Will James Blunt really 'serenade Kate as she gives birth'?
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Version 0 of 1. Ah, the celebrity press. It promises readers untold riches, an insight into a fabulous world far removed from that of mere mortals; gems of important information, the gleaning of which cannot help but improve your life. Occasionally, it delivers on that promise: only this week we learned via its good offices that Kanye West has claimed to have discovered the meaning of life while at the dentist, and that Lindsay Lohan recently posted a picture of an Arabic phrase on Instagram, which she claimed was an inspirational expression that translated as “you’re beautiful”, but in fact turned out to mean “you’re a donkey”. More often, though, it deals only in harsh disappointment and a weird kind of bathos. So it was with the reporting of the recent visit to the Coachella music festival by Kim Kardashian’s half-sister Kendall Jenner, or, as Grazia magazine recently dubbed her, with a compelling combination of snappiness and bashful understatement, “the global aggregate of fairytale young womanhood”. “KENDALL GOES CRAZY!” screamed the headline. “INSIDE HER WILDEST WEEKEND.” At this, Lost in Showbiz confesses, it felt a certain prickle of prurient anticipation. It likes to think of itself as something of a connoisseur of festival misbehaviour: the friend who so conclusively reordered his brain that he watched an entire set by techno duo Orbital, steadfast in the belief that he was actually watching the Kinks, and shouting with increasing agitation for Sunny Afternoon; the two men, covered in filth, who whiled away a lacklustre Glastonbury debut from Fleet Foxes by beating each other about the head with what looked like two petrol cans filled with cider; the astral traveller who successfully distracted attention from Gorillaz’s headlining performance by the simple expedient of climbing a pagoda to the left of the stage, removing his clothes and manipulating his genitals in time to the music. It pounced up on the magazine in question, eager to read tales of drugged madness, to see photographs of The Global Aggregate Of Fairytale Young Womanhood suffering a scrumpy and microdot-fuelled freakout while watching the Ozric Tentacles and to hear of her announcing her decision to quit the world of haute-couture modelling in order to live in a converted ambulance with a man called Seaweed. Instead, it discovered that her “wildest weekend” involved wearing some clothes that apparently constitute “boho chic”, being seen talking to Justin Bieber and complaining when she found someone sitting in a seat reserved for her. It wondered: since when did the notion of festival “craziness” become so debased? Did that man strip naked on top of a pagoda and start waving his old chap around in time to Gorillaz for this? But its disappointment regarding The Global Aggregate Of Fairytale Womanhood’s wildest weekend was as nothing compared with the letdown engendered by a story in the Daily Mail, designed to grip a country that is apparently in the throes of Royal Baby Fever, the Mail having rightly adduced that Britain is in the throes of Royal Baby Fever on the grounds that three pensioners are camped outside the hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge is due to give issue. But what a story! Brace yourselves for what may be the headline of the year: HOW JAMES BLUNT WILL SERENADE KATE AS SHE GIVES BIRTH. Now, Lost in Showbiz has no desire to mock James Blunt, singer-songwriter and former captain in the Household Cavalry. It barely has any standards or values whatsoever, but it does try to abide by the rule: don’t make fun of a trained killer. Nevertheless, on reading those words, its mind swam with a plethora of images and, indeed, questions. Dear God, do the decadent whims of our royal family – and, indeed, certain singer-songwriters’ thirst for lucrative “private gigs” – know no bounds? More practically: to which “end” of the duchess will Blunt address his performance? The top, to soothe the agony of labour via his own multiplatinum brand of mellifluous melancholy? Or “below stairs”, the better to welcome the royal infant, or indeed encourage it onwards, with the irresistible strains of Blunt acting as a kind of musical bait? Of course, on reading the article, it transpires that Blunt is going to be nowhere near the £15,000 delivery room. He will be “serenading” the royal birth only in the sense that he may appear on the parents’ “birth playlist”, also featuring “some classical and some Ellie Goulding-type stuff”. And yet, even knowing that they are untrue, that it has once more fallen prey to the bait and bathos of the showbiz press, Lost in Showbiz finds the images conjured by that headline are impossible to eradicate from its brain. Every waking moment is now plagued with the thought of good old “Blunty” bellowing Goodbye My Lover up the royal cervix; of him emerging from the hospital to give a nonchalant interview: “I just make music for myself and if the Duchess of Cambridge, screaming for an epidural and tearfully pleading for the agony to stop, likes it, it’s a bonus.” It points an accusing finger at whichever Daily Mail staffer was responsible and mutters: thanks for that. As Lindsay Lohan would say, you’re beautiful. |