The Final Celebrity Award: In Retrospect

Best Celebrity Award

There are rare moments in life, glimmers within the gaping abyss, when you know you have finally made it. Like having enough Boots points to actually make a purchase; or finally completing a crossword. From a broadsheet. Or managing to hold a conversation about the forthcoming election with pseudo-intellectual authority; or mistaking Kerry Katona for a down-n-out hobo and dropping a pound coin upon her lap. Yes, there are benchmarks for every success we muster and each one validates our self-importance just that little bit more. And the success of The Celebrity, you see, is just as marked.

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No.8: Best Celebrity Boss

Best Celebrity Award

Ah, domination. Don’t you just love it? It separates the strong from the meek, the victors from the losers, the trouser-wearers from the skirted sissies – and the fetishists from the straight-laced. It disrupts any notions of equality and creates, for those involved, a microcosmic experience of Totalitarianism, in all its gore. Yet the art of domination is, surprisingly, a fragile skill. Should the whip be placed in the wrong hands, the results are horrific – as power can and will corrupt even he, the humblest of humble-pie eaters. No clearer is this than in the world of Celebrity, a land in which echoes of a Stalinist regime resound more quickly than one may yelp, ‘Naomi hit me!’ With this in mind, we present this week’s award for ‘Best Celebrity Boss’ to “Overly Helpful Heather” Mills [her words, I stress] and thank the lord we’re not on her payroll. Praise be to Mucca.
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No.7: Best Celebrity Blunder

Best Celebrity Award

There are times when the fallibility of man is indisputable – as easy and unavoidable to view as the night sky or Chanelle Hayes’ bedroom. To err, you see, is a human trait and – though Bono will forever feign otherwise – we are all subject to the ‘whoopsie-daisy’ of life’s mistakes. And nobody is exempt. However, there are other times when some transgress more than others – when their mistake is so idiotic and ill-advised that we have no other option but to sit back on our high horses, valiant steeds indeed, and judge – loudly and with bias aplenty. It is thus with a spoonful of violent condemnation that we award this week’s prize for Best Celebrity Blunder to the lowest of the low, Mr-soon-to-be-ex-Sandra Bullock (né Jesse James) for his monumental mess-up of a super-charmed life in an all too clichéd way. [Enter slow clap]

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No.6: Best Celebrity Break-Up

Best Celebrity Award

They have publicists for their poodles and Cristal Champagne-filled baths. Scientologists are their career advisors and coffee is undrinkable – unless stirred counter-clockwise. Naturally, a celebrity’s life is, to most folk, an incomprehensible succession of alien activity: something distant and foreign to the bed, wed, dead existence of your average Joe. Yet there are times when, to the intrigue of the tabloid reader, this gap decreases; when The Celebrity emerges a flesh and blood human and I, with considerable confidence, can say (in my head, at least) to a Britney or a Paris or a Reese, “I know how you feel.” Yes, Splitsville is a regular destination for many a-globetrotter and thus the best voyage must be duly rewarded with a Papture-sponsored accolade – something to shine as a triumphant centrepiece at the divorce disco. And so, living in the ruins of a post-Barbie and Ken era, we present “Best Celebrity Break-Up” to you, Dawn French and Lenny Henry, for out-weighing the average celebrity partnership by roughly twenty years. Or stone, perhaps. By all accounts, a cumbersome achievement.

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No.5: Best Celebrity Revelation

Best Celebrity Award

Ah, The Celebrity Revelation – so shocking, so outrageous and irresistible. Staring out with water-stained eyes from the front page of a Sunday tabloid, The Celebrity has often employed his or her ‘big reveal’ for that one defining moment of naked, unbridled honesty. Laid bare, they divulge to the attention-paying public their emotional journey – be it out of the closet, into rehab, out of their divorce lawyer’s office, or into their plastic surgeon’s reclining chair. ‘Bravo!’ we cry, commending the candour of a celebrity stripped. But what happens, pray tell, when The Revelation is taken too literally? When calls to expose oneself – naked and all unveiled –reveal just a Tad. Too. Much? Cover thy shame with a trophy, I say. And so, without further ado, we present this week’s award for Best Celebrity Revelation to a revealing Miss Geldof, who seems to have got her knickers into something of a twist as of late. Congratulations, Peaches dear. Now, please put your clothes on.

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No.4: Best Celebrity Fighter

Best Celebrity Award

“War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!” cried Edwin Starr some forty years ago, calling for a final end to pointless wars with his hippy-tinted optimism. Yes, peace and love were oh so en vogue – and battle was blah. However, despite his best intentions, it seems Mr Starr was ever so slightly misguided in his total rejection of warfare, failing as he did to recognise the irresistible drama and spectacle of the deadliest type of battle our society knows – the celebrity feud. Pugnaciously volatile and mercilessly bloodthirsty, it streaks the battle-line with venom and casts its opposition into a war of words, vocal, reported and – the most toxic of all – tweeted. Yes, this week we march furiously and all attentive To Arms! To Arms! as we award the military medal to Sgt Lily Allen for Best Celebrity Fighter. Sound the bugles and beat the drums. Oo-rah.

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No.3: Best Celebrity Surprise

Best Celebrity Award

It comes out of nowhere and rattles us to our very core. Inverting the norm, it contradicts presumptions and casts the whole world itself into the unsettling shadows of an apocalyptic era, where nothing is what it seems. The planets collide and we, left open-mouthed and all-agog, are left to decipher right from wrong, hot from cold, Ant from Dec – and scope out the wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing. Yes, a real surprise will unsettle even the most stoic celebrity news junkie and upset that delicate balance between sinner and saint – or, more poignantly, between Kerry Katona and Cheryl Cole – upon which the grounds of Celebland lie. Thus, having Owened up to Relighting many a girl’s Fire, our next prestigious accolade is duly presented to Mark Owen, good boy gone bad, who wins Best Celebrity Surprise by a landslide. And oh, how the debris crumbles.

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No.2: Best Celebrity Turnaround

Best Celebrity Award

It’s official: with spring in his step and blush in his cheeks, he beams his veneered, pearly whites indiscriminately – proverbially punching the air with the ever-so-infectious ‘love-bug.’ All enamoured, he reminds me of Maria Von Trapp, spinning atop an Austrian Mountain with unbridled glee and Do-Re-Mi revelry. Yes, the quintessential bachelor who once claimed that, “marriage is the most ridiculous contract in the world”, is a recently converted disciple to the Cult of Cupid, having put down his Westlife ballads and raised the volume of Beyonce Knowles’ calls to ‘put a ring on it.’ It is thus my pleasure (or revulsion? I cannot quite decide) to bestow this week’s award upon Simon Cowell for Best Celebrity Turnaround, having declared that new squeeze Mezhgan is ‘The One.’ In other words, Simon, the last one left? Read the rest of this entry »

No.1: Best Celebrity Reunion

Best Celebrity Award

Shakespeare could not have dreamt of a love so perfect – so romantic, so tender and star-crossed – a genuine fairytale of the twenty-first century. Boy meets girl; boy and girl fall in love; boy and girl smoke and inject themselves with copious amounts of heroin; boy goes to jail and girl attaches a beehive to her head, interspersing her singing career with loud bouts of violent intoxication to remind the world what it truly means to be a WINEhouse. And then, tragically, with a heart-wrenching sign of the decree nisi, boy and girl split – torn from each other like an old, cocaine-stained five-pound note. Never was there a story of more woe, indeed. However, it seems the world can rejoice once more and revel in celebration as we award our very first Best Celebrity Award. Yes, this week, the honour goes to love’s young dream, Amy Winehouse and Blake Fielder-Civil, who take home the prize for Best Celebrity Reunion. Take that, Take That. Read the rest of this entry »

The Final Life Lesson, An Education in Retrospect

Trust me, I'm a celebrity

Well, Class, we’ve certainly learned some important life lessons, have we not? From Susan ‘slapped-arse’ Boyle to Ashley Rascole, with various pun-worthy gurus thrown into the mix along the way, we have, by all accounts, scratched the surface of the art of Celebrity life, in all its absurdity and paradox. Thus, as we reach our tenth- and final- life lesson, we turn our attention back upon ourselves and retrospectively take stock of what we have been taught from all those cry, ‘Trust me, I’m a Celebrity!’ So take note and follow the rules, dear friends. And consider this hindsight your final life lesson: conscientiously and all attentive, never underestimate the importance of education. Read the rest of this entry »