Spring, and a rich
and famous young man’s fancy turns to exactly where he
put that pre-nup. And with the current state of what
were until recently thought to be the two most solid
showbiz marriages in Christendom — those of the Beckhams
and the Pitts — what hope can there possibly be for the
rest of the posing, preening flibbertigibbets, be they
crooners, thesps or kickers of balls? Look at Wayne and
Coleen — not even married, and already the bets are on
that they’ll have broken up by the next Bank Holiday;
not even out of their teens and they’ve already built up
an impressive back catalogue of he-said she-said grudge
matches. Infidelity, use of prostitutes, fisticuffs — he
wouldn’t be out of place in the gin-and-Jag stockbroker
belt. The fight between the couple’s families at their
engagement party; her crazed shopping sprees, which seem
designed solely to show up her lack of ability to choose
or wear clothes; they seem, despite Rooney’s alleged
great gift, to have been plucked by some cruel deity’s
hand on a whim — like in Clash of the Titans —
just to illustrate what fools these mortals be. Next
thing you know, Coleen’s going to turn up on the
front-page of the red-tops, tied to some rocks as a
virgin sacrifice to the terrible Kraken. But the day
will be saved when Wayne turns up and offers it his
autograph (as he did with those prossies that time, the
bright spark) and it flies off happy as Larry.
Though one is loath to burden this young couple with
the usual Daily Hell preach-pieces about How They
Are The Worst Thing In The World, Ever, Including
Hitler, they do seem to exist in a realm beyond mere
sport/shopping now; they seem to exist solely to
illustrate a morality tale in the manner of medieval
mummers — Too Much, Too Young. There are so many of
these couples these days; Jordan and Peter: Don’t Judge
A Book By Its Cover. Kate and Pete: Love Laughs at
Locksmiths. David and Victoria: Handsome is As Handsome
Does. Brad and Jen: Don’t Let Your Husband Make A Film
With Angelina Jolie, Ever! In themselves, celebrity
couples are far less interesting than they used to be,
probably because there are now so many of them, and they
all seem to meet, date and eventually hate in the same
way and with increasingly dizzying speed. Of course,
serial marriage and divorce has always been a mainstay
of showbiz, as normal as blood-sucking agents, plastic
surgery and tiny dogs pampered to within an inch of
their lives; for the first time, with the raising of the
Hollywood sign, there was a place which acted as a
magnet for millions of the most physically attractive
people in the world. And Mexico, where a marriage could
be ended just by waving a fistful of dollars, was just
across the border. Hollywood razed monogamy, made it a
museum piece, with the allowance of a level of
promiscuity that would have got an alley cat stoned to
death outside the city walls.
But the old-style pairings and
sunderings seemed to have much more, well, style, much
as I hate to use that word. And by style I don’t
necessarily mean Bryan Ferry in his peachy prime,
standing by a swimming pool in a white suit, cradling a
martini, though I’m not averse to a bit of that either.
No, for behaviour to be stylish, especially if
questionable morally, it must be clear-eyed and somewhat
shameless. It isn’t about ceaseless sneaking around,
lying and denying and, above all, it’s not about being a
hypocrite.
Think what the magnificent Elizabeth Taylor —
supposedly a mindless product of the stultifying studio
system — said to an interviewer when asked about her
numerous marriages: “What do you expect me to do, sleep
alone?” Then contrast it with what Angelina Jolie said
when asked about her rumoured relationship with a
Hollywood hunk: “I don’t sleep with my co-stars.” Of
those two, who sounds like the free spirit? Think of the
old days — princesses such as Margaret and Grace losing
love for their country and marrying for kingdoms,
bolters and headless men being dragged through the
divorce courts. Marilyn Monroe marrying Joe DiMaggio,
then Arthur Miller; the Body, the Brain and the goddess
who had both of them. Jayne Mansfield in a skintight
pink jumpsuit, nipples pointing all the way to Neptune,
breathing, “I’m the marrying kind” as she prepared to do
the deed yet again.
Just type the words “marriage” and “quotes” into a
search engine, and everyone from Oscar Wilde to Zsa Zsa
Gabor was capable of coming up with dozens of brilliant,
bitter, glinting quips on the subject. These days,
perhaps because so much is allowed, so little that is
truly striking and original seems to happen in the game
of love. Couple meet on-set or in players’ lounge; date,
mate and spawn; have tattoo of other’s name; get sick of
each other — and then the lies start, not so much to
each other as to the public who were previously sold
every soppy, sickening detail of their private lives. We
will be told that there is “no third party involved” —
especially not their sexy current co-star in some film
that turns out to be Grade A pigswill anyway; that the
suspect co-respondent is also a “dear friend” of the
dupe as well as the adulterer; that all three have the
“utmost respect” for each other — and then, after a
solid six months or more of this arrant offal, come the
first photos of the adulterers on the beach. Then the
lawyers arrive, the tattoos come off and so do the
gloves, and all merry hell breaks loose. And you just
wonder why they bothered denying it for so long.
Adultery makes a hero of no one — I’d been banged to
rights for it twice by my mid-thirties, so I should know
— but the one way to bring any level of honesty or
honour to it is to hold your head up, be proud of your
new feelings for your new squeeze and get the hell out
ASAP. It’s the hanging around trying to have your cake
and screw it while telling 12 shades of porkies to the
papers that makes people look like clowns — especially
if they’ re always banging on about “integrity”, as so
many of them do. At the risk of sounding a prig,
consistent lying and denying on the level and at the
length that these jokers go in for it brings a real
deepening of cynicism to public life — just as
politicians are accused of. The media are often accused
of deceit and manipulation, but perhaps we were made
that way by the eye-popping degree of protracted fibs
that the new breed of celebs goes in for. Compared with
them, we look like Gandhi.
julie.burchill@thetimes.co.uk
