The process of letting go of your tabloid showbiz reporter career…
It's not been easy but slowly but surely I'm getting there!
Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!
It’s like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders of late. What was my life for over 15 years in the tabloid world has dispersed and I’ve managed to start fully letting go of that chapter in my life.
And with this removal of pressure has come a newfound confidence and honesty. To speak publicly and truthfully about what I went through.
I guess part of the catalyst was the pandemic and the doom-filled lockdown where we were forced to deal with our thoughts head on for many tricky months.
I started doing some writing and I started doing some talking (mainly to my other half at the time). It quickly became a rather freeing cathartic process – something I could lean into and work through. What I’d done. What I’d seen. How things had played out. What sort of human being I was. And you know what I discovered? I wasn’t made for the seedy gritty world of tabloid newspapers. With their ethos of build them up, drag them down, fuck them up and write about every part of it. The truth is I’m so pleased I managed to get out of that world. A world that was – back then, not really now – gross and relevant. It was a world where editors cared about were sales and money; neglecting to give a shit about the lives they ruined and momentarily destroyed in the process.
When I managed to wriggle out permanently, the editor’s were writing the headlines before I even left the office to interview a top name. My job as a journalist was just to get the line that worked for the splash. How lame is that? The story was being written before I’d even sat down with Victoria Beckham or whoever.
These days I’ve got my own PR firm and I’ve got a mixture of brand and personal PR clients. I’ve built it up across the last nine years and truth be told I rarely do much with the tabloids. It’s a rare case if I do. The reality is tabloids don’t hold much power right now and it’s getting to the point where I don’t see the point in bothering with them. They’re all dying on their ass with social media killing every part of the entertainment industry and no title has really worked out how to successfully monetise their online platforms in a big way.
During lockdown, one of the first conversations I had on a podcast was with former-T4-presenter-turned-Hollywood-actress Jameela Jamil. She wanted to chat with me about the industry, about tabloid culture and have a frank conversation about the industry. I held back. I was scared. I like what Jameela does sticking up for herself online – but I question whether she was one of the key players within that moment-in-time. There were bigger fish to fry. I was there and didn’t see it like that – which just goes to show how the other side felt with the continual paparazzi stalking. It was a lot and I really felt for her - you can hear the anger in her voice. Worth noting often back then it was just a creepy freelance pap not even being employed by a tabloid…
Anyway, I didn’t fully lay my cards on the table like I should have with Jameela. But now I feel far more honest with myself and able to pen more about what was a real formative time in celebrity culture. You can listen to that podcast HERE.
Even now, there are certain elements of the industry that bother me. Some of the weekly celebrity magazines are casually still just as women hating as they always were and there’s still a huge lack of diversity in them. Same people, same boring old ideas, same sad shoots trying to look fabulous and end up looking generic…
It also really bothers me that there are STILL phone hacking legal proceedings taking place where my name is quietly being dragged through the mud because stories were dumped by bosses on my newspaper column. Usually when I was on holiday and not there to bat the naff stories away. I was a huge control freak about every story that ran if I was in the office.
I’ll assume these celebrities probably think I phone hacked because of these legal issues that are still rumbling away. The good news – my conscience has never been more clear. I didn’t phone hack a single person back in the day. My stories were gotten by the old school way of actually talking to people, snooping around nightclubs (in the nicest possible way) and using contacts across the globe who were in the showbiz world. I have no fucking clue how the stories dumped on my column were extracted. But I’m assuming as there’s still legal issues they weren’t gotten hold of by legal means. My approach to showbiz journalism was much more fun – making friends with celebs and writing fun, harmless entertaining stories. Not destroying lives.
Truth be told, I hope the celebrities get a nice healthy cash injection because of what the papers did. They deserve it. The phone hacking that went on was a serious business. One friend of mine in the industry told me recently her and her actor husband stopped speaking to his ageing father for over five YEARS because they were convinced he was selling private stories on them. They actually blacklisted ‘Grandad’ from their lives for half a decade because they were so beaten down and anxious about leaks. Insane.
I spoke with journalist and podcast host Emma Guns (below) for her ‘Emma Guns Show’ two weeks ago where I surprised myself by actually discussing some of the newsroom dramas I was witness too. You can listen to that episode HERE btw.
I was once casually asked to bug flowers with a microphone and deliver them to a very well-known actress (at the time) and sit in a hotel room next door recording what went on inside.
Said actress was dealing with addiction issues and in a pretty fragile state. I flatly refused to do the job and walked away from the newsdesk thinking what a shady bunch of motherfuckers my bosses at the time were. I’ll never forget it. I left that publication weeks later and moved to a glossier magazine to hopefully avoid that sort of shady encounter. It lasted for a while.
But then I dipped back into the showbiz tabloid reporter world where the big thing was how we used freelance contacts who had ‘sources’ EVERYWHERE with regards to ANY celebrity. It was extraordinary. These freelancers were notorious among the weekly magazines and tabloids and miraculously could produce anything you needed in record time. “Could you get a line on Madonna,” I’d say. “We’ve got great pictures but need to know the inside track on her marriage.” Two hours later POOOOOOOF a full page of juicy salacious gossip would appear and save the day. Utter shite. And these muppets were earning upwards of 80k a year from one publication alone.
It worked for everyone – Cheryl, Katie Price, Kerry Katona, Colleen, Dannii, Sharon…you know, all the targets of the mid naughties showbiz world. It was actually amazing how little legal checks went on (before the Leveson inquiry). You could literally get anything across the line and onto the front page back then and readers would lap it up with sales lifting. The weekly magazines could actually get more across the line than the tabloids for a few years.
It got to the point as a celebrity editor where you were under your own spell and believed the tripe you were pedaling. It simply must be true.
“So-and-so knows Jennifer Aniston’s hairdresser personally and it’s come via them,” you’d say, hearing the pure insanity of your justification statement across the newsroom floor.
The one thing that saved me was the fact I learnt early on how shady the industry was. I knew what was happening and where the stories were coming from and wanted nothing to do with that. I wanted a legit way of knowing my stories were true.
I also tightrope walked the celebrity journalism world for over ten years being exceedingly careful not to shit on anyone and to remember that people were human beings. I’ve remained close with lots of my friends from back then and some even became clients for a time like Spice Girl Melanie C.
If you listen to Emma’s podcast you’ll hear me talk about a couple of cock ups – namely, Myleene Klass and Jade Jagger. But all-in-all I made some of my best friends during my adventures in showbiz land who remain to this day my closest confidants. The model I chatted all night too at a house party, the pop star who I originally didn’t hit it off with and the wife of a high-profile footballer. They’re all still very much my closest friends these days.
But like every good cathartic process of healing, I had to ditch my ego, realise the error of my ways with some of the things I’d written for all sorts of publications and now I’m in a place where I don’t feel part of the machine at all. I’m an outsider looking in.
Occasionally, there’s an invite to a swanky do and I catch up with lots of celebrity folks from the past. But they’re few and far between now. I was offered a seat at the Brits recently – turned it down on the spot. It’s just not my vibe.
In ye olde days - wrapped up in the celebrity game - you almost didn’t appreciate the hilarity and speed at which things were whizzing by. Golden Globes, Brits, Cannes, Elle Awards, Oscars, Bafta TV, Bafta Film, National TV Awards…it was a hamster wheel of glamorous events around the globe and to be frank fucking exhausting. But a lot of fun at the same time – but I didn’t appreciate it at the time. I was well and truly underneath that velvet rope and within the game.
There’s one simple rule I’ve come to realise that helps you to stay sane in this weird world of showbiz. We are all human beings. Even a celebrity in the eye of a media storm – they’re not covered in armour. Words, comments and opinions fucking hurt. I could talk about how social media is poison all day and as I said last week, the power is with the general public now on whether they make a star or cancel them.
I’m just at a point where I’m looking at an industry of yester-year which wasn’t filled with a lot of nice people. Folks who now fail to accept any responsibility for their actions and what we were all a part of. They know who they are. They know how shady they were. They lie about that time in their lives and accept no responsibility for the damage they did. But I see them.
This isn’t a witch hunt. This is just the start of some honest celebrity journalism flashbacks from what was primarily a really fun time in my life…
Until next week, Kids.