Readers may recall that, earlier this year, Lost in Showbiz reported it had come to a new accommodation with the celebrity press. No more would it sneer at it, nor dismiss the act of reading it as akin to immersing your brain in a massive vat of warm diarrhoea. No, world events in 2016 had caused Lost in Showbiz to start looking at the celebrity press with a kind and welcoming eye, as balm for the brain: every self-evidently fabricated story about the romantic vacillations of Jennifer Aniston, every titbit about people it has never heard of from the cast of Geordie Shore, would be a beautiful respite from the horror of daily life.
Six months on, things are even worse and, LiS regrets to inform you, the celebrity press is no longer doing the trick. It has tried to luxuriate cravenly in Closer magazine’s exclusive about Kerry Katona’s interest in availing herself of something called “minky tightening” – “a nonsurgical procedure using plastic balls, rejuvenating cream and a vacuum to strengthen the pelvic floor and tighten the vagina”. It has turned the pages of the same magazine to discover that Closer has also canvassed the opinions of Vanessa Feltz and someone who presents the weekend breakfast show on Magic Radio on the debate around the cryonic freezing of a 14-year-old girl with cancer and cried. Bring it on, for who wasn’t struck during the whole cryogenics case by the overpowering desire to know what Vanessa Feltz and the presenter of Magic Radio’s Weekend Breakfast think about it?
But it’s no good. Not even news of Katie Price’s sixth volume of autobiography can fully still the disquiet in LiS’s mind. It lies awake at night, worrying itself sick about the future. Its mind races with one imponderable question after another. It feels sure you are the same and that, for you too, one difficult question towers above all others: what’s going on with the line up at Donald Trump’s inauguration celebration?
It has thus far proved quite the saga. First, Vince Neil announced he was playing, which LiS thought was a truly inspired booking. You may recall that Barack Obama’s inaugural celebration featured Stevie Wonder, U2, Mary J Blige, Bruce Springsteen and the veteran soul singer Bettye LaVette performing Sam Cooke’s 1964 civil rights anthem A Change is Gonna Come. What better way to announce that there is a new, brighter mood abroad in the US than by getting the delectable former Mötley Crüe frontman – a man once accused of assaulting a sex worker at a legal brothel in Nevada by grabbing her by the throat and throwing her against a wall – centre stage at the Lincoln Memorial, belting out some of those Mötley classics? Perhaps Slice of Your Pie – “schoolgirl studied up well on hoochie-coochie, lick lips, kitten with a whip so undress me” – or indeed the fabulous All in the Name Of: “She’s only fifteen, she’s the reason I can’t sleep, you say illegal – I say legal’s never been my scene.”
But alas, it was not to be: Neil subsequently claimed that he had been “uninvited”. Next, Trump transition team executive Anthony Scaramucci – a man whose name surely begs the question, “will he do the fandango?” – announced that Sir Elton John would be performing, in tribute to the new administration’s fantastic record on LGBT rights. For the record, that includes Trump’s longstanding personal opposition to same-sex marriage; vice-president Mike Pence’s attempts to divert federal HIV/Aids funds to “gay conversion therapy”; and the president-elect’s choice for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, whom the Huffington Post recently profiled with the headline: Pick Any LGTBQ Rights Issue – Jeff Sessions Has Voted Against It.
For reasons that are completely beyond LiS, Elton John’s spokeswoman quickly announced that he would not be performing, but who can blame Scaramucci for thinking he might? After all, throughout the presidential race, pop’s Rocket Man kept dropping coy hints, precisely the kind of things that might lead anyone to believe he was 100% behind the Trump campaign: “I fear for the world … [if] Donald Trump gets to be president”; “we need a humanitarian in the White House, not a barbarian”; “I’m not a Republican in a million years – why doesn’t he ask Ted fucking Nugent? Or one of those fucking country singers?” In consolation to Scaramucci, LiS can only say: well, that’s rock stars for you – unpredictable creatures of whim and caprice.
But LiS has a message for Trump, and that message is: don’t despair! Don’t waste your time trying to book Hollywood stars and music-biz liberals: they are probably all a bit “sadface emoticon” about the wave of virulent neo-Nazism that appears to have swept America in the wake of your victory with all the sieg heiling and everything. You don’t need those guys! Remember: Brexit Britain is your friend! And we have got talent to spare! Yes, the government may have blocked your idea to have Nigel Farage appointed as UK ambassador to the US, but LiS has another, equally important role for him in mind: inaugural celebration talent scout, bringing you the very best of British entertainment to make that big day go with a swing.
Remember that fantastic line-up assembled for the sadly cancelled pro-Brexit gig BPop live? Who could forget it? Three quarters of Bucks Fizz, sometime Living in a Box frontman Kenny Thomas and “world leading Elvis Presley tribute and impersonator” Gordon Hendricks! That’s the kind of 3,000 megawatt starpower old Nigel can pull in! Problem solved!
And LiS can happily throw a few suggestions into the pot. First off: who needs Elton John when Atomic Kitten are back and touring with Kerry Katona in the line up? LiS reckons you can get them if the price is right: after all, minky tightening doesn’t pay for itself. Next: former Another Level star Dane Bowers. Of course, he’s pretty busy at the moment, DJing at Dubai’s sophisticated-sounding British pub-themed venue The Black Lion (“the food is amazing – even down to a homemade sausage in batter and chips”), but he is surely persuadable. If you are after something more contemporary than the world’s leading Elvis Presley tribute and impersonator, what about Robbie Glenn, the UK’s No 1 Olly Murs tribute, perhaps performing his amazing-sounding Murs to Mars show, in which he transforms himself into not just the X Factor “cheeky chappie”, but the Uptown Funk hitmaker too! That’s TWO tributes for the price of ONE!
Come on, Donald: nil desperandum! Atomic Kitten, Dane Bowers, three quarters of Bucks Fizz, sometime Living in a Box frontman Kenny Thomas and Robbie Glenn the UK’s No 1 Olly Murs tribute: that’s what Lost in Showbiz calls a star-studded presidential inauguration celebration, a bill fit to prepare America to be made great again.
