind to actor Matt Le Blanc.
Yes, it's hard to understand I know, but in television programmes, people don't actually get older when the shows get repeated. However, in real life - and hold onto the safety rail if you feel yourself spinning - people do get older with the passing of time. Comparing anyone to how they looked in 1994 to how they look now isn't going to be a 'spot the difference' competition. We have all, I'm afraid, got a little bit older.
As I've said before, you can always compare certain Mail columnists' older pictures
with how they look now, and who'd have thought it -
- they look older too*. And so what? People get older and look a little older. It's no big deal, and it's not even something to be bothered about, except for when you need some pointless celebrity guff to churn out to fill some space, I suppose. Yes, people get grey hair and put on weight, or lose weight, or change their appearance slightly, but that's a positive thing, surely? Wouldn't the Mail's ageing readership be happy to see Matt Le Blanc turning into a silver fox, rather than pouring scorn on him for becoming slightly, well, like them?
Thanks to Adam Bienkov for discovering the awfulness of the story!
* Surprising that the author of the Matt Le Blanc article, Georgina Littlejohn, hasn't noticed the ageing process on that Mail columnist pictured above, but there you go.
SuBollocks
I think it was Charlie Brooker back in the TV Go Home days who did a spoof of a celebrity magazine covering a man walking past some crates. To prove that news does emulate comedy, here's today's Sky News website:
(Spotter's badge: ryanfmc)
Yes. It's true. A woman has walked up to her bin and put some rubbish in it. To clarify, the news story, on Sky News, a news channel that thinks it's grown-up enough to host a debate with the leaders of all political parties in the run-up to the next election, is that a woman has put some rubbish in a bin.
That would be bad enough, just the sheer banality of it, but they couldn't resist this:
Earlier this week, Boyle reportedly burst into tears while visiting the US for a whistlestop tour.
...
The star has previously suffered from stress and checked into the Priory clinic for treatment shortly after she shot to fame.
Ah, lovely. There we are: waiting for the tears, the breakdown, the stress and the problems so they can make fun out of her, just as they did when she was admitted to the Priory. Doesn't it make you proud of the British media?
Disturbing sentence of the week
is this, from the Mail's latest story about Suri Cruise's shoes:
'She's looking a little grown-up for a three-year-old' - try saying that without vomiting blood.
Strictly creepy stalking
Just what the hell is it with the Mail and Natalie Cassidy? No aspect of the ex-EastEnders actress's life is allowed to be free from scrutiny, as today's pointless piece of utter shite masquerading as celebrity 'news' shows:
Natalie Cassidy stocks up on ready meals between rehearsals
No. Oh my god. She's been... stocking up on ready meals, you say? Well why haven't the police been informed of this? What about Parliament - shall they be hauled back in for an emergency session to discuss the situation? HUMAN BEING IN EATS FOOD TO STAY ALIVE SHOCKER! Tell us more, Mr Mail. Tell us more details of your shocking investigation!
Natalie Cassidy is spending her waking hours living and breathing dancing.
So much so that it seems the Strictly Come Dancing contestant hasn't got time to spare slaving away over the kitchen hob.
There follows a creepily stalkerish photo of the woman concerned walking around a fucking supermarket with a basket of shopping and then a close-up of the fucking shopping basket - this really is revelatory stuff, isn't it? People go to supermarkets to buy things! Who knew? Who knew that was what happened in life? Next they'll be telling us she breathes air and goes to the toilet!
She popped into a branch of Marks and Spencer and filled her basket with pre-prepared dishes of salad, vegetables, pasta, stir fry and wholemeal bread rolls.
How dare the bitch! How dare she buy preprepared salad! She's worse than fucking Hitler for doing that. And wholemeal bread rolls... how can she sleep?
Uponnothing pointed out last week that while the Mail often tackles the subject of bullying, it's still happy to maintain its bizarre campaign against Cassidy. For this is just the latest in a long, long line of pointlessly banal yet somehow sniping stories at the actress, who has committed the horrific crime, it would appear, of not being the perfect weight, or shape, or class, or appearance for the Mail's liking. You can see the venom dripping from the fangs in today's story:
Yo-yo dieter Natalie previously slimmed down to a size 8.
But she later admitted she had been eating unhealthily to sustain her slender size after failing to keep up with her exercise routine.
Ah, there comes the barely disguised hatred. And why do we think she might have become a yo-yo dieter... pressure from the tabloids saying she was horrible and fat, by any chance? Long-lens pictures of her on the beach with nasty sniping comments underneath? Complete bastards judging her from afar, perhaps? Who knows. But let's look back at the Mail's stalking of Cassidy and see if we can find any clues.
September 29: Natalie goes to the gym. (To the fucking gym! The bitch!) Daily Mail reporter can't help growling: "the ex-EastEnders actress looked a far cry from her glammed-up appearances on Strictly Come Dancing."
September 23: Natalie goes to rehearsals for television programme in which she is appearing. Daily Mail reporter roars disapproval that the paparazzo who snapped her managed to get a photo making her top look more sheer than it really does: "But she didn't seem concerned about the embarrassing faux pas as she smiled for photographers." How dare she smile at the people making money out of pointing and laughing at her!
September 19: Natalie leaves house to go somewhere. Today it's the headline writer's turn to get the claws out, screaming: "Natalie Cassidy prepares for her big night... let's hope her outfit is more flattering than yesterday."
September 18: Natalie walks down the road. Daily Mail Reporter can't help questioning her choice of footwear this time, bellowing: "Natalie Cassidy looked in danger of sustaining an injury before even setting foot on the Strictly Come Dancing dancefloor. The former EastEnder, 26, stepped gingerly from her north London home to a waiting car in a pair of high heeled ankle boots."
September 10: Natalie gets in and out of a car. Luckily a pap photographer is there to take photos of her outfit in order for Daily Mail Reporter to take aim and fire: "In by far her most unflattering outfit to date, the actress emerged from a gym session last week wearing a sheer lycra leotard that tied around the middle and leggings which looked a size too small." Good god! Leggings a size too small! And this kind of crime goes unpunished in Broken Britain! Why aren't the police out arresting actresses for wearing leggins a size too small!
September 7: Natalie walks along the road. Daily Mail Reporter can't help giving with one hand and taking away with the other, combining positive comments about her appearance with a dig at her personal life: "She has been looking fresh-faced and slimmer than usual in recent weeks as she trains for the show, which starts on Friday, September 18. However, she has also had to contend with rumours of a Strictly romance with dancer Vincent Simone, her partner on the show." Slimmer than usual! The bitch! But she's probably fucking some other bloke than her boyfriend!
September 5: Natalie arrives for rehearsals for a TV programme in which she's taking part. But the long-lens photos are merely window-dressing for yet another bitchy attack by Daily Mail Reporter, who says: "In recent years, the actress has attracted attention for her dramatic weight loss after filming a workout DVD and subsequent weight gain." How dare she have done that! The evil woman! She lost weight and then filmed a DVD and then put the weight back on! Evil! Evil!
And that's just September. I have no idea what Cassidy has done to deserve this kind of pestering attention from the Mail - who aren't alone in this, it must be said, sharing their disgrace with the neon-coloured shitrags you see in doctors' waiting rooms - but she's stuck with it. Everywhere she goes, there are cameras, and when there are cameras, there will be the bitchy little comments. I'm surprised she ever leaves the house.
Katie Price and the value of celebrity
I've written before about the allegations Katie Price has made about being raped. They were widely reported, especially by Richard Desmond publications, as the interview in which they were contained appeared in Desmond's OK! magazine. The other papers covered it, but not to the same degree.
Now, though, there's been another spike in interest in the story - it's much bigger news than it was before. Why's that? Well now it turns out that Price has said an unnamed celebrity was behind the attack on her. All of a sudden, it becomes a bigger story, appearing on the front page of every tabloid every day this week so far. Today's papers are a good example:
Celebrity raped? Meh. Celebrity raped by celebrity? Wow! I don't know if I'm alone in feeling a little queasy about this state of affairs. I also think the use by the Sun of the phrase 'celebrity rape' is fairly grim as well - this from a paper which used the chortling headline "By gum" the other day to describe alleged sex attacks by a dentist. And is "I didn't rape Jordan" really a story? Whatever you think of Katie Price and her desire to be in the papers, this whole business does not reflect well on tabloid papers in this country.
The Express, meanwhile, has gone back to familiar territory in what is clearly a new policy to return to the old favourites:
The same old tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories; the same old nonsense. I even discovered today that the Mail have recently been delving into this drivel thanks to Lauren Booth's article implying Our Queen of Hearts may have been slaughtered because she was about to single-handedly destroy the arms industry. The sort of guff you'd laugh off if it appeared in a student magazine, but not something worthy of turning up in a national paper.
It seems little changes.
Red faces all round
Or at least there should be at the publication which put this miserable non-story on the front page of their website:
Burn, baby, burn: Simon Cowell battered by Mediterranean sun
Yes, a man went on holiday and got a suntan. Would you believe it? Well yes you would. Ooh yes, he was quite pale, and now he isn't.
As befits a man of his fabulous wealth and talent, Simon Cowell enjoys many of the trappings of the LA lifestyle. But while he has the cars, the mansions, the high-waisted but exquisitely tailored trousers – there is one thing about him that remains resolutely, even defiantly, English: his skin.
Oh really? Stunning. Thank goodness we all know about that. Imagine what a void of knowledge our lives would have been without knowing about the colour of some TV man's skin.
Like his fellow countrymen, the pop mogul seems to be cursed with an epidermis that burns like milk before a flamethrower when he ventures out of the shade.
Epidermis? What? Who says epidermis? Ever? Anyone?
Whatever the cause, his battle scars are all too familiar. First there is the bright pink hue of the flesh, reminiscent of a lobster freshly plucked from the pot but yet to be covered with a cheesy duvet of thermidor sauce.
I feel sorry for the life of this writer who had to churn out this wall of turd, because I'm sure they'd rather be doing proper journalism about real stories - at least I hope they are. But I feel even sorrier because the publication which has chosen to cover this pointless crock of codswallop and put it on their web front page is not the Mail, nor the Sun, nor even the Telegraph (although they may well have done it) but The Guardian.
Christ. How depressing.
Buy my book, it’s great
Switch site
Donate
Recent Posts
Most Commented On
Recent Comments
- Eddie on A day with the Daily Mail
- Eddie on A day with the Daily Mail
- Eddie on Peter Hitchens depresses me. But I won’t kill him.
- Emily on Update
- Angela Webb on This isn’t a flounce
About Me
Hello. I'm a Bristol-based writer and soon-to-be-redundant journalist. You can read more about me and the Enemies site here, or follow me on Twitter. Email me if you like - antonvowl at live dot co dot uk
If you're struggling to read the site please use the drop down box below to increase the text size.