No Rock And Roll Fun

SPIN CYCLE: We're a little surprised at the MediaGuardian website for basically handing a page over to Max Clifford to talk up his client Kerry McFadden. He's claiming she could milk the win on I'm A Celeb for two million quid - unlikely, we'd have thought, given that the previous best performing jungle escapee Linda Barker appears to have got two sofas and a large bottle of Liebfraumilch from Currys. After all, Tony Blackburn's career has been "reinvigorated" by winning season one to the extent that last weekend he appeared in an advert for a free CD giveaway in the Daily Express dancing like an arthiritic guardsman with really bad piles; Phil Tuffnell won the last one, and we've only seen him on that godawful With A Little Help From My Friends and, yes, plugging free gifts from newspapers. Kerry, though, has something they didn't have: an already rubbish career of presenting programmes - nobody who saw it can forget the horror of Britain's Sexiest, where Kerry's chest gave the eyes scant solace as they tried to avoid being dissolved in the complete lack of chemistry between McFadden and Michael Greco; her other big vehicle elimidate was dropped so quickly by ITV the website never quite got finished.

Kerry does also have Max Clifford on her side, and how can she go wrong with the man who originally suggested she shouldn't do the series at all now advising her how to make the best of her success? He at least knows how to keep the paying clients happy: talking about her first signing (for one of the less well-known brands of pasta sauce) he says "When I mentioned Sacla she said she uses it all the time. I know she likes Sacla because she has used it when I have had dinner with her. She is natural and saucy and loves Italy." And, probably, it's really difficult to get the stains she makes out of your shirt. Clifford seems to be eyeing up America, too - presumably on the basis that if American TV will let Tyra Banks and Sharon Osbourne host programmes, there's much less requirement to be able to read an autocue and follow production notes on that side of the Atlantic.