Posts Tagged ‘fame’

Jedward may finally be gone from the X Factor, but that’s no reason to expect that they have automatically dipped straight off the fame radar. For all of you wondering why and how they lasted so long on the X Factor, I contributed to a couple of articles in the Independent and the Telegraph looking into the phenomenon, the manipulation and the plundering of the Jedward brand.

To read the Independent article, click here. To read the Telegraph article, click here.

It seems that there is a total sense of humour failure endemic throughout the world when it comes to stunts like the ‘Balloon Boy’ incident, as the ongoing trial of the parents proves – they apparently pleaded guilty only after the wife, who is Japanese, was threatened with deportation.

Certainly, the need to think about wider concerns makes outlandish and outrageous stunts a more difficult prospect in this health and safety and desperately money-conscious world. Some years ago, a band wanted me to help them arrange to completely stop traffic in Piccadilly Circus so they could play a gig from a flat bed truck – I had to hold a hand up and say “what are we going to do if an ambulance comes through with a heart attack victim on board?” The need to stand back and question all possible outcomes is even more imperative nowadays.

As much as the Rupert Pupkinish hedonistic approach is appealing, for its ability to grab headlines and for the sheer thrill of pulling something extraordinary and outrageous off, the parents of ‘Balloon Boy’ are proof positive that care has to be taken and that serious thought has to be applied if you don’t want an initially amused and fascinated public to turn on you if even the smallest thing goes wrong. Fame for the sake of it can be a costly business.

The more implausible elements of the ‘Balloon Boy’ story are deflating fast, but still people are hanging on in there, waiting to see what happens when the balloon crashes finally to earth.

Deprived of the possibility of an injured or dead child to fulminate over, the press are waiting to see what happens to the child’s father and making scathing noises about his “appalling” hoax. Legal action looms on the horizon and the life of a man desperate for attention looks likely to deflate even more drastically than the balloon he claimed had carried off his son.

But why is there all this fuss? The media are furious at being scammed and at appearing gullible, but they have scammed many times before and shrugged it off, admitting they’ve been kippered – such stories make for good entertainment.

Hoaxes have been a part of the American psyche for decades – just think of Orson Welles’ radio version of War of the Worlds in the 1930s. The flying saucer is one of the most recognisable tropes of the modern era of hoaxing; ‘balloon boy’s’ father was just – amateurishly – continuing a theme. On reflection, ‘Balloon Boy’ is one hoax that the media could and should have been able to see through, given that there was no realistic way that the balloon could have held a cat, let alone a six year old boy.

Why are the media so furious about a man who is so patently desperate for fame that he was prepared to try anything? Is it really because he pulled the wool over their eyes? It is the media’s fault that people are doing anything and everything they can to get noticed – all one need do is look at the reports of fabulous nobodies like Kerry Katona, Jordan and Pete and so on, who litter the newspapers daily at the expense of actual news, and at the thousands of wannabes who clutter up the tarmac at X Factor auditions. It’s seen as the last measure of job security, being famous, even if it often pays little.

The media needs to take a long hard look at what it is asking the public to buy into in future, if it is serious about turning on the people it has helped create.

When King of Comedy came out 26 years ago, the character of Rupert Pupkin was a grotesque, an inflated satire. Now that mindset is everywhere – the world is full of Rupert Pupkins, created by the press and public’s endless desire for the next sacrificial lamb in the servant’s quarters of fame. The press are largely culpable for this, using stories such as ‘Balloon Boy’ to bury bad news or carry people away on a soapy ride. To censure someone for trying to play the game by slightly different rules is simply hypocrisy.

Some of the contestants in the X Factor, wanting to learn a thing or two about the publicity tricks of the past to help get them through the tough new auditions system, (where they have to face not only the barbed comments of Simon Cowell and co, but the baying of a full-throttle audience out for carefully-packaged blood) have turned to the Fame Formula for ideas, it seems, as this picture from the ITV website proves.

Look carefully at the hands of the ape on the right...

A hug from Danni and Simon may be all very well, but it seems that The Fame Formula is the hardened fame seeker’s reference book of choice when it comes to helping build the courage to leap onto the first greasy rung of the ladder of stardom. Personally, I can’t help hoping that some more audition hopefuls will, er… ape these guys and go out and buy the book…

The guys from Bragster, the social networking site for daredevils, were the ones dressed in the gorilla suits, braving the raised eyebrows of Cowell and co. The site’s boss Bertrand was dared to take part by his colleagues, with £1000 going to charity on the condition that he get a hug from one of the main judges. Here’s a link to some footage of him in action on the ITV website – I particularly like his version of I Want to Be Like You…

I gave an interview for Austrian radio last week on the nature of fame in the 21st Century. The podcast is available now but I am posting up the extract of my interview on this site.

Click here to listen to my comments on Fame on Austrian Radio or, to hear the full podcast, click here.

A film, by Aaron Stone, featuring Mark Borkowski instructing a couple of wannabe celebrities on the perils of fame.

I’m still recovering from a sold out Hay Festival appearance and the blazing sun. I’d forgotten how wonderful the Festival can be when the weather’s good!

The discussion, Hype and Glory, with the Guardian’s Marina Hyde and our excellent chair, Paul Blezard, was wide ranging and got an excellent response from the audience. Marina wanted to reclaim the world from celebrities and wanted real people with real talent to get recognition. Why should Angelina Jolie be the face of the UN when there are committed and talented people out there who, though less glamorous, do all the hard and amazing work that Jolie is employed to make palatable to the people.

The crux of the talk was who will stop the process of fame at any cost and foreshadowed the results and aftermath of Saturday evening’s Britain’s Got Talent final perfectly. The media love a good celebrity meltdown and there is no doubt that the people who own the formats dictate the stars – and the events on Britain’s Got Talent and in its wake prove this without the shadow of a doubt.

It’s great that Diversity won – here’s a group of talented dancers who represent the best of Britain – but it’s the meteoric rise and post-loss wobble of Susan Boyle that will hold the media’s attention for longer. It’s clear that Boyle has problems – she was diagnosed as having learning difficulties as a child – and has invested way too much of herself in the rollercoaster media ride through the talent contest, as her admission to the Priory for ‘exhaustion’ proves.

Jan Moir at the Mail summed up Boyle’s performance as follows: “Boyle did seem a trifle unsteady, not to mention tranquilised during the final. Yet I still phoned in my vote for her, because she delivered the most compelling and thrilling performance of the evening.” To read the entire article, click here.

The programme has a duty of care to its contestants, but how far will they take that when there’s money at stake?

Proof of the sell-out

Carole Malone, in her column in yesterday’s News of the World, worries about this too: “TV bosses have a duty of care to EVERY contestant on that show-but Susan needed more support and I don’t think she’s had it. I just hope they don’t – but I worry that once BGT is over, the powers that be will wash their hands of her. No one wants to be responsible for her losing it or coming to any mental or physical harm-especially because of a show that purports to change people’s lives for the better,” she wrote. To see her entire column, click here.

There have always been troubled stars – from Gwili Andre, who I have discussed here (and in my book The Fame Formula) before, to Judy Garland. Back in the glory days, however, the stars were protected from the ugly side of fame and the intense scrutiny that is now the norm. Now, of course, we are getting to see the nightmare of fame thanks to the people’s constant, urgent need for soap opera and the media’s willingness to supply it.

On another note, I noticed that David Milliband slipped into the discussion – perhaps to learn a bit more about spin and how to patch up tarnished reputations – just as I was getting into my stride about the need for people such as myself going into schools to talk to children about the true price of fame. It was noticeable that the more political I got about fame the more uncomfortable he got, to the point that he slipped out almost as soon as he’d arrived. A shame; it would have been interesting to get his viewpoint…

David Milliband in the Hay green room

I was intrigued to read in yesterday’s Independent about the splash Paul Duddridge is making in Hollywood. He’s moved from being an agent for comedians based in Soho to becoming a fame guru in Los Angeles in two years and seems to be making a good fist of getting numbers of the countless acting hopefuls who litter the staff rosters of LA bars and restaurants to come to his seminars in the hope that they, too, will be able to make Hollywood work for them.

The promise he offers is to make them famous in 40 days, if they follow the instructions in his two-day seminar to the letter.

“’I started out giving tips to people, and straight away, it just seemed to work,’” Duddridge told the Independent. “’What’s more, it turned out I was giving the same tips, over and over again. Now think I’ve boiled down my theory of fame into forty instructions, forty specific rules that will get you noticed.”

“He is, if you like, the sergeant major of a show-business boot camp,” says the Independent.

It seems to me, however, to be another Hollywood trawler net, powered by publicity, that might capture a star but is more likely to drag up shoals of fodder for Jade Goody-land, the sort of reality TV/brief tabloid stardom culture that is dependent on a constant turnover of faces.

Longevity is about talent, about originality. Yes, people can become famous very quickly, but their ability to stay famous is dependent on what new versions of themselves and their talent they can offer over years. As I have discussed in The Fame Formula, even the most talented need to refresh their fame every fifteen months if they want to stay in the limelight.

Duddridge’s theory of fame is based around Keanu Reeves. “’He’s a major, major movie star, yet no-one thinks he’s a great actor,’” says Duddridge. “’Even he may not think he’s a great actor. But I’m guessing people would give right arm to be as successful as him. My system that is more geared towards getting you to where he’s at.’”

Which is fine, but it should be remembered that Keanu Reeves started out as a child actor, has worked in movies continually, is rather handsome and has a screen presence, far beyond his ability to act, that any amount of training will not replicate.

I wish Duddridge luck with the venture, as well as the hopefuls he is teaching to become starrier in their outlook (to the point that one of the first things he instructs them to do is turn down auditions to test whether the people holding the audition really want to see them). But I believe that the global psyche has moved on from the bling bling nature of fame and fortune that has seen us through the last 20 years and that he won’t be able to utilize the old PR mechanisms to make this work in the way he might have been able to five years ago.

Put any misgivings about Jade Goody’s Barnumesque three-ring Circus sideshow to one side for moment. Instead, focus on the silver fox who has been the undisputed ringmaster of recent events in her life; Max Clifford.

He may not be attired in a garish ring suit, but Max Clifford is clearly visible as the man, centre stage, pulling the financial strings. This is not written as a genuflection to the cult of Clifford, more as an explanation of the reality; he is doing something more than a mere job – he is reacting to the peccadilloes of the age.

Clearly it is necessary for him to either not care about Jade or refuse to be paid to do that job; to carry it off, he has to place himself into a zone devoid of any emotion. Max remains calm, confident and never flustered despite the slings and arrows aimed at him. His style of delivery has been criticized but it is deliberate, matter of fact. Max is a spokesman; he is doing a job that few can deliver. Reminiscent of a river pilot steering his charge through dangerous and congested waters, Max vigilantly avoids all the sandbanks that might scupper the good ship of any celebrity brand he is steering. Max has always functioned in the wasteland between public merit and clandestine vice, creating content for the curtain-twitching masses–none of whom will ever admit to their trivia addiction.

This weekend was a high water mark in the celebrity-obsessed world we have allowed to prosper. The enduring picture we have taken away from Jade Goody’s wedding, however, was not the pitiful Goody forcing a smile through the pain; it was Max, surrounded by a sea of microphones and flanked by camera lenses. Like an effortless high wire act juggling nine clubs, he kept the media audience outside and inside the big top entertained in a style that few understand, measuring each sound bite for maximum effect.

Waspish bourgeois media dinner parties, I am sure, have a curt point of view regarding Clifford’s modus operandi. But they fail to comprehend his skill. Yes, he has enemies but he knows the power of collateral. For decades he has not compromised his style; he knows what works and the power of his personal business relationships. He’s happier to operate openly, on the phone and in the flesh. His skill can’t be replicated by a miracle app. Max has not bowed to the digital age and his instinct, shaped by decades of experience, is impossible to learn without years in the foxhole. Despite operating in the age of time compression, Max confounds the 24-7 swirl. His telltale grey hair is an insignia, a livery, which indicates his membership of a unique Guild that few have the skill or stamina to join.

I have often observed his methods of dealing with each media ruck and marvelled at his deft hand-off passes, reminiscent of the Welsh wizard Gareth Edwards in full flow. He is an adept distracter who knows how to deliver up a sound byte in an utterly disarming fashion whilst keeping the uber-media paymaster happy. He’s more than aware that one false move, one slip, could lead to a chain reaction that could negate the final payment of the big check.

When the cameras stop rolling and Jade becomes a sad footnote in Celebrity-ville, Max will pop up again and again; he is a brand and he occupies a unique place in the media landscape. If you’re in the public eye and you need to exploit your 15 months of fame quickly, he is accessible. Max has his finger on the pulse.

It seems to me that his type of PR has been genetically engineered in the last 15 years to suit the times. But, despite this engineering, I do not see any Clifford clones or heirs to his throne coming up through the ranks. Is this because of the way PR is retrenching, underscoring the inability of the new breed to come to terms with the ever-shifting churn of media from both side of the fence? Or will the next few years create a world where celebrity will not be able to command the fees that a new Max can make a meaningful profit from?

There are a number of PR people out there who need to take a clear look at Max Clifford. These are the people who decry his tactics and lampoon his deadpan manner with the press, the people who are rushing headlong into the digital media age without any grounding in the skills that have made him such a success; most notably the 360 degree vision that allows him to spot incoming missiles before they hit, be they aimed at him or his clients. Regardless of what anyone thinks of him, there is much that can be learned from him.

To some, Max Clifford will be an apotheosis of the media and to others the rationale for moral intervention, but he is first and foremost a creation of the media and of his clients. His success in finding a continually crashing wave of “sordid human interest” stories for the tabloid press has been unparalleled over the last 20 years, a new age that has seen the boundaries of morality and taste shifting significantly.

He is a prime example of the squalor of the universal global media. Without modern media poverty, he could never have been successful. The future for Max is to help people amortize the moral morass because the morality compass was demagnetized decades ago and he is one of the few people still making it twitch.

Make no mistake, the floorboards of his office will creak under the weight of many more scandals for years yet.

“Dying is an art,” wrote Sylvia Plath, in her poem Lady Lazarus, and the very public final weeks of Jade Goody are reinforcing Plath’s point remarkably well. Jade Goody has moved on from the unthinking, mouthy persona that brought her to national attention with a sudden aplomb, becoming, in her need to make a better life for the two children she will be leaving behind in the wake of her terminal cervical cancer, an iconic figure whose death will mark the end of an era of celebrity in Britain.

Jade Goody

There are notes of disgust registering around the country that she’s intending to let a film crew follow her through her final weeks as well as to her wedding, assuming it happens before she is too ill to cope. There shouldn’t be; this is a woman dying as she lived. She is, in many ways, like Mickey Rourke’s character in The Wrestler, in that all she knows is a life in front of the camera and all she can do to ensure the future for her children is to make as much money as quickly as possible for them in the only way she knows how; on television and in the press.

It’s telling that she has made it clear that she wants to ensure that her children are educated; this is the woman who came from difficult, uneducated beginnings to make a career in the celebrity industry, a woman who created a new life for herself on Big Brother and took on the personality the tabloids created for her, only to watch them turn on her with more vigour when she rose above the cheap insults that were initially levelled at her. She’s not the brightest of women but, tellingly, she knows it. And it’s her attempts to make amends for her mistakes that have endeared her to the British public. She is finally taking control of her life in the spotlight in a way that she wasn’t able to do when she first found herself in the arms of fame.

She is a most human celebrity and it is to be hoped, for the sake of her children, that she will be remembered for her late transmogrification into a role model; according to The Guardian, the swift and vicious spread of her cervical cancer – and her brutal, well-publicised honesty about it – is responsible for a massive upsurge of requests for smear tests. This alone drives home what people think about her. She is ‘one of us’, albeit ‘one of us’ who has become an industry in her own right. She is fallible but not above trying to make amends for her failings, even if that means doing so in excruciating detail in the public eye.

“There is a charge//For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge/For the hearing of my heart…” wrote Sylvia Plath, again in Lady Lazarus. And: “The peanut-crunching crowd/Shoves in to see//Them unwrap me hand and foot/The big strip tease.” Jade Goody has run with this idea and made a positive of it; where Plath was contemplating her attempts at suicide, the ‘big strip tease’ of Goody’s final weeks is solely about taking care of the future for her children and may well see her reborn in the public’s collective memory as someone who rose above the pain and despair and did some good.

Goody is not succumbing to Gwili Andre’s lonely and miserable mode of death, alone in her flat consumed by the fires taking root in her piles of cuttings. She has not allowed fame to make her bitter. She is taking what remains of her life and transforming it, seemingly aware that she, like so many celebrities before her, from Marilyn Monroe to Princess Diana, will be frozen in the moment by her early death. Of course she’d prefer to live to see her children grow old rather than die in front of the cameras, but what she’s doing is right for her and what she thinks is right for her children.

If it disturbs you, do not watch or read the reports, but do not try to prevent Jade Goody from choosing the manner of her death; she has finally proved that she deserves more than that.