Celebrities

Sarah Palin has always been the object of speculation about her appearance

The issue of plastic surgery in American politics rears its head anew as the blogosphere explodes with the “news” that Sarah Palin, ex-governor of Alaska and former vice presidential candidate, may have had breast implants. In an era of intense scrutiny of politicians, Palin is not the first – and certainly won’t be the last – to be accused of going under the cosmetic surgeon’s knife. Joe Biden may have had (the world’s worst) hair plugs, Nancy Pelosi a facelift and Hilary Clinton various nips and tucks. And if they have, who can blame them? Have you seen… Read More

The Queen and Prince Philip with the Queen Mother, 1963 (Photo: Bill Beck)

Those of you turning on the radio this morning just before 7am might have been surprised to hear the national anthem. It is, of course, the birthday of the greatest living Englishman, Prince Philip Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg Battenberg, who is 89. He’s a daily reminder that inviting back Charles II was a wise move.

Prince Philip, despite years of hard work for his adopted country, is perhaps best known for his gaffes, which are so numerous that they even fill a whole book, Duke of Hazard: The Wit… Read More

Congratulations to Barbara Kingsolver for winning the Orange Prize for fiction. And now onwards to a far more illustrious award, the inaugural Book I Would Least Like To Read contest, with a coveted prize of cracked, hollow laughter. So far I have two contenders, courtesy of the Penguin press office.

The Rear Of The Year, 2010 - belonging to Fiona Bruce (Photo: Eamonn McCormack)

I try to keep up with the currents of feminism, but really, it gets harder by the day. Fiona Bruce – attractive, intelligent, personable, 46-year-old Fiona – is posing in the papers today because  she has won Rear of the Year Award.

So it’s three cheers for Fiona’s bottom. Perhaps her bottom has its own agent and is right now booking appearances at village fetes, student balls and shop openings. They’ll be separate engagements from those undertaken by ‘Fiona Bruce’, of course, who can talk and… Read More

Russell Brand’s lack of contrition for his appalling treatment of Andrew Sachs, revealed in an interview with the Radio Times, is an iconic example of the shamelessness that pervades celebrity culture and public life today.

“As often is the case with comedy, at a junction I always take the road less travelled, the road of this’ll be funny, this’ll be funny, this’ll be funny,” said Brand. “Sometimes there are casualties with morality, politeness. As I said at the time, it was impolite and I apologise for that. But as for all the subsequent reaction – it’s like you knock over a glass of water at your neighbour’s house and the wife comes down and shoots the dog.”

Impolite? Impolite is when you… Read More

Above is the latest in Lady Gaga’s sequence of expensive, long and endearingly barmy videos. It’s for her next single, titled Alejandro. Let’s overlook the gnawing suspicion that, as with Telephone, the extravagance of the video is intended to make us forget that the song itself is quite a lot less brilliant than Poker Face and Just Dance. Instead, let’s marvel at:

* what appears, at 5 mins 30, to be a St George’s Cross on our heroine’s crotch (if you’re reading, Gaga: that’s nothing. The pub down my road has painted its outer walls in the style of a St George’s Cross – and then, as if its support for Fabio’s fumblers were still in doubt, hung St George’s flag… Read More

Last night, at the TV Baftas, the public voted for its favourite British TV show of the past year. Which of the obvious, mainstream, household-name favourites would it pick from the shortlist? Britiain’s Got Talent? The X Factor? The One Show?

As you will doubtless have seen or read, the answer is none of them. Instead the public chose The Inbetweeners, a little-seen sitcom on the digital channel E4. (It gets about a million viewers an episode, which is great by E4’s standards, but is some way short of the 19 million-plus who tuned into the final of Britain’s Got Talent last year, or the similar number who watched the final of The X Factor.)

A bit odd, you might initially think,… Read More

"Madoff in jail" (photo courtesy of New York magazine) Photo-illustration by Peter Rad; Prop styling by Maeve Sheridan; Casting by Impossible NYC

That’s right. That charming quote comes from New York magazine, whose reporter Steve Fishman has just written about life inside prison for the world’s most infamous Ponzi scheme investor:
In prison, he crafted his own version of events… Madoff explained the trap he was in. ‘People just kept throwing money at me,’ Madoff related to a prison consultant who advised him on how to endure… Read More

Doing it for the money, Carrie et al in Abu Dhabi photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Sex and the City 2 is so very, very bad that it induces a physical reaction: mild nausea, audible groans, instinctive shielding of eyes and a general feeling of being run over by a team of movie makers who’ve sold themselves out. During the course of a screening I went to last night, “I wondered,” Carrie-style, how did a quirky, beloved HBO series – that defined mating in a metropolis for a generation of aspirational urbanites –… Read More

Fergie on Oprah today

When I first heard Sarah Ferguson was going on Oprah, I thought it was a fantastic idea. Americans – especially those who enjoy watching Oprah – applaud the chutzpah it takes to make a public apology, and love a good dose of contrition on their TV screens. It appeals to the cultural ideal here that all sinners can be redeemed. That’s why all the big celebs do it, if they want to get back in the public’s good books after a fall from grace… The best recent example of this is, of course, Tiger Woods. Going on Oprah to… Read More