Sunday, November 22, 2009

Calling your name: Marilyn reappears

There's a snarky piece in the News of the World this week. The paper has caught up with Marilyn, seemingly just to point and laugh:

HE urged us to Feed The World - but 25 years after Band Aid, Eighties star Marilyn seems only to have fed his FACE.

For the slim, 10st gender bender who recorded Do They Know It's Christmas with Bob Geldof and a host of other pop idols has ballooned to over 17 STONE.

Gone are the blond locks and girly make-up along with the millionaire lifestyle. Bloated Marilyn, 46, is now just a shambling, jobless self-confessed drug addict who lives with his MUM in an ex-council semi.

I'm a little confused about why the detail of "ex-council semi" is thrown in there - doesn't the Murdoch press love the idea of people buying their council houses? Wasn't that aspirational?

Still, I'm sure James Murdoch will be delighted to read one of the papers he runs laughing at someone for having to rely on their parent's generosity.

Marilyn talks to the paper, but doesn't have much to offer. He's been on the drucks, but we all knew that when his career was crashing down in fame. Most of the people on Band Aid were a bit cynical - but that's hardly a surprise. Status Quo took drugs to the recording - but even Status Quo trot that anecdote out.

It's all a bit of a shame. But, on the plus side, it might be the first time anyone has written an article about Marilyn without suggesting he was little more than a Boy George side-project.

There is another plus - to pad the piece out, there's a 'where are they now, the other people who were on the Band Aid' piece which might be the only time the national press has worried about 'what is Mark Unpronounceablename from Big Country up to these days'?

It's a shame about how wrong it went for Marilyn, whose career never quite worked out. Mainly, because while Boy George was happy to keep his act edging close to the pantomimic, Marilyn never attempted to recast his sexuality as theatrics. The world wasn't really ready.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does anyone think that perhaps the reason that there are so many ridiculous, famous for 30 seconds, celebrities created and destroyed by tabloids for tabloid readers these days is purely so that in 25 years they can have even more insulting articles like this. A rival paper should print a "where are they now" about News of the World reporters. They could remind the readers of shameful articles published in the rag and confront the former staff about the way in which they insulted, disrupted and destroyed peoples' lives with their despicable coverage of various stories.

Olive said...

Presumably the NOTW hack researched the "Where are they now" bit of the article rather than, oh, say, just cobbling it together from Wikipedia. I know how much News International hate people lifting stuff from the internet.

jd said...

You could be right on the Wikipedia part. Last name in the NOTW piece is Linda Ronstadt who I cannot remember from Band Aid but there she is at the top of the Band Aid members list on Wikipedia. Strangely she is not on the list on Bob Geldof's site which I suspect is a bit more reliable.

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