Monthly Archives: October 2007

X Factor – Is Anything On It Real?

TV

Louis Walsh 

In an interview on Graham Norton’s TV show, X Factor judge Louis Walsh has admitted that the houses featured on the ITV show aren’t real. Or rather, they ARE real houses, of course…they just aren’t houses belonging to the judges. Contestants in the last 24 of X Factor get to fly out to the judges’ houses for more auditions – Simon Cowell in Marbella, Sharon Osbourne in LA, Dannii (won’t one ‘i’ do?) Minogue, and Louis in Dublin. The houses that the contestants turned up to were merely rented for the purposes of the show. The contestants should be grateful that the judges don’t all pretend to “live” in Peckham.

A spokesperson for the show said:

“The contestants are invited to a house. We call them the judges’ houses, not the judges’ homes.”

Ahh! Clever! Houses, not homes. And I suppose they also call the program “entertainment”, not “sucking the life out of TV”. Or that it’s a “talent contest” and not “something to line Simon Cowell’s pockets with”.

See, they’re all very small difference. You’d barely notice.

Jimmy Choos + Miss GB + Teddy Sheringham = No Link

Bad Behaviour

Danielle Lloyd

Danielle Lloyd, the former Miss Great Britain (and, of course, an infamous Celebrity Big Brother contestant) was today cleared in the High Court of cheating her way to the title. When she was crowned Miss GB in 2006, one of the judges was Teddy Sheringham. (That’s got to be a classy panel of judges, to have Teddy on board there, eh? Who else was there? Dean Gaffney?!) In a later magazine interview, she claimed that she’d been given a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes as a Christmas present by Sheringham at Xmas 2005 – months before the contest! Lloyd was later stripped of her crown.

However, it now comes to light that she’d lied about the shoe present, and now admits to having been given the shoes as a gift from the Jimmy Choo company. Her lawyer also says that she only met Sheringham for the first time on the night of the Miss Great Britan contest. (Not bad for a day’s work! Judge beauties, leave with the prize!)

Outside court, Lloyd said:

“It was good to get history put right today, because it was a matter of importance to me. I wasn’t a cheat.”

Thank goodness history’s been put right! We can all rest easy now. She’s not a cheat. Only a bit of a fibber about presents from boyfriends…

Katie Hopkins – You’re Fired! (Part 3)

Media, The Apprentice, TV

Katie Hopkins 

Poor love. This keeps happening every few months or so. Katie Hopkins, patomime villainess of this year’s Apprentice has been fired from yet another job. A columnist for the Exter newspaper Express & Echo (the cutting edge of modern journalism, I’m sure), she was recently subject of an online poll where readers could vote for whether she should keep her job or not. 84% of those polled voted for her to go…and today she got the sack. Katie was also fired in the summer from her job at the Met Office.

In fact, only 407 people voted in the poll. I wonder what was the actual readership figure of her column in the first place?! Maybe she’ll move on to bigger and better things, like agony aunt in Turning Down a Job with Alan Sugar Monthly, or gossip columnist for Shagging Outdoors Weekly.

You can read her column – all nine entries of it (wow!) – at the link below. I can see why some got annoyed.

One of the comments to the article at the Express & Echo makes a good point – will the paper be running a poll for all its writers? I say yes! Do it for all newspapers and magazines everywhere!! Let’s get rid of all the annoying writers!

I give it TEN!!

80s, Music Videos, TV

In honour of Bruno Tonioli, one of the two best judges on Strictly Come Dancing (which starts again this Saturday, 6th October, BBC1, 6.15pm – tune in!!) here’s Elton John’s 1983 hit I’m Still Standing. Bruno is one of the backing dancers in the video!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lK-0wfHutk]

Take Who? Take Me? Take What? That That?

Film, Music

Take That 
Jason (left) bravely protects the rest of the band
(I always knew he was the brave one.)

Not content with breaking teenage boys’ hearts in the 80s (probably, I was neither a teenager nor a boy in the 80s) Michelle Pfeiffer yesterday chose to attack British supergroup…erm…group…Take That. Upon being asked if she was a fan, she replied:

Sorry, who? I have never heard of that band before?

And they’ve even performed a song in your new movie, Stardust! Little Mark will be crushed, I’m sure. (Well he is quite little, it wouldn’t take much to crush him, huh?)

You guys are mean!

Entertainment, TV

I log into my stats today, and what do I find as one of the search terms for people coming to this blog? This:  

Losers on Dancing with the Stars 2007

That’s cold! COLD! Look, I know they don’t always get the biggest star names, and sometimes some of their dancing is rather average, but you really don’t have to call them losers. I’m sure they’re trying their best!

Spice Girls Announce Two More Dates in London

90s, Music, Spice Girls

 Spice Girls in the 90s

Well, okay…so I don’t really see the attraction of going to a Spice Girls concert, but apparently thousands do. Two more London dates have been added to their tour – on 15th & 16th January, bringing the total of dates in the capital to fourteen! The concerts at the O2 will be spread over December and January.

I suppose well done to them? Or maybe Victoria just fancies living in English pad for a bit, so has begged everyone else in the band to extend the London residency. And then went back to say “no honestly, David, we’ll need to be there for at least four months – they love us over there! Oh wait, my Blackberry’s just told me we’ll be doing five months, FIVE MONTHS of concerts. Look, why don’t you just give up football, eh love?”

Tickets go on sale this Saturday, 6th October, from 10am, and can be bought from Ticketmaster.

P.S. Ahh, looking at the above photo really takes me back…to a much more innocent time, when life was all about peace signs and Union Jacks…and Geri dressed as a transvestite…

Sex and the City Film Update

Fashion, Film, TV

Sex and the City 

Today’s Daily Mail has lots of new photos from the set of the Sex and the City film, currently being shot in New York. SPOILER! DO NOT click on the link if a) you don’t want to know a possible plotline (although rumours also suggest this is a fake storyline being “filmed” due to leaked scripts), and b) you have a phobia of truly hideous dresses. For they truly are. And I thought they were supposed to be stylish ladies.

Kate Moss Banned

Advertising, Magazines, TV

Kate Moss 
Kate Moss in ad

Oh, okay. She’s not been banned from anything. In fact, it’s just print and TV adverts in which she features that have been banned. Adverts for Rimmel’s Magnifeyes mascara show her having impossibly long eyelashes, and two viewers complained that they did not believe her eyelashes were real, or that the mascara could produce such results. The ad agency behind the campaign denied that false eyelashes had been used, but did say they were enhanced after the photoshoot.

First off, TWO people complained and this gets banned? And who complains about mascara ads? I’m pretty sure most of them are doctored in some way. Hey, loads of ads are! In fact, I saw a cat food ad the other day where a tin was opened, the cat came running, and then wolfed down the whole thing. And that NEVER happens in real life! 

But then I also noticed it was a cartoon.

Oh, Felix!