Once a celebrity has been linked with a silly object, they stay connected for ever

Sarah Ferguson, Princess Di and verrucas; Matthew McConaughey and bongos; Bill Clinton and chicken nuggets – for me, public figures are always defined by ridiculous objects

• 
• • Sophie Heawood
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 15 October 2013 18.35 BST

Before the infected shoe incident … Sarah Ferguson and Princess Diana at the Epsom Derby. Photograph: Ken Goff/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

Here's a sentence I'm fairly confident nobody has written before: I have recently become obsessed with Sarah Ferguson and Diana, Princess of Wales, after discovering their friendship is believed to have come to an abrupt end when Fergie told everyone she got a verruca from one of Diana's shoes. Fergie wrote in her memoirs that she and Diana were so close they would even share their heels, in true gal‑pal fashion, but that this once led to Fergie contracting a plantar wart. Allegedly – and this comes from Tina Brown's unauthorised take on Diana's life – the comical indiscretion was so humiliating to the princess that she never spoke to the duchess again. That was it – their friendship, all because of an infected shoe. A year later, Diana was dead.

It's not the two individuals who fascinate me so much as the idea that empires rise and fall, alliances begin and end, over something as ridiculous as a pair of slip-ons with a virus nestled in the toe. For me, public figures are always defined by the ridiculously random objects they inevitably end up associated with. Every celebrity has one.

The band All Saints admit they split up because of a row about a jacket. "I would never, in a million years," said band member Shaznay Lewis some years later, "have put money on the group ending over a jacket." Jamie Oliver apparently sold his house in Hampstead after he got sick of drunken idiots coming out of the pub next door and shouting up at his window for a bacon sandwich. When I interviewed the actor Matthew McConaughey, I was delighted to learn he had once been arrested for causing a public disturbance after sitting on the roof of his house late at night, stoned and playing the bongos. Bongos! And I'm not saying that I've got too much time on my hands, but I did once become a quite active member of a Facebook group called "The day that Brian Harvey ate 47 baked potatoes then ran himself over", even though Harvey himself has claimed his intake at that fateful pre‑crash luncheon was a mere three jacket spuds – with tuna mayonnaise on, since you asked.

Once you've linked a celebrity with a silly object, they stay like that in your mind's eye for ever. David Miliband walking down the street with an awkward grin, clutching that banana. David Cameron has been entirely cunning at avoiding any object association – until his breadmaker, that is. I have American friends who always want to ask me about Prince Charles and his intercepted phone call to Camilla that led to tampongate. These objects come to trail alongside the celebrity, like a puppy who refuses to leave their side, or a daemon in a Phillip Pullman novel. When confronted by the monolithic narratives that prop up our state, institutions such as the royal family and Westminster that seem to have been there since the dawn of time, built of wealth and stone, I find it rather cheering to remind myself that they are just as vulnerable as the rest of us.

I've never been convinced that Philip Larkin was right when he wrote that all that remains of us is love. After Bill Clinton is dead and gone, it's not love that I'll remember him for. It's an object – and I don't even mean that cigar that went on holiday somewhere in Monica Lewinsky's nether regions. The object was brought to my attention in Alastair Campbell's diaries, in a story where Tony Blair, Kevin Spacey and Bill Clinton are all sitting in a McDonald's restaurant. In Blackpool. "So there we were," Campbell writes, "drinking Diet Coke and eating chicken nuggets as he [Clinton] poured forth on the theme of interdependence and the role of the Third Way in progressive politics." Obviously, it is the chicken nuggets that get me.

Campbell also mentions that Cherie Blair wore a magic pendant – a bioelectric shield, apparently – to ward off evil rays during their time at No 10. And for her part, Cherie has spoken of an amazing night out the Blairs enjoyed on an Italian summer holiday with that lovable old goat Silvio Berlusconi, who arranged a surprise fireworks display. Much to the Blairs' delight, the words VIVA TONY came to light, spelled out in rockets in the sky. This anecdote will always stay with me. In fact, I often struggle to concentrate on our former prime minister's face without seeing the words VIVA TONY beaming through his intergalactic eyes.

But back to those chicken nuggets that the most powerful man in the world enjoyed, perhaps – and I do like to imagine this is true – as part of a Happy Meal, or at least a meal deal with a fizzy drink thrown in for the price of the chips. In a burger bar lit by primary colours and over-enthusiastic plastic, in a rain washed seaside northern town, circled by gulls. Perhaps, all that remains of any of us is this.

Scandal: Just how corrupt is Britain?

Rotten banks, dodgy cops, MPs on the fiddle. A conference on public life has evidence to
topple long-held assumptions

Jonathan Brown
Friday, 10 May 2013

Looking across the seas at political scandals surrounding the likes of Silvio Berlusconi and
Jacques Chirac, at match-fixing in Pakistani cricket and Italian football, or claims of tax
avoidance on a nationwide scale in Greece, it was said jingoistically for many years that
humble Britain could never compete with the explosive corruption scandals that "Johnny
Foreigner" seemed to specialise in.

Yet recent British scandals can compete with the best Europe can offer. Besides MPs fiddling
their expenses and Jimmy Savile's history of paedophilia, racing has been hit by Frankie
Dettori's six-month drugs ban, we've seen London-based banks Barclays and UBS
embarrassed by the Libor rate-fixing scandal, and BAE Systems has been investigated over
its arms deals.

The police have become embroiled, too, with Detective Chief Inspector April Casburn jailed
for offering to sell information to the now defunct News of the World and evidence of a
cover-up on the Hillsborough disaster. And while none of our Prime Ministers have yet had to
stand before a court, MPs including Jonathan Aitken and Margaret Moran have been
convicted and Neil Hamilton famously lost his libel claim against Mohamed al Fayed over the
cash-for-questions affair.

Even royalty has not been immune, thanks to the tabloid sting that saw Sarah Ferguson
offering access to Prince Andrew for cash.

With this weighty list and other cases to examine, it will be claimed today that corruption
has in fact become an everyday part of British national life.

A conference of campaigners and academics, entitled "How Corrupt is Britain?", will hear
evidence that wrongdoing is not confined to a few corrupt officials but is systemic within
leading institutions.

The conference organiser, Dr David Whyte, of the University of Liverpool's School of Law and
Social Justice which is hosting the event, said the aim was to challenge two "long-outdated"
assumptions.

"First, that corruption is a problem that happens in far-away places, in governments that do
not have our traditions. Secondly, that corruption is something that we can understand
merely as a problem that stems from the actions of a minority of public officials who are 'on
the make', rather than something that is routine in our most venerated institutions," he said.
Among the speakers will be Carole Duggan who has campaigned on behalf of her late nephew
Mark Duggan who was shot by police in Tottenham, north London, in an incident that
sparked the summer riots of 2011.10/05/2013 Scandal: Just howcorrupt is Britain?

An Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report into his death is still not
complete and investigators have not spoken to the firearms officers involved. She claims she
has faced persistent collusion between official bodies preventing her bid to find out the truth
– with her lawyer, Michael Mansfield, arguing earlier this year that the cases showed the
IPCC was "not fit for purpose".

She believes that society as a whole has become more corrupt because of the anger at the
high salaries and bonuses still paid in the City despite its financial failings.

"Corruption is now endemic – just look at the bankers," she said. "They are teaching kids to
just take what they want – which is why they were taking trainers from shops in the riots.
That is what they are being taught by the greedy people."

Joanna Gilmore, of the Northern Police Monitoring Project – an organisation which brings
together campaign groups across the north of England – said many sections of the
population were losing faith in public bodies particularly the police and the IPPC.

Ms Gilmore said: "Corruption and violence is central to what people have experienced.
Communities feel powerless when they try to seek redress through official channels. They are
hitting a brick wall when they make a complaint."

Organisers hope that by sharing their experiences groups can pool expertise and find new
ways of dealing with systemic corruption across the whole of public life.

Co-organiser Richard Garside, director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said there
was an urgent need to view corruption as a nationwide problem that spanned both public and
private spheres of national life.

He said: "In Britain it has often been thought that corruption is something that happens in
other countries, not ours. The conference will join the dots across the public and private
domains, and begin a dialogue between campaigns for police accountability, tax justice,
executive pay, political and corporate accountability.

"Rarely, if ever, do we talk about those things in the same place. This conference will make
links across those different spheres of public life."

Press regulation: a victory for the rich, the celebrated and the powerful

This new press regulator is all about revenge, not justice. It's hard to imagine a more chilling deterrent to serious investigation

• 
• • Simon Jenkins
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 19 March 2013 20.30 GMT

Illustration by Matt Kenyon

We can agree that the press had it coming. The victims needed revenge. Celebrities wanted redress. A few tabloid moguls got a bloody nose, and Ed Miliband got to meet Hugh Grant.But what happened on Monday in Westminster was a ludicrous way to engineer a more disciplined press. We do not have an independent regulator, but the agency of a political stitch-up. Any MP who claims this is not statutory regulation is a liar, and should be forced to retract and apologise, or face a million pound fine.

Press laws should not be written in the dead of night by a coalition of those worsted by newspapers. They have produced not just a royal charter, which might be no big deal, but a detailed remit of how a press regulator should operate, down to the prominence of apologies and the size of fines. MPs on Monday were salivating with regulatory power. The truth is that parliament was drinking deep from the well of disgust and revenge. As the veteran MP Peter Lilley bravely remarked, whenever parliament gloats over such deals "we invariably make our worst blunders".

Last month the distinguished US journalist Lawrence Wright came over to seek British publication of Going Clear, his detailed exposé of Scientology already published in America. He was told by publishers to forget it. His book was not reckless or inaccurate, but the Scientologists would make defending its publication in a London court prohibitively expensive. He went home empty-handed. As Chinese communists can attest, there are many ways to kill free speech short of murder.

Any regulation of the press should pass the Wright test. Will it make publishing what someone, somewhere does not want to see in print more or less likely? This week's legislation patently means less. A few innocent victims of press unfairness may gain redress. But the cheering across town this week is from the rich, the celebrated and the powerful, with parliamentarians in the van.

This debate has been dominated by the crime of phone hacking, largely at News International. Not a news report fails to mention it. This is an illegal activity that, under existing law, has seen dozens of journalists and police officers arrested and massive compensation paid. A paper has been closed, and exemplary punishment meted out. It needed no royal charter or late-night deal.

Certainly, those who complain if papers break statute or common law deserve a better route to justice. Britain is already tough on libel, defamation and privacy, as the Wright case illustrates, but the law tends to be for the rich. The appropriate reform is for these cases, if not resolved voluntarily, to come before a small claims court, to avoid the present deterrent of legal fees. That is the solution.

This week's proposals have no bearing on this at all, any more than did the tedious Leveson report. They are not about press illegality but something mysteriously called "misdemeanour" – that is scurrility, intrusion and unfairness. No one might complain here about a tougher monitoring of a code, to reprimand and seek apology. The existing complaints procedure works without fines and compensation, and merits strengthening. But we have to accept that sometimes there will be mavericks who are beyond reprimand. Free speech within the law is their entitlement.

The new regulator allows no time for this. Parliament sees no role for mavericks. Its target is not just celebrity intrusion but bias, unfairness and gossip in the style of Private Eye and the "off Fleet Street" plethora of news-and-comment websites. The regulator is obliged to offer a free arbitration service to anyone who feels traduced or unfairly treated by the press, imposing fines and compensation. Indeed, the service will have a vested interest in fines as it will be financed by "fine farming", like traffic wardens.

Parliament on Monday proposed no safeguards against this becoming a PPI-style stampede for anyone – including lobbyists – trying to grab a compulsory correction plus aquick payoff. Fining journalists for unethical deeds is a charter for the vexatious. It is madness. Fines and compensation at the arbitration stage will put editors in thrall to chief executives and nervous publishers.

Worse ensues if editors reject the new regulator and, because a matter of law is at stake, the case goes to a proper court. They there face punitive "million-pound" fines. Smaller publications and many in the provinces could be forced into closure. Almost by definition, such matters are likely to be seen by journalists as ones of principle. It is hard to imagine a more "chilling" deterrent to serious press investigation than this.

This is blatantly one-sided justice. It is as if the BBC charter were drafted by victims of Jimmy Savile, or church law drawn up by those abused by priests. It will certainly make some sections of the press more careful in their handling of the private lives of public people. But the baby's gone out with the bathwater. Northcliffe's maxim was that "news is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising". The advantage today is with the advertisers, who will find it that much easier to stifle criticism and deter journalistic risk.

This is not the end of the world, and any such suggestion will sound self-serving from British papers. But, unlike the supine press so common abroad, they still have the irreverent vigour and diversity of a true political safeguard. This has been a grim, vengeful saga. The press faces tough times anyway, and must now do so wearing a ball and chain.

It's not just about the results

More important than the numbers you chalk up as a player is gaining personal mastery of yourself - as a cricketer and a person

Paddy Upton

September 25, 2012

Comments: 9 | Login via  | Text size: A | A

	Gary Kirsten: "When the heat is on in Test cricket, it's not your skill but your character that is being tested" © PA Photos  Enlarge
Related Links Players/Officials: Hashim Amla | Gary Kirsten | Sachin Tendulkar Teams: South Africa

As cricket advances into the entertainment industry, so the celebrity limelight shines more brightly on the players. Cricketers today enjoy more money, more glamour, more exposure than ever before. It's fun, the party is on, but are they sufficiently prepared for the hangovers that lurks in the shadows?

These come in many forms and manifest themselves in the form of scuffles in nightclubs, drink driving, sexual indiscretions, drug abuse, cheating and match-fixing - sometimes driven by a celebrity's sense of being above the law, invincible, and sometimes even immortal.

Cricket stars are easily seduced into defining themselves, their self-confidence and their happiness, by their name, fame, money and the results they produce: happy when they do well in these regards, grumpy and anti-social when not. A darker shadow of the limelight is where players buy into the image of fame (of being a special person) that fans and the media create for them. As they do this, they become more alienated from themselves, losing touch of who they authentically are. They begin to see themselves as superior to ordinary mortals, not only better at the skill that made them famous but also better and more important as people. They struggle to be alone, uncomfortable in their own company. Yet while surrounding themselves with others, they become incapable of genuine relationships.

A loneliness and creeping discontentment begins to shroud the star. This inner emptiness drives the celebrity to wear their "happy", "tough" or "I'm okay" masks while looking to find temporary happiness out there, in more success, fame, money, sex, drink or drugs.

Cricket has plenty of known instances of depression and substance abuse, one of the highest suicide rates of all sports, and a divorce rate to match.

It's about who you are, not what you do
There is another road, less-travelled by superstars, which leads out of the shadows of the limelight and into the light of personal and professional success, sincere relationships, lasting contentment and an all-round fulfilling life.

Speaking to me in 2004, Gary Kirsten said: "I'm searching for the authentic Gary Kirsten - someone who is accepting of his shortcomings and is confident in the knowledge of who he is. One who is willing to have a positive influence and add value to society in my own unique way. I want to make a difference to people's lives and give them similar opportunities that I have had. My perception of success is not about how much money I can earn in the next ten years but rather what impact I made on people I came into contact with."

Gary spent thousands of hours mastering his strokeplay, which had brought him great success and recognition. To this pursuit of professional mastery, he added personal mastery. He often says that when the heat is on in Test cricket, it's not your skill but your character that is being tested.

In life as in cricket, it's who you are inside, your character and your values, rather than what you do, what results you achieve or possessions you gain, that will determine your contentment, enduring success and how you will ultimately be remembered.

Personal mastery is many things. It is a journey towards living successfully as an all-round human being, a tapping into your full potential. It is a commitment to learning about yourself, your mind and emotions in all situations. It is a strengthening of character and deepening of personal values. It is an increased awareness of self, others and the world around; living from the inside out, not the outside in. Peter Senge, one of the authors of the concept of personal mastery, defines it as "the discipline of personal growth and learning".

This idea may already sound too touchy-feely for the John Rambos and Chuck Norrises out there, but before dismissing the concept, know it translated to Kirsten's most successful international season, that it underpins Hashim Amla's remarkable performances, and grounds Sachin Tendulkar's extraordinary fame.

Conversely, the lack of personal mastery has undermined the personal and professional lives of many celebrities. Have you heard about the guy who was a brilliant batsman but whose peers think he is an idiot, and who after retirement had no mates? Or the one who had great talent and opportunity but never managed to deliver? We will never know the truth about all the cricket failures that may seem to have been caused by technical errors but which were actually caused by a lack in character or strength of mind, causing the player to repeatedly succumb to the fear of failure and how it would reflect on them. We all know how the likes of Hansie Cronje, Mike Tyson, Ben Johnson, Mohammad Azharuddin, Diego Maradona and Tiger Woods might be remembered.

The road to personal mastery

Personal mastery is a shift in attitude that drives a shift in behaviour.

From over-emphasising results to placing importance on the processes that set up the best chance of success; from defining one's contentment by results, to deriving contentment from the effort made in the pursuit of that result.

From worrying about what others think about you, to knowing that what others think about you is none of your business. There are people who don't like Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa, so what makes you so special that everyone should like you?

From focusing on the importance of looking good outwardly, to the importance of inner substance and strength of character. It is not about trying to be a good person but allowing the good person in you to emerge;

Personal mastery is a shift from thinking you have the answers, to knowing you have much to learn. From balancing talking and telling with listening and asking. People who think they're "important" seldom ask questions;

It is a shift from pretending to be strong and in control, and from covering up ignorance, faults and vulnerabilities, to acknowledging these human fallibilities while still remaining self-confident. The current South Africa team now openly acknowledges that they have choked in big tournaments in the past, and they're not choked up by this acknowledgement;

When things go wrong, personal mastery is a shift from pointing fingers and blaming others, to taking responsibility. It is first asking "What was my part in this?" before looking elsewhere. It's a shift from being reactive, to being proactive; from withdrawing or getting pissed off by criticism, to accepting that it's one of the few things that helps us grow.

It is about developing social, emotional and spiritual intelligence, in addition to building muscle and sporting intelligence - in the way that Kirsten added the journey of personal mastery to that of professional mastery.

It is a shift from an attitude of expecting things to come to you, to earning your dues through your own effort; and then being grateful for what does come.

It's a shift from focusing on yourself, to gaining awareness of what is going on for others and the world around you. Not everyone is naturally compassionate, but everyone can be aware.

	When things go wrong, personal mastery is a shift from pointing fingers and blaming others, to taking responsibility. It is first asking "What was my part in this?" before looking elsewhere

Personal mastery is a shift from expecting to be told what to do, to taking responsibility for doing what needs to be done. A shift towards becoming your own best teacher as you learn more deeply about your game, your mind and your life, in a way that works best for you. Kirsten insists that players make decisions for themelves, that bowlers set their own fields, and batters take responsibility for their game plans, decisions and executions. Off the field there are no rules to govern behaviour, no curfews, no eating do's and dont's, and no fines system. Players are asked to take responsibility for making good decisions for themselves, at least most of the time.

Personal mastery is about pursuing success rather than trying to avoid failure. It is an acceptance that failure paves the path towards learning and success. It's important in this regard that leaders are okay with their players' mistakes. Almost every sports coach I have watched display visible signs of disappointment when a player makes a mistake. I wonder if these same coaches tell their players to go and fully express themselves? If they do, then their words and their actions do not line up - and their reactions speaks more loudly than their words. Show me a coach who reacts negatively to mistakes, and I will show you a team that plays with a fear of failure.

It is about knowing and playing to your strengths, rather than dwelling on your weaknesses, knowing that developing strengths builds success far more effectively than fixing weaknesses does. If you're a good listener, it's about being even better, for instance.

It requires an awareness of how you conduct yourself in relation to basic human principles, such as integrity, honesty, humility, respect and doing what is best for all. It means having an awareness of and deliberately living personal values as one goes about one's business. It's about knowing how one day you want to be remembered as a person - and then living that way today.

When you, as a top athlete, do well, it's about receiving the praise fully, and expressing gratitude in equal proportion, knowing that no athlete achieves success without the unseen heroes that support them. Praise plus gratitude equals humility. One only need listen to Amla receiving a Man-of-the-Match award to witness humility.

Personal mastery is a path that leads through all of life, bringing improved performances on the field and a more contented and rewarding life off of it. It's a journey out of the shadows of the ego and into the light of awareness; it's a daily commitment, not a destination. It may not be for John Rambo or Chuck Norris, but it works for most.

The bonus is that while personal mastery leads to a happier and more rewarding existence, it also leads to better sport performance. Kirsten adds: "I spent years fighting a mental battle with my pereived lack of skill. Towards the end of my career I dropped this, as well trying to live up to others expectations. I went on to score five Test centuries and have my best year ever. As a coach, I now know that managing myself and others well, being aware of who I am being and why I do things, is of far more importance than technical knowledge of the game."

Another fairly successful and likeable international cricketer who knows the importance of personal mastery states: "Who I am as a person, my nature, is permanent. My results on the field are temporary - they will go up and go down. It is more important that I am consistent as a person. This I can control, my results I cannot." He adds that "people will criticise me for my results, and will soon forget them, but they will always remember the impact I have on them as a person. This will last forever." His name is Sachin Tendulkar.

Paddy Upton is South Africa's performance director.

Is it OK for celebrities to hog the best seats in the house?

By Jemima Lewis in The Telegraph

While my husband was chewing on the sofa cushions in an agony of doomed hope, I was busy spotting the celebrities at the Wimbledon final. “There’s Posh and Becks! Doctor Who! Ronnie Wood! One of the Middletons! And another one! And another one!” There were so many famous faces – from the Prime Minister to the merest boy band singer – it made Elton John’s annual White Tie and Tiara Ball look like a quiet night at the bingo.

Nor is this just a Wimbledon-related phenomenon. At any fun-packed event of national importance (or not), you’ll find celebrities hogging the best seats. At the Queen’s Jubilee pop concert, the royal box was so packed with stars that one newspaper provided a numbered chart to help us identify them all.

It does seem that the rich and famous find it mysteriously easy to come by tickets that other mortals couldn’t get if they removed their right arm and handed it over at the box office. Yet the strange thing is, most people don’t find this annoying. They accept the superior rights of the famous as meekly as previous generations deferred to the aristocracy.

A couple of years ago, my husband and I managed by circuitous means to get VIP tickets to a children’s musical, based on a hit TV show. It was a revelation.

We – the VIPs and our Very Important Toddlers – were given seats in the front rows, cordoned off from the proles who’d actually had to pay for their tickets. Before the show began, we were plied with cupcakes and party bags, and invited to bring our children on stage to meet the cast.

The Unimportant Persons at the back had to sit and watch for the best part of an hour, while their agitated toddlers demanded to know why they couldn’t have their photos taken with their favourite furry characters. Why indeed? “I’m sorry, darling: it’s because neither of your parents have ever presented breakfast TV.”

We can all learn from Gwyneth Paltrow

Terence Blacker in The Independent Friday, 9 September 2011





The scavengers who live off the scraps of celebrity scandal will be paying particular attention to the marriage of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin over the next few weeks. Not only are the couple blessed with talent, looks and success – provocation in itself – but she has just made a statement which has caused considerable outrage in some quarters.





Prepare to be shocked. "The more I live my life, the more I learn not to judge people for what they do," Gwyneth has said, quite openly and without apology. "I think we're all trying to do our best but life is complicated." As if that were not controversial enough, she added: "I know people I respect and admire and look up to who have had extra-marital affairs."



The response to these dangerous and reckless remarks has been predictable. There has been clammy speculation about the state of Paltrow's marriage. Seven years of married life, and suddenly she's relaxed about infidelity. What could be going on there? Then, naturally, there have been gusts of moral disapproval from the media. Famous people who express sane, reasonable views are instinctively mistrusted – we expect our celebrities to be out of touch and entertaining – and sneering reference has been made to Paltrow's "latest flirtation with controversy", not to mention her "superhuman compassion".



Paltrow is, though, making a worthwhile point. It is a very contemporary habit, the need to stand in judgment over every little muddle in which a public figure finds herself or himself and draw sorrowful conclusions from them, as a vicar does in a sermon. Scandal and misadventure have always been part of the media, but the busy drawing of moral lessons, the pious scolding from the sidelines, is something new. Disapproval is to the 21st century what primness was to the Victorians.



Both, to a large extent, are propelled by sexual frustration. Prurience, today as over a century ago, tends to disguise itself as moral concern – we need to know every excitingly shocking little detail, in order to condemn it. When a photograph was published recently of a uniformed American cop having sex with a woman on the hood of her car, it was published around the world – it was funny and played to some well-worn erotic fantasies. The story accompanying the picture, though, was the scandal, the abuse of power, the controversy. The randy cop was quickly fired.



It is worth remembering who is doing the judging on these occasions. Unlike the Victorians, today's wet-lipped moralists are not eminent politicians or churchmen. They are journalists.



Such is the hypocrisy when it comes to public misbehaviour that it is now taken for granted. When MPs were being pilloried for taking liberties with their allowances, the moral outrage was orchestrated by those who belonged to a profession in which, over the previous decades, the large-scale fiddling of expenses was a matter of competitive pride. Nor, for all their shrill moralising when a celebrity is caught in the wrong bed, are those who work in the media famous for their high standards of sobriety or sexual fidelity.



Here, perhaps, is the truth behind the new need to judge. Commentators scold, and readers allow themselves to be whipped into a state of excited disapproval, for reasons of guilt about their own less-than-perfect lives.



As Gwyneth Paltrow says, life can indeed be complicated. Taking the high moral ground is only worthwhile when something truly bad has been done. It is fine to be interested and excited by scandal, but why do we have to condemn quite so much? Since when have we all become so sanctimonious?



Few lives would bear the closest scrutiny day by day. Indeed, in a world more full of temptation and dodgy role-models than ever before, a bit of complication along the way may simply be a sign that you are living it to the full.

Detox for the soul

Famous? Done something you regret? Not sure how to salvage your reputation? Just check into rehab, says Zoe Williams

Wednesday January 31, 2007
The Guardian

Jade Goody has gone into rehab, admitted for "depression and stress". "Jade has struggled since leaving the [Big Brother] house a week ago and learning that she has become the most hated figure in Britain," a friend told the Sun. I wish I had a friend who formed such succinct sentences. It makes you realise how much your own friends blether on. Here's the sequence of events, as I understand it: Jade calls Shilpa Shetty "Shilpa Poppadom" and "Shilpa Fuckawallah" and tells her she should spend time in "the slums"; she exits house; defends own reputation; realises she's on a sticky wicket; "collapses" with stress; is "told by GP that he was going to refer her to the Priory", but seems to have entered said institution under her own steam; is "now being monitored by doctors, while they decide what treatment to give her".This is a funny old business, isn't it? The stress-induced collapse is always so fishy. It's such an unusual response, when most people, under stress, just absent-mindedly eat ginger biscuits. In cases of rehab for addiction, where a person has got themselves into a fix from which they must, for their own wellbeing, be rescued and rehabilitated, doctors pretty much know what to do. "A heroin addict, you say? Let's monitor her while we decide whether or not to take away her heroin . . . Oh, depressive? You watch her pacing up and down, I'll just go and Google Prozac, see if that might work."
I hate to call anyone a fraud. It seems such a petty accusation, set against existing tabloid charges of "racist", "bully" and "fat". Celebrity stress is not exactly the most serious of medical conditions. It doesn't even sound that medical. You might just as well refer yourself to a creche.
I do not, however, think this is self-indulgence on Jade's part. Rehab, in this instance, is being used as a one-stop redemption shop. It's a neat mea culpa previously used by Mel Gibson, after his antisemitic outburst last August, when he asked a police officer if he was a "fucking Jew" and shouted "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world". Mel, of course, wasn't the first star ever to enter rehab - indeed, going into rehab on the advice of a doctor, or a judge, with handcuffs on is as old as the Hollywood hills - but Gibson illustrates neatly the more modern variant of self-referral. It is a way of atoning that you can do really very fast, and of course, it's not that much of a hardship either. You were never medically referred, so when you get there, doctors don't know what to do with you except watch you. And a lot of these people are actors. They are used to being watched. Mel said, after his curious explosion, "I am not a bigot; hatred of any kind goes against my faith." But naturally, this was not sufficient - words have never been quite vast enough to convey atonement, which is why in the olden days they used to make up Songs of Atonement.
It seems to be particularly in misdemeanours of bigotry that only residential self-flagellation will do - to complete the prejudice triptych, along with Jade's racism and Mel's antisemitism, Isaiah Washington, star of Grey's Anatomy, rehabbed himself for his anti-gay remarks (he called one of his fellow actors a "faggot".) He said, "I regard this as a necessary step toward understanding why I did what I did and making sure it never happens again."
The only thing that comes close to (actually, thinking about it, probably surpasses) bigotry for hot social shame is sexual harassment, for which Mark Foley institutionalised himself last year. The Republican congressman, who sent sexually inappropriate emails and messages to teenage boys, explained: "I strongly believe that I am an alcoholic and have accepted the need for immediate treatment for alcoholism and other behavioural problems." It's rather American, isn't it, blaming alcohol for the fact that he couldn't stop badgering his staff for sex? In England, one might be tempted to respond, "Matey, we all like a drink, but I certainly don't employ 16-year-olds and then spend the day sexy-mailing them, even when I've had an absolute skinful."
So where did this come from, this self- disciplining (in the most literal sense)? I've seen the seeds of it in children; a friend of mine's kid will do a running commentary on his own naughtiness, finishing off with suggestions for an appropriate punishment, so that when he has really pushed it, and upset everyone, and ruined everybody's day, he'll shout, "Now I've been really bad! Oh, lock me in the car!" I don't, however, think Mel Gibson got the idea from my friend's naughty kid; on the contrary, it comes from the judicial system, in which - far more frequently in America, it must be said - stars are exempted from custodial sentencing by agreeing to a spell in Betty Ford.
There's a distinctly different tang to that kind of offence, though: Winona Ryder did rehab instead of prison for her shoplifting. She would never have had to redeem herself with us, her public, for such an offence, since a) nobody really minds a shoplifter - it feels like a nice, of-the-people crime, and b) she had already redeemed herself with her lovely Marc Jacobs court outfits.
Andy Dick (you know Andy Dick! You will find him in the not-very-famous-but-makes-lists-of-famous-people-with-addiction-problems-look-longer section of the library), Charlie Sheen, Nicole Richie . . . oh, there are tons of them. They were mainly addicted to painkillers. What this really rams home to me is how much better American painkillers are than ours.
The question remains: how much of an atonement is it when you admit yourself and you're not even really addicted to anything? What happens when you get to the Priory? Do they still go through your luggage and make you go to the group therapy, or are you allowed to just sit about looking glum? Doesn't that drive the proper addicts crazy? Is it like AA - do you still have to go round all your family and friends when you get out, apologising for the time you arrived at their wedding/ bar mitzvah [not that] drunk, [really not at all] whacked out on drugs, [no more] unreliable and flaky [than the next man]? And if it is rehab lite, must one go residential? Couldn't Jade have said sorry with a detox? Couldn't she just have given up wheat, then put out a press release? "I may be guilty of racism, but I've eschewed doughnuts in penitence and, by the by, beaten my bloat!" ·

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