Now
that Margaret Hilda Roberts has been safely consigned to meet her maker (I hope
He’s ready) we can finally get back to reading about the people who really
matter. I’m thinking, for example, of that
ever-fascinating, multi-talented and peripatetic icon of screen, kitchen and
runway, Gwyneth Paltrow.
Poor
GP has had to play second fiddle to Margaret of late. But fans needn’t worry. She’s back in the tabloids, and on
television, and raring to go, with all kinds of exciting new adventures lined
up for our entertainment and enlightenment.
Today’s
Daily
Mail reports no less than four new GP sightings.
The
first is actually a non-sighting, namely that GP failed to show up at the London premiere of Iron
Man 3, in which she appears, in a supporting role, with Robert Downey Jr.
“Bad
form,” was my first reaction. The poor
fellow had to take his wife instead.
But
the Mail
soon helpfully explains her absence.
GP
has been spotted in New York
on the night in question, attending an event called the Blue Book Ball, an
annual see-and-be-seen shindig sponsored by Tiffany’s. She certainly put on a show, the Mail
disclosed, looking as svelte as ever in a “silky, dusty blue dress which clings
to her figure in all the right places”.
For
what it’s worth, I thought it was smashing, too.
A
few column inches later, GP pops up again, this time to report that her
husband, Chris Martin, who heads up a pop group called Coldplay, can’t
cook. Worse, it seems that Chris is a positive
menace in the kitchen. “He has only
cooked twice, and both times the fire brigade came,” GP has revealed to a
television host.
“Heaven
forfend!” I couldn’t stop myself exclaiming.
Shocking
as news of Rich’s culinary incompetence undoubtedly may be, it’s followed by even
worse. The Star newspaper in America has published a poll of the most hated
star in Hollywood,
and GP appears at the top of the list.
Her offence, apparently, is “irritating people with her self-satisfied
attitude and lifestyle blog”.
Now
that’s taking things a bit too far, I say.
If a film star can’t be self-satisfied, then who can be? But you know what they say: there’s no such
thing as bad publicity.
Meanwhile,
the Daily
Mirror discloses that GP’s children, Apple and Moses, often go on road
trips with Dad and bring him his tea during performance breaks. “They think it’s pretty fabulous,” GP gushes.
And
so it must be, though I must admit to being a little surprised that tea is the
refreshment of choice for a travelling rock group. It’s hard to imagine Mick Jagger flouncing
off stage for a cuppa.
There’s
no end to the busyness – and business – of GP.
She’s a one-woman diversified industrial conglomerate. Between acting, attending balls, pestering
the fire brigade, and packing the kids off with satchels filled with PG Tips, she’s
found time to write a cookery book called It’s All Good.
It’s
apparently a ground-breaking – or stomach-churning – volume that promotes what
we ought to eat, or, more to the point, what we ought not to eat, in order to look
as healthy and beautiful as GP. The
proscribed ingredients listed include coffee, alcohol, dairy produce, chicken
eggs, sugar, shellfish, deepwater fish, potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, corn,
wheat, meat, soy, and all processed foods.
I’m
not sure how many books she’s likely to sell by undermining the essential
British diet. Most of the people I know,
by following GP’s health-giving regime, would actually starve to death. To be fair, though, she hasn’t banned baked
beans. Apple and Moses may appear as a
recipe in the next volume, I’m told.
As
if the poor girl hasn’t got enough on her plate, pardon the pun, I now read
that she’s reignited her long-standing feud with Madonna. GP is thinking about tweeting her former
friend to assert the superiority of the GP physique. “My abs are better … I’ll take a Polaroid and
text them to her.”
Madonna
will be livid, is my guess. I wouldn’t
want to be in GP’s designer shoes when the old slapper reads that.
GP
is still invariably described as an actress, although – bit parts in Iron
Man movies aside – she doesn’t seem to have much time for acting these
days. Can anyone remember the last film in
which she had top billing? I can’t,
though I may well have missed it.
The
last one I came across, on television the other night, was Shallow Hal, an attempted
comedy with a profound social message. GP
spends much of the film in an enormous fat suit, as a pathetic lard-tub (no
type-casting here) who’s ardently courted by Jack Black, who’s been mesmerized
into believing that she looks like the real Gwyneth Paltrow.
Anyone
who sits through more than 10 minutes of Shallow Hal – or any other movie
starring Jack Black, for that matter – risks being called a pathetic lard-tub. But that’s just a personal opinion.
She
also fetched up the other night in Shakespeare in Love, in which she
disguises herself as a boy in order to get a part in Romeo and Juliet. When Will finds out, he’s besotted, even
after discovering out that she’s engaged to a dangerous madman and has a flat
chest. I have to say her legs aren’t
bad, though.
My
bet is that the GP Show, whatever form it takes, will run and run, at least
until her publicist dies from exhaustion.
I’d
like to know who it is. He – or more
likely she – is obviously some kind of mad genius – though what that says about
the audience for this stuff may not bear thinking about.
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