The cardinal rule of the celebrity memoir: the more you've readabout the subject in the headlines - particularly ones such as'Barrymore seduced me while Diana lay cold on slab' - the moretedious their book will be. And 2002 distinguished itself as a yearin which stories squeezed from these hastily written kiss 'n' tell,screw 'n' tell, snort 'n' tell autobiographies spread over the medialike an overpriced oil slick. Ulrika and the tabloid press playedhunt-the-rapist; Geri explained her prison- camp-fresh figure byconfessing that she'd been attempting to survive on cayenne pepperand maple syrup; Michael Barrymore embraced the role of FattyArbuckle in his own story, and Christine Keeler in Paul Burrell's.
Fortunately for his former wife, the man who fronted Strike itLucky is now virtually impossible to defame. Cheryl Barrymore,cuddly as a steak-knife, has taken full advantage of her formerhusband's special status by rushing her memoir Catch a Falling Star:My Life with Michael Barrymore (Robson pounds 16.95) into print -days after the inquest on the death of Stuart Lubbock recorded itsverdict. Nothing to do with a desire to coin cash from otherpeople's unhappiness, you understand, just a courageous attempt to'set the record straight'. Which is doubtless why she felt the needto add a queasy literalism to the notion of airing dirty washing inpublic by describing how her husband's drug-slackened sphinctercondemned her to waking up each morning in a lake of celebrityexcrement. As she writes, when describing how she once vomited intoa champagne bucket, 'How showbiz!'
Self-pity and self-aggrandisement are the key qualities of theBarrymore book, but in this, Cheryl is only following the structuraland thematic commonplaces of the genre. Lulu's I Don't Want to Fight(Time Warner pounds 17.99), is another tornado of self-regard, inwhich the heroine boasts of the deprivations of her childhood (herfather was an offal dresser who made her mother scrub the stairswith the same disinfectant used to sluice the bloodied tiles of theGlasgow Meat Market), before making some eye- wateringly immodeststatements about her own abilities. Describing her rapport with aconcert audience in Poland, she notes: 'We were like `gods' who haddescended from another planet'. The scare quotes don't absolve her.Nor does her account of the destruction of the World Trade Centre.While the rest of Manhattan is hauling rocks and distributing soup,Lulu is barricading herself into her room at the Marriott: 'Beingable to lock the door was important. There were all sorts of rumoursabout looting and a total breakdown of law and order. I had visionsof gangs roaming the streets.' Never the less, she reports later:'There was a sense of shared hardship and resolve. So much so, thatwhen international flights were restarted I didn't really want toleave. I felt as though I was somehow lending support. I didn't wantto desert New York.'
There's more self-abnegation than self-importance in UlrikaJonsson's Honest (Sidgwick & Jackson pounds 16.99), the story of anunusually hairy Swedish baby who grew up to be a televisionpresenter who couldn't find a boyfriend who wouldn't cheat on her orupon whom she wouldn't cheat. Don't hope to be offered a solution tothe Ulrika problem, however. Just as she seems to be approaching amoment of self-realisation - when one of her stalkers gasseshimself, for instance - she takes another piece of celebrity bait,and sells pictures of her baby's christening to OK! magazine.Perhaps the events following the publication of the book haveconvinced her of the argument of its own pages: that celebrity is asyndrome, not a profession. Whatever the case, it would be as wellto wait for the paperback to find out.
Dale Winton's My Story (Century pounds 16.99) provides acomparable concoction of meat and fluff. Its early pages deal,rather well, with the suicide of its subject's mother, but as soonas Dale turns from a plump Edgware schoolboy to a plump local radioDJ, the book becomes a compendium of showbiz Pooterisms. His realgift is for bathos. 'So I arrived in Nottingham that weekend,' hebreezes, 'bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, little knowing that I wouldbecome a Midlands-based person for the better part of the next 10years.' Later, events take an even more surprising and mysteriousturn when he secures his first small screen gig on a show called PetWatch. 'Little did I know,' he reflects, 'that animals would playsuch a major role in my later TV series, Pets Win Prizes.'
Geri Halliwell's Just for the Record (Ebury Press pounds 17.99)is one of those books printed on paper that smells of sick - addingpiquancy to the passages detailing her eating disorders and death-row diets. The text is a series of name-drops of variable likeliness- how George Michael saved her life, how Sam Taylor-Wood introducedher to yoga - and the pictures all narcissistic softcore. You'd haveto consult the photographs in Catch a Fire (Headline pounds 17.99),the self-justifying memoirs of Geri's former colleague Melanie B, tofind evidence of a time when some of the Spice Girls looked likehuman beings. The book is a love-letter from the author to herself,but its final few pages offer a clear picture of the chilly povertyof the celebrity lifestyle. 'The world as I now know it is myoyster,' affirms the artist formerly known as Scary Spice. 'Forgetabout the questions like, Can I do it? Will it be successful? I'mfar surer of myself than I've ever been. Oh yes, this is innerconfidence with a vengeance.' Can't you hear terror and misery inevery word of it?
There are less gruesome reads stacked in the dump-bins. RubyWax's How Do You Want Me? (Ebury pounds 17.99) is a disappointingmemoir supported by the most brutally unflattering teenage snapshotsever published. Barry Norman's And Why Not? (Simon & Schuster pounds16.99) sends a convincing rebuttal to those who criticised thecritic for defecting to Sky. (His argument, in a nutshell, is this:why snipe at a man who worked for years at the Daily Mail for takinga cheque from Rupert Murdoch?) David Bellamy's Jolly Green Giant(Century pounds 16.99) offers details of his dalliance with JamesGoldsmith's Referendum Party, and the ballet for moths that he wrotein the 1980s. David Attenborough's Life on Air (BBC pounds 18.99)reveals little about the man, but much about the dietary kinks ofbush babies (they're buggers for mealworms, apparently - somethingof which Geri might take note). Barry Humphries's My Life as Me(Michael Joseph pounds 16.99) is similarly opaque, but energised byits subject's keen sense of the inevitability of his own death.
Intimations of mortality also trouble Max Bygraves's Stars in MyEyes (Robson pounds 14.95), a greasepaint memoir beyond parody -though the author is reassured that his celebrity golfing partnersawait him on the celestial fairway. His attitude to the living isless sure: 'I met Rowan Atkinson as I was descending the stairs atthe Palladium. `Hello. How are you?' I asked. His mouth formed an`O' and his eyes grew wild, like a stag caught in a car'sheadlights, but there was no reply. I never found out how he was.'
But the book by the least-exposed name on this list is easily themost worthy of celebration. Jeremy Scott's riches-to-rags story Fastand Louche (Profile Books pounds 16.99), has the most strikingopening line ('On Easter Sunday father killed and ate a dog'), thebest anecdote of a mis- spent childhood (live hand grenades in thetoy cupboard) and the most original narcotics-related confession(jollying up an unknowing Edward Heath by grating Methedrine intothe canapes). The fact that he's never been the subject of anewspaper headline is the best weapon in his arsenal.
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий