Life Lesson No.9, courtesy of Ashley Rascole

Trust me, I'm a Celebrity

So, you’ve been caught red handed, indictable and remiss. Again. The evidence is piled high against you and the people of the world (or the readers of The Sun, at least) are scorning you with violent castigation. What do you do? Hang your head in shame and beg for mercy, hoping all will look upon a pennant sinner with forgiving eyes and generous amnesty? Do you, heck! It seems instead that a new policy is being prescribed by every Spin-doctor in town, urging the errant Celeb-folk of today to follow a more belying course of action. And it’s time for us all to follow suit. Thus we turn our attention to a seasoned pro – a (football) player supreme who, inspired by the success of his wife Cheryl, has taken to finding out for himself who’s really got The XXX Factor. Yes, with sheepish wrongdoing and fingers-crossed, we look upon Ashley Cole to deliver our next celebrity life lesson: categorically and in no uncertain terms, Deny. It. All.

One only has to consider the repercussions of Ashley’s fellow teammate, John Terry, and his extracurricular ballgames to understand the slippery slope of honesty and confession. Demoted as captain, he is firmly entrenched within the ‘wrong,’ with no recourse to forgiveness except through the proper modes of redemption and atonement. What a bother and a (sex)-pest. If only our Dear John had listened to Shaggy and his masterful lyrics all those years ago, as it seems savvy Ashley has done…on repeat, he would have fully understood the genius power of denial. “I don’t know what to do!” croons Shaggy’s cheating pal, with pitch-perfect despair, to which the reggae singer replies- all-knowing and boombastic –“Say it wasn’t you.” Easy peasy and job done.

Guilt, you see, is an unnecessary and tedious affliction – an ugly truth which I, for one, refuse to embrace. With it come rules, order, sentencing and judgements. Why not instead join the en vogue club of denial, and harness the freedom and space it offers to dance away your blues, either by actively denying your misdemeanours, or accepting your other half’s lies in total self-denial (Hello, Cheryl!) “No, honey, that wasn’t a ‘sext’ you read on my phone…that’s just a new way of expressing LOL,” you’ll ramble, with airy innocence and masked unease. “You saw me checking into a B&B?” you’ll feign surprise, before swiftly settling the matter with unquestionable logic: “Oh! Didn’t I tell you my estranged twin is in town?” Ultimately, follow the course of the field player. And play along.

And so, it seems it is high time we fully understood the power of denial. What was traditionally considered a mark of the immoral or naïve is now a happy space of white lies and laughable tall-tales. So what if they have photographic evidence, saved texts or video footage? Who cares for eye-witness accounts, lie-detector tests or interrogations? Like Ashley Cole before us, we must dispute the evidence, however obvious, emphasise the ridiculous and argue for our innocence until proven guilty – knowing full well that guilt is in the eye of the beholder. Denial, you see, ‘aint just a river in Egypt.