Don't put your daughter on the stage
So TV actress Jamie Lynn Spears, younger sister of Britney, has announced she's pregnant at the age of 16.
Dealing with this challenging piece of news in the privacy of OK magazine, Jamie and her mother advised American teens not to follow in her footsteps.
Coming in the same year that has seen her eldest daughter turn from a figure of fun to a walking tragedy must make her mother, Lynne, a former teacher, wonder it might have been better if neither of her daughters had been put on the show business track quite so young.
Child stars have gone off the rails since the days of the silent movies but they used to wait until their careers were fading before they did it. How, for instance, stage school drop-out Amy Winehouse finds time in her chart-topping day to wander round the all night chemists in her underwear or help police with their enquiries is a mystery.
You do wonder whether there'll come a time when it'll actually be illegal to put your daughter (or son) on the stage.
- More from David Hepworth.
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Stage school brats
Is the ratio of stage school brats who go off the rails considerably larger than that of normal kids? I suspect not.
And isn't Britney's family from the trailer trash milieu where 16 is considered rather long in the tooth to be making one's debut in the maternity ward?
The thing I don't get is why on earth most kids want to be "famous". Being famous seems like a right pain in the arse to me.
Isn't this
just a continuation of Mr. Hepworth's earlier comments on the Tori blog?
Everyone's famous in 2007. Therefore, why start at 21; why not start at 21 months? I grew up in Thatcher's 'Me me me, I'm all right Jack, sod the rest of you.' 80's, which kickstarted the conspicuous consumerism and wish to be seen that is now a daily part of our lives, want it or not.
Technology is another factor; I can post this comment and hey, the luminaries at Word ACTUALLY REPLY, which means if I wanted to, my Friday night meet with the boys in the pub can be the perfect excuse to brag about how I talked to David and Fraser and Mark. Reality TV, YouTube, YouPorn, OK, Hello, look at us etc. etc.
As ever, some of this is good, some of this is bad, some of this makes us want to weep, and perhaps the worst of all possible results is that 2008's Bonnie Langford's won't have a dream of strutting their stuff on stage because it's FUN, but because they can then say that they had; no other reason than that.
It's the cult of personality gone mad and very difficult to ignore because it's ever-present. Will there be a reaction to it?
Culture often sweeps away its detritus at opportune moments, and unfortunately some of the good boys and girls suffer as a result. Where there really is talent (Winehouse being a classic example), it's all the sadder. I can quite readily see her on daytime TV in a couple of years, sanguine and humble and banging on about how she blew her chance for prolonged success. Unfortunately for us, there'll be a new case of 'Look at me' along any minute.
this seems appropriate
right about now...
BRITNEY AS ROLE MODLE TO YOUNGER SISTER
Clearly using protection isn't an issue in the Spears family. 16's old enough physically I guess, but most people would perhaps agree that it's not quite old enough mentally. Fabulous quote from the Spears Mum about her youngest being under a curfew- pity she wasn't under lock and key also.
It seems to me that the only was we're going to rid ourselves of these vaccous, insipid, whinging, time taking no marks is to deny them the oxygen of publicity they desperately crave.
So, Word, stop featuring them, stop allowing these talentless wasters to be discussed on these very boards, deny them thought space in your podcasts and let them fester in somebody else's fevered, wasted imagination.
And while I'm at it, someone please take Amy Winehouse away into a small room with all the fags and water she needs and a therapsit- and don't let her our unitl she's either 30, or quiet. I get so fucked off that she takes up space in my head, despite my utter contempt for her and the way she treats herself. Her having space in my head means that something else, possibly a useful telehone number, or the date of a friend's birthday, has been turfed out by her bullshit, cliched plastic rock star antics. I read the papers and scan webistes and hear conversation at work- how come I know who david "wretched" guest is, he's a fuckwit who looks like a thunderbird puppet- and theses fuckers take up valuable brain space uninvited.
That's it.
I'm off to a shack in the highlands where I can nurse my vitriol and spite for the wanky state of modern celebrity.
Calm down, calm down
It's quite easy to avoid all that celebrity rubbish. Just ignore it. There are whole swathes of modern popular culture that are simply not on my radar: reality shows, soap operas, footballers wives, Graham Norton, Russel Brand. (My wife watches that dancing programme and the only people I've ever heard of on it are the cricketers and John Barnes.) This stuff's for morons. Just ignore it and it won't bug you. (I think you'll find you can buy Heat magazine in the Highlands too. At least you could when I was on Harris last summer. Didn't buy it though, obviously.)
Fair enough, but there's a
Fair enough, but there's a list there of all those things that you say are not on your radar, but you still have to give them brain space. It's not right.
Perhaps the highlands isn't far away enough...
Lily too
Lily Allen's got one on the way too apparently, how old is she?