1 DOWN Simon Cowell
CW says: hurrah for the rising fortunes of the proletariat! Two hundreds years ago, it was all, “We want the vote!” this, and “Our children are dying drinking from the well with the wee-wee in it!” the other.
Now, the biggest rage seizing our country is over the fortunes of a load of second-rank cabaret artists taking part in a kind of nuclear version of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, on prime-time ITV1. That’s progress!
The nation is now FURIOUS, IN CAPITAL LETTERS about The X Factor stars Jedward — the preternaturally confident twin-act from Ireland.
Jedward’s act is as mad as old arses, to be frank — imagine Dr Seuss’s Thing 1 and Thing 2 having a pop at We Will Rock You after they’ve been at the Haribo. But as they have been weekly victimised by “evil” Simon Cowell — who claimed he would “leave the country” if they won — a perverse, so-bad-it’s-good wave of public goodwill led to Jedward becoming odds-on favourites.
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Last Saturday, however, Jedward faced a shock eviction from the show and had to be rescued by their supposed “enemy” — a panicking Cowell — lest they take at least two million in the ratings with them. The subsequent public fury with Cowell has been immense.
“You’ve only been PRETENDING to be ‘a cartoon evil judge’!” the public are screaming. “But all along, you were REALLY an extremely calculating millionaire showbusiness mogul, who owns the production companies that makes X Factor! And it’s only taken us six series of X Factor to realise this! We are INCANDESCENT!”
Genuine public uproar is predicted for next week’s live show. The mood is febrile out there. It’s wee-wee in the well water, all over again.
2 UP Lady Gaga
Look, you know how CW feels about Lady Gaga. It loves her. If Gaga ever should fall ill, and need a kidney, CW would step up to the plate, drug an unsuspecting European backpacker, perform a crude medical procedure and present Gaga with a stolen organ — as proudly as a cat with a dead frog.
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This week, CW’s Gaga-love reached tumultuous new heights of frenzy, when it spotted a quote from Gaga, explaining why she’d turned down the opportunity to design a clothing range. “The Haus of Gaga,” she said, “is nothing that can be sold.”
Other popstars refer to themselves in the third person. Gaga discusses herself using a multiword noun illestic eponomy. While wearing a hat that looks like Miss Havisham’s fruit bowl on her head! [CW faints from admiration.]
3 DOWN Leslie Ash
This week, Hello! asks Leslie Ash and husband Lee Chapman who their dream cocktail-party would consist of. Chapman plumped for the late INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, while Ash puts in a request for Nelson Mandela. Well, that’s quite a line-up: Chapman, Ash, Hutchence and Mandela. To be honest, CW can’t even begin to imagine how stilted that conversation would be — and that’s even with the presumption that Hutchence would somehow have been brought back to life for the occasion.
You see — people tut over them, but it’s for exactly such awkward social situations that Jedward prove so useful! After a grim, 20-minute vol-au-vent-eating silence: “So, Nelson, did you see the Twins do Ghostbusters?” “Yes! OhMyGod! Wasn’t the bit in the car amazing?” And there we go.
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4 UP The Pope
The Pope is to do his bit for commercialising Christmas — er, we mean “his bit in worshipping the legacy of Christ” — and is releasing a Christmas album: Alma Mater! Full of inoffensive “some classical” and a bit of praying.
CW is put in mind of the beautiful Alexei Sayle gag: “I have fairly Catholic tastes — I like anything by the Pope,” and notes that it has now come true.
5 UP Joe Jackson
You know — Joe Jackson. Michael’s dad. The one who denies beating the young Michael. That Joe Jackson.
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Well, with this redoubtable public image, you can see why the Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo has approached Jackson, and proposed that they go into business together — manufacturing football-shaped barbecues! Yes, you can see why! CW orders you to see why! It will not leave until you accede that this is a stroke of genius! The only thing that could make the whole thing better is if Jackson and Ronaldo now go on to theme the football-shaped barbecues in party-equipment tribute to Michael. CW says: go on, Joe! Have one more bang on the Michael Legacy Crack Pipe! Want To Be Charrin’ Somethin’! The Grill Is Mine! Grillie Jean! Broil Be There! We Char The World! Griller! The Ham In The Griller!
7 UP Beyonc?
This week, the quantum fox-engine that is Beyonc? took her tour to Egypt, and enraged local Muslim clerics. In an open letter to the Egyptian Government, the hardline Muslim Brotherhood referred to her show as “the nudity concert”, accused it of “disturbing peace and stability, and encouraging vice and debauchery” and — most fabulously — rounded things off by calling it an “insolent sex party”. CW is sorry, but it thinks the Muslim Brotherhood has missed its true calling — in marketing and PR. Those straplines are incredible. CW was straight on the phone for guestlist for the Wembley gigs.
8 DOWN The Horse Slaughterer
Those with the ability to discern strands of narrative within the quote-blizzard of Jordan’s life may recall an unhappy incident: a “sick fan” — at the time, OK! suggested it might be “a deranged feminist” — who threatened to “kill” Jordan’s horses. Well, the News of the World has tracked him down — and, it’s fair to say, we’re not dealing with one of the greatest criminal minds of our age. He’s Scott Cromwell, who posted the threats online under the MI5-level pseudonym “Cromscott”. Like James Bond often uses the name “Bondjam”.
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“It was just a wind-up,” Cromwell told the NoW reporter, swigging from a can of lager. “But if you pay me, I’ll pose next to a horse with a knife in my hand, and you can call me ‘The Horse Slaughterer’.” He then went on to offer out Jordan’s boyfriend — the cage-fighter Alex Reid — for a fight on his lawn. CW suspects that “Cromscott” will not be playing the lead in the next series of Spooks.
9 UP Robin Shulman
Here’s a question: who do you think the happiest person in the world was this week? Those people who won the £45 million Euro Lottery? Jedward? Wrong!
CW is pretty sure that it was the Washington Post journalist Robin Shulman — who, this week, in the course of her job, got to file this deathlessly glorious opening paragraph:
“New York — Sting is sitting in the lotus position on a plush white couch in his bright Central West apartment, talking about how a soccer ball might change a poor child’s life. ‘Instant, instant joy! These kids have got nothing,’ Sting notes, as a uniformed servant hovers in his doorway with a silver tray.”
If CW were Shulman, it would have spent the rest of the week lying on its back, smoking fags, luxuriantly twirling a fingertip round its nipple, sighing, “Thank you, Sting. Thank you,” over and over again.
10 Katy Perry
Ah, isn’t love an amazing thing? Make-a one man wip, annanova man sig, as Huey Lewis and the News so wisely put it in The Power of Love. This week, the game pop chanteuse Katy Perry announced her love for the Victorian-vocabularied the comedian Russell Brand — by wearing the outfit to the MTV European Awards. CW understands that the costume is homage to Brand’s favourite team, West Ham, and his nickname. Still, Cw would demur from having the word “Rusty” stamped across its arse in 4in sequin decals.