Trashing celebs

One of the hardest things to adjust to if you're an up-and-coming celebrity must be the fact that everyone can write about you and they can be as abusive and malicious and vitriolic as they want, they can spread lies and half-truths and scurrilous accusations, and there's very little the person targeted can do about it.

They can demand a retraction or correction, but won't necessarily get one. They can sue for libel but that's expensive and chancy. They can use an interview to try and scotch the most ludicrous stories and inventions, but people might still believe them anyway.

It's all a bit like trying to hold back floodwaters with a bucket. So much is being written about you on such a colossal scale, it's impossible to react to more than a tiny percentage. The rest you just have to do your best to ignore.

Knowing that so much hostile and trumped-up nonsense is being aimed at you day after day must be a very surreal and unnerving experience.

What feeds this unwanted deluge of commentary is the general assumption that the writers are simply exercising freedom of speech and can therefore say what they like as long as it's legal. And also the assumption that celebs are "fair game" and being subject to venomous criticism goes with the territory.

Then again, some celebs actually welcome everything that's written about them, however derogatory. They just revel in all the attention as it shows that they're famous and controversial and they've caused millions of people to focus on them.

Personally I'm glad absolutely nothing is being written about me and I can enjoy the cosy cocoon of total anonymity.

Celebrity blues

I'm fascinated by the downside of celebrity. The negative stuff you don't usually hear about when everyone's going on about the wealth, the luxury houses, the lucrative job offers, the fawning service wherever you go. The reality behind the apparent opulence and easy living is seldom so glamorous.

Gemma Collins, hugely famous star of the TV series The Only Way is Essex, has revealed some of the things that piss her off.

Complete strangers calling her a fat cunt or saying her car's being stolen. People who think she sits around all day doing nothing. Endless abuse about her weight. Fits of anxiety. Everybody wanting a bit of her. "People want all from you, absolutely everything. And everyone's got an opinion about you. I get so much criticism now."

"I don't hate my life, I'm not sitting here going I don't want to be famous. But it's come at a price, hasn't it? I just want to do my job, be entertaining and get paid like any normal person, but people think they own you. It's like bear-baiting."

She seems a remarkably resilient person who can cope with all the shit and just carry on. She's not going to let it get to her. But other less resilient souls like Amy Winehouse and Janis Joplin struggled to adjust to the hot-house pressures of fame, and finally went under.

That must be the worst thing, everyone latching onto you, treating you as public property and seeing you as fair game for whatever they want to throw at you. Criticism, abuse, harassment, death threats, sexual overtures, begging letters, stalkers, you name it. If you object, they argue that if you deliberately put yourself in the limelight, then you deserve everything you get. They don't believe celebrities are entitled to a peaceful private life like the rest of us.

No way would I want to be a household name. It would be a bed of nails.

Pic: Gemma Collins