To the internet, with alacrity, where Lost in Showbiz is alerted that Beyoncé has uploaded footage of her flossing her teeth with her daughter, Blue Ivy. Finally, a chance to inspect the oral hygiene regimes of other people’s children without being put on some kind of register. Until it transpires that – well – the word “video” might be pushing it, to be quite honest. A more technologically accurate description of the format would be “a still photo that wobbles back and forth a bit” to a soundtrack of somebody, could be either one of them, saying the word “flossing”, repeatedly.
And is that Jay Z rapping some other words in the background? It is hard to be certain of any such detail, what with the whole affair lasting a total of four seconds, and having been uploaded to Instagram sideways. Still, this is documentary footage of a celebrity and their progeny and, as such, entertainment websites have leapt to report it, knowing that the people will come. The people being, er, Lost in Showbiz, helplessly and shamefully addicted as it is to this sort of guff. But what an abundant week indeed it has been for this sort of guff.
First there was the new James Corden chatshow in America, on which David Beckham revealed that his son Brooklyn, now 16 and in the audience, had already been dating girls for a few years. While the boy watched through his fingers, presumably praying for the ground beneath the television studio to open up and consume him, his father went on to announce that, aged 14, Brooklyn had asked if he could take a girl out for a Valentine’s Day dinner. His mother, Victoria, had said yes, but only on the grounds that David take them to the restaurant and station himself at a nearby table, functioning as some kind of remote-control chaperone. Which he did. Because obviously, nothing is going to make a night in a restaurant pass more uneventfully than the presence of David Beckham, sitting alone and staring at children.
Then there was the Chanel fashion show in New York attended by Lily-Rose Depp, daughter of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis. Lily-Rose is now 15, and posed for photos in her Chanel outfit looking very nearly French and very nearly famous. Or like “a mega mini person,” as the Daily Mail described her, which is certainly another way of putting it. Lily-Rose will soon be seen starring in her father’s film Yoga Hosers, apparently, thereby giving her ample opportunity to turn into a mega maxi person before the year is out.
This party also contained the daughters of Bono, Phil Collins, Sean Penn and Don Johnson, all young women at various stages of stardom themselves. Much as Lost in Showbiz is guiltily hooked on ogling such mega mini persons, it is surely time to ask some serious questions about the growing phenomenon of inherited fame, and how it limits social mobility. Didn’t famous people used to be driven by the fact they came from nothing and yearned to make it the hell out of dodge?
Jay Z started his career dealing crack in the Brooklyn ghetto before he broke through as a musician. Bono’s family struggled under religious segregation in Ireland. Depp grew up in and out of Kentucky motels, scared, learning the meaning of hard work by sitting up with his waitress mother to count her tips. While we do not wish these experiences on anyone, it does not take a huge stretch to imagine the drive and passion they created in these young men, who hungered for more. Will all celebrities from now on be second- or third-generation famous, as if a celebrity wing of Ukip were putting a cap on new immigrants to the sphere? If Labour wins the election, might it consider scrapping its mansion tax plans and generating the same revenue by putting an inheritance tax on celebrity itself?
Something has to be done to stop the next generation of famouses from turning out to be a bit, you know, naff – coming, as they all do, from childhoods where the only true experience of hunger is when Karl Lagerfeld hovers into view at a party, hissing at you to put down the sushi platter in case you get fat.
