…don’t get famous, get even

When the famous-for-not-being-famous Celebrity Big Brother 4 winner, Chantelle Houghton, was in the hot seat on The Darker Side Of Fame, in a righteous world, the girl would have turned the tables on Piers Morgan and asked him exactly what he’d done that was so goddam special himself. There’s nothing special about a bunch of bores that have been hoisted into power by virtue of connections rather than talent, after all. The British media, to give this bunch a name, is nothing if not a long-standing Chantelle-inspired social experiment: will the interloper ever be outed or is the self-perpetuating racket of nepotism and public schooling destined to keep the likes of an Essex girl in Essex rather than Fleet Street, or Hello! Street, or whatever.

There she was, this warped producers’ experiment in post-modern celebrity, telling Morgan that actually- stop the press!- if being a celebrity means not having to get the same bloody train every day and work in the same pissing office for thirteen grand a year, then yes thanks she’ll have a bit of that, and take her chances on the repercussions, as would the rest of the population, given the chance. Nothing revelatory there, so I wonder if it wouldn’t be more pertinent to turn the spotlight on that bloated ego in a suit himself for some Piers-on-Piers action, where, instead of reducing a girl to tears at the recollection of her sham marriage to Preston, (who’d told her a week after their wedding that he’d never wanted to marry her in the first place), he’d enlighten the plebeian fame-seeker on the Insider’s guide to (the darker side of) fame. That with a bit of insider dealing and insider deception you can secure quite an insider’s career these days, and not a few book deals to boot. Don’t bother with Big Brother, kids – Piers’ll tell you a thing or two about spinning a career out of nothing, after all he’s a judge on Britiain’s Got Talent, and he tells kids they can’t sing all the time. Oh, sorry, don’t you know? Piers used to be a best-selling recording artist. He won X Factor in a previous lifetime as the one that couldn’t sing a note. He was the Chantelle of his generation, doncha know? Isn’t that something…

Take it from me…don’t get famous, get even.