I have already written about the Telegraph's wretched gossip writer Celia Walden (aka Piers Morgan’s girlfriend). As regular readers of this site know, I’m not one to go on (and on etc), and I do believe in giving subjects of my interest a chance to redeem themselves. I have given Celia a chance to improve her act after an adverse review of a selection of her “exclusives” several weeks ago, and today, on impulse, I returned to her column. Alas! Would Celia know what gossip is if it smacked her on the fanny? Let’s go through today’s crock of tales:
Beckham to get his own reality TV show! Yes, but this story saw the light of day early Tuesday morning, dear. Celia quotes a TV source as if he’d whispered this intelligence into her actual shell-likes. In fact these whispered revelations first appeared in the TV trades.
Cricketer Monty Panesar spends Monday evening with David Cameron! Gossip indeed. Celia “gathers that Cameron was overheard laughingly calling Monty the acceptable face of spin.” The same quote couldn’t possibly have been lifted from this blog item [click here] posted yesterday, by any chance?
Tony Blair holds a Labour whips bye bye party at No 10 – even “disloyal” Tom Watson turns up! OK, so did the canapés, presumably. Celia digs up an old Tony quote on Tom to fill space.
The cover of Lewis Croft’s The Pornographer of Vienna features a knickerless woman and is upsetting at least one unnamed commenter on the Waterstone’s website! Well, fuck me!
Liberal MP Lembit Opik wants to teach girlfriend Cheeky Girl Gabriela Irimia how to fly! I know! He told Fern Brittan and Phillip Schofield on This Morning last week. How people repeat themselves!
8 comments:
Puzzled by Celia Walden. She's constantly referred to as 'incredibly' and 'ridiculously' beautiful. Why? She looks so very ordinary.
"Liberal MP Lembit Opik wants to teach girlfriend Cheeky Girl Gabriela Irimia how to fly!"
come on, this is hilarious! And I heard it here first.
I'd make the most utterly crap gossip columnist - I hear everything last, and half the time people tell me things I'm not even listening. But I always say it's not about how big your scoop is, it's what you do with it that counts.
Do you know, I like this character, the crap gossip columnist who hears everything last...
Dear Mme A, I have to confess I am so crap I had no idea Celia Walden even existed before reading this post! However, curiosity piqued by Anonymous there, I have done an image search. There is something odd, and I think I know what it is. Lovely as she is, it appears that if she moves her face her eyebrows will fall off.
I like the idea of the goss writer who hears everything last - it make a nice comic theme, though to cover myself I'm going to pretend Evelyn Waugh got there first (he probably didn't but I gave up on Vile Bodies at p32).
I'm sure Celia is a perfectly competent journalist, I just don't know why she does gossip. Her party reports would suggest a lack of interest in her core subject, and certainly she has no novelist's eye.
As for the fragility of her eyebrows, I cannot say with any authority.
Yes but who DOES do good goss ? Richard Kay ?
Who does good goss? you ask. Depends what you mean by goss. TMZ.com breaks great showbiz stories and does carry orginal goss that gets lifted by the tabs.
Holy Moly can be outrageously good, but there maybe question marks about accuracy at times: Jason writes a little too well, I fear. Popbitch can be good, but the fluffy animal stories can grate. Also, it seems gentler these days.
Among the UK dailies, I like the Express' Night & Day - it has a wide remit and is a good mix. Richard Kay can break great headline celeb stories; too often his page is too still, too lacking in mischief and mayhem.
The best gossers these days tend to be on the pop pages - the Star's Kim Dawson is one I like and she will go far. Veteran Compton Miller does a v good property goss column once a week on the Evening Standard. Londoner's Diary on the Standard can be excellent and I read it every day. Private Eye keeps its hand in I think - it's frequently plundered by sharp-eyed hacks.
The broadsheets generally can't do society or ents gossip - largely because their staff have pompous ideas about what is important - and their editors know fuck all. They still don't realise that they're competing with the immediacy of TV and the net these days, not with each other.
Worst/pointless gossers include the Telegraph's Celia Walden (natch), the Mail's blustery Baz Bamigboye - oh, I could go on ...
However, I think I'll do a special posting on this topic later.
I remember Baz Bamigboye when he was the film critic for our local freesheet in Wimbledon.
Madame Arcati,
You seem to have forgotten Katie Nicholl in the MoS. I once read something in that column that I knew to be factually incorrect and so I haven't bothered with it since.
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