After 10 long years I’m finally in heat

I know some people simply don’t have the time for the likes of Heat magazine. In fact, they’ll make a great show of haughtily flapping their broadsheets right in your face and declaring that your IQ is bound to have dropped several points just by picking it off the shelf.

I’m not one of those people, I love Heat. Don’t know why, I just do.

Admittedly it may not have the editorial content of The Independent, or offer an in-depth analysis of world events – much beyond weight gain, wardrobe malfunctions and celebrities who can’t make up their mind who to date. But that’s the whole point of a magazine like this.

It isn’t meant to replace ‘The News at 10′ or ‘Question Time’ and it never claims to help improve your exam results or boost your earning power. Rather, it’s half an hour of total escapism every week – and, if we’re all honest, an opportunity to reassure ourselves that those celebrities who ‘have it all’ often don’t.

Because, whilst the average reader may not have the fame, fortune or enviable shoe collection of most of the people featured week after week, at least us unknown, relatively broke, Louboutin-less readers are safe in the knowledge that we won’t be photographed nipping out to Tesco in our ill-fitting tracksuits, with hair that looks like an unwashed birds nest and eye bags down to our cheekbones. And we won’t make the headlines when we meet, marry and divorce in the time it takes a normal person to draw breath. And we won’t cause a national panic because we lost a bit of weight, or god forbid, ate too much for lunch.

So I reckon that magazines such as these actually work as a rather handy and incredibly cheap form of therapy for Joe Public. They give you a glimpse into the sort of lifestyles most could never hope to afford – unless your mum was a Rolling Stone groupie and you’ve just found out you can move like Jagger – and then show you that the grass isn’t always greener in La La land.

And it’s for that reason – and the handy TV guide – that I have been buying Heat since Issue 1. Now, 12 or so years on, having produced 2 children, lived in 3 continents and survived one life crisis after another, I’ve carried on buying it every week. And yes, I still have a go at my husband if he dares flick through it before I’ve read it cover to cover.

Granted, I often feel like I’m on the wrong side of 30 for the fashion spread and technically I guess I’m also old enough to have given birth to some of the Torsos of the Week, but what the hell. All those years of trivia and escapism haven’t done me any noticeable harm and I’m pretty sure my IQ hasn’t diminished over the last decade – and if it has, I’ll put that down to having children.

So all of that said, it would be something of an understatement to say I was a tad excited to open Heat this week and see I’d finally won Letter of the Week – I think I might actually have let out a squeal. So overcome was I with shock that I immediately had to call my husband (who totally understood my joy) and my sister, who initially thought I’d won the lottery.

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It’s a funny thing that after all these years of writing, having published a book, kept countless clients happy with copy and received fairly respectable hits on my blog, it’s having a letter printed in Heat that really makes my day. And winning the prize of course…

Now not that my 25.5 seconds of fame have gone to my head, but just in case a member of the paparazzi has driven down the A11 by mistake and is currently ambling around rural Norfolk looking for a way back to civilisation, I think perhaps I’ll make the effort to brush my hair before doing the school run later today.

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what you can do with a pile of sand

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Here’s a little gem from youtube that’s well worth 8 minutes of your time. I’d even go so far as to say I guarantee you’ll also end up watching it more than once… and utter the word ‘Wow’ at least half a dozen times.

The video shows the winner of 2009′s ” Ukraine ‘s Got Talent “, Kseniya Simonova. Her ‘talent’ – drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table – is incredibly mesmeric to watch, as the continuous flow of images tell the rather emotional story of how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II.

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky – then war planes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.

It is replaced by a woman’s face crying – then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos, from which a young woman’s face appears.

She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier.

This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house.

In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye.

During The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, one in four of the population was killed, with 8 to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million. Little wonder then, that so many in the audience were moved to tears and this incredible artist went on to win the top prize of about $ 75,000.

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Click on the picture below to watch this truly amazing performance..

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Reality strikes, and it’s pretty dumb

I am a self-confessed lover of most things reality. I say most things, as even I absolutely draw the line at Australian Idol and Big Brother.

Australian Idol because it’s quite frankly a load of talentless crap, and Big Brother, because the programme is now at least 7 years past it’s ‘Sell by Date’. The first 2 series of BB in the UK were funny and captivating – due to their originality and the people who walked into the house. They had no real notion of what to expect or what wide spread coverage they would receive, and they treated each other with at least some respect.

The following series that have been thrown up on screens every year since, have however, been just plain boring. This is due to their predictability and the attention seeking w*nkers, sorry, I mean housemates, who clamber over each other to live like guinea pigs, fight like toddlers and mate like rabbits.

The audition requirements must now surely be about finding the oddest of oddballs. Those who are guaranteed to strip, clash and pash. So if you’re a blood drinking, devil worshiping, plastic surgery obsessed, brain-dead sex-o-holic, who can’t seem to make a definitive choice between girls or boys, then you’re definitely in with a shot of getting on the show.

Maybe I have just gotten very old in these past 8 years, but it seems to me that BB has spawned a whole new breed of desperate and talentless weirdos. People whose skill sets range anywhere from merely having had a boob job or a sex change, to looking like a pig, thinking they’re God’s gift or simply being the first person born without a single brain cell between their ears.

For these fame fanatics, their 16 step ‘life plan’ would go something like this:

1. Get onto Big Brother and humiliate myself on national TV.
2. Prove that my IQ really can be smaller than my shoe size.
3. Feature on the front cover of HEAT magazine.
4. Meet a fellow non-entity, and be caught in a trendy club having sex.
5. Marry and divorce the said non-entity within 3 months.
6. Turn orange, lose weight, get new boobs/haircut/wardrobe.
7. Release DVD of me lifting Gucci handbag in weight-loss programme.
8. Feature on the front cover of HEAT magazine.
9. Release a single – prove I can’t sing.
10. Date an entire Premier Division football club.
11. Apply to go on Celebrity Mastermind – get laughed off.
12. Apply to go on Dancing with the Stars – get turned down.
13. Apply to go on I’m a (Z list) Celebrity Get Me Out of Here – get accepted.
14. Humiliate myself on national TV.
15. Prove that my IQ is still smaller than my shoe size.
16. Feature on the front cover of HEAT magazine.

Of course truth be told, even if I wanted to watch Big Brother, I couldn’t. My husband only has to hear the music and he starts frothing at the mouth. And that’s not in excitement I might add.  As a rule he really doesn’t like any form of reality TV, and will generally protest for many, many weeks about what he is being forced to watch. He’ll complain about how pathetic the format is, how fake the contestants are, and declare, quite rightly, that the presenters are enough to make you want to throw up your dinner into your hands.

Over the years I have worn him down, and have somehow managed to successfully get him hooked on shows like Dancing on Ice, So You Think You Can Dance, The Apprentice, the Biggest Loser (only the Aussie version) and Masterchef. Wife Swap, I’m sad to say, is simply never going to happen.

But of all these shows, my favourite have to be those that prove that beauty really is only skin deep.

America’s/Australia’s/Britain’s Next Top Model – oh you’ve got to love them for the sheer drama and brilliant bitchiness that these girls, many of whom aren’t even old even to cross the road on their own, have already mastered at such an tender young age.  As they cry, sulk and pout over every makeover haircut, and squeal with every Tara/Sarah/Lisa Mail that appears, it seems they just can’t help themselves but to prove the theory true that models are an incredibly dumb breed. And that large groups of catty girls are infinitely more dangerous to be around than a stick of lit dynamite.

I know this stereotype of models is something of an unfair generalisation, namely because I too once shimmed my way down a catwalk, and I’d like to think I possess matter between my ears that I know how to use. But oh my God, most of the vain little prima donnas on these shows apparently fell right out of the nearest stupid tree, hitting each and every branch on the way down.

So yes, it does makes me realise that I must be aging considerably faster than I care to admit, because many of these model wannabes seem young enough to still need the placenta attached to survive. They also appear to be completely unequipped to deal with the big bad world of reality that awaits them, on the other side of the competition. A world of fashion that will gobble them up, strip the meat of their jutting hip bones and then spit them out when they’re 20, over the hill and past it.

The final of Australia’s Next Top of Model is on tonight, and as far as I can see there is only one obvious winner. In one corner you have Tahnee – a girl with a beautiful face and a body that looks how it should at 17. In other words, there is still some sign of the puppy fat that you are supposed to have at that age, if it hasn’t been forcibly starved off and thrown up.

In the other corner is Cassi – a chain smoking, bad mouthed brat, with bad teeth, serious anger management issues and a body that would look right at home on a 6 year old.  In a word, she’s a Bogan. An Australian word for slapper, or a common little oik who struts around wearing micro-minis, white stilettos and a chip on her bony shoulder. Think Vicky Pollard on a hunger strike.

If this girl wins it will be a sad day for mothers everywhere. For she is the worrying proof that nowadays it’s OK to be a nicotine-stained, spoilt little madam, as long as you’re stick thin and look pretty in makeup. I’d have to say she’s about neck and neck with the Pussycat Dolls, when it comes to being the best role model there is for little girls.

Having seen her act out, lash out and stomp out over the last few months on TV, I for one certainly wouldn’t buy into any brand that she was the face of, so lets hope the judges vote for the right girl to win, the one that might just prove that beauty isn’t always just skin deep…

And the result? Yeah, the right girl won. Some of the judges may have been tempted with $ signs and voted for who might make them the most cash, but thankfully the Australian public proved that poise and good manners beats trailer trash and tantrums any day of the week.

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Who has the most talent?

Stop the press, hold the headlines, refresh your browsers. Susan Boyle wasn’t crowned the ‘Britains Got Talent’ winner after all.

Talk about the results not living up to the worldwide hype, or the bookmakers expectations. Despite being the favourite to sing her way to victory, the crown was whipped away from Ms Boyle and handed over to Diversity, a group of 11 incredible dancers from Essesx, aged between 12 and 25.

So why didn’t she win? Maybe the viewers, all 18.5 million of them, felt she had already achieved her place in the spotlight, and others now deserved a shot at fame more. Maybe people assumed she has her money making future in the bag, and no longer needed the prize. Or maybe people just thought the dancers were better.

Now I haven’t been watching the show, but I would have to have been blind, deaf and half way up a mountain not to have heard about the singing sensation that is Susan Boyle. I, along with some 220 million other people, watched her on YouTube back in April, when she first performed “I Dreamed a Dream”, from the musical “Les Miserables”. The video clip flooded our screens and filled inboxes everywhere. And I, along with everyone else, including the open-mouthed judging panel, sat and went – ‘Wow, that came out of that’.

Since then, she seems to have become something of the singing equivalent to Marmite – with her legion of adoring fans on one side, including Oprah Winfrey, Demi Moore and Jon Bon Jovi, and those who couldn’t wait to knock her down on the other. And there goes the fickle fame of fame, and the double edged sword of celebrity. Apparently, some people really don’t like to see a frumpy, middle aged church volunteer do well.

People’s obsession with ‘looking the part’ aside, what seems to me to be the most absurd, and probably saddest part of this whole singing circus, is that the day after losing the competition, Boyle checked herself into The Priory suffering from ‘exhaustion’. Isn’t The Priory the place that all those poor coked up celebrities crawl to, when they simply can’t deal with their charmed life and the negative press anymore?

Surely things can’t be that bad? Surely she can’t have got so bad in just a couple of months that she really feels the need for an ambulance and the assessment of the Mental Health Act – just to reconfirm that she’s tired and stressed? Why not just lock the door, take the phone of the hook and sit down with a nice cup of tea.

All this fame and glory must be a terrible thing to have to endure, it certainly never seems to make anyone happy. Oh well, she may not have won the competition, but at least she has the wealth still to come, with a reported eight million pounds up for grabs in the next year alone, from a record deal, book deal and possible film.

That should cheer her up a bit. It nothing else it will help towards the big black sunglasses, army of bodyguards and weekly sessions on the shrinks couch that she will certainly be needing, when the reality of her new life really kicks in.

I have to say, I was amazed that Susan Boyle didn’t win. Then I watched the clips below, and I could see why. She is without question a brilliant singer, but those dancers, they were just amazing.

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Watch Susan Boyle’s FINAL performance.

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Watch Diversity’s FINAL performance.

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The Winning Loser

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The Australian ‘Biggest Loser’ final took place the other night, and what can I say but ‘WOW’. What an inspiration these people should be to every person sitting on their sofa-loving backsides in front of the TV.

Whilst most reality shows are all about that 15 minutes of fame, this show actually sets out to achieve a really worthwhile end goal. And that’s not just for the person who wins and pockets the much deserved prize money (well as much deserved as it is possible to be when you have won and not earned it). All the contestants who take part, come out of it better off for having been there.

For while there is money at stake, and a lot of it, for once the show isn’t all about what you get at the end, but what you learn and achieve along the way. There are no record deals or big shiny cars on offer here.  The contestants aren’t expected to battle it out on a deserted island, or pick out a new mate to marry. They don’t have to decorate a room, design an outfit or beat a poly-gram test to do well. The show doesn’t dangle a ‘jump on the celebrity bandwagon’ carrot in front of their nose, or even teach them how to peel one.

No, the ‘Biggest Loser’ gives contestants a little bit more. It allows them to take one big fat foot out of the grave and start looking forward to living a longer, healthier life. A life that they can actually start to participate in, not just observe from the side lines.

Turning someones life around like this is no mean feat. For 3 long months the contestants are made to eat, sleep, think and exercise  ‘healthy’. Life long bad habits are stripped away and their approach to their food intake, mental attitude and body image are rebuilt, from the plate upwards. At the end of every week they face a public weigh-in, and those who drop below the ‘yellow line’ are voted off the show.

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By the end of the 3 months, the proof was very much in the low-fat pudding and the results achieved were nothing short of jaw dropping. Bob Herdsman, the oldest contestant and the winner, lost more than half of his original 167.8kg (26.4 stone) weight. He dropped a massive 87.6 kg (13.8 stone) along the way and now tips the scales at just 80.2kg (12.6 stone). Tiffany, his daughter-in-law, came in at second place with a weight loss of 54.1kg (8.5 stone).

Without a surgeons knife or gastric band in sight, their weight loss was achieved purely through good diet, hard work and a dogged perseverance to be there at the finish line.

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At a time when the whole world seems to be doubling it’s waist size every time the World Health Organisation release new statistics, this TV programme is certainly trying to do it’s bit to help get the message through.

Something certainly needs to be done before the entire population slips below the ‘yellow line’ and ends up getting eliminated from the race.

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