Ever alive to the latest trends, today this column brings you the Air Glade-freshest news from the zeitgeist, and it’s this: whether or not a model-actress-whatever has a film, a fashion label or a lifestyle website to promote, she is still like you and me.
She has the same issues with her husband and marriage that you have with yours. OK, yes, she might have more money, help, mansions in Malibu, but apart from that, snap!
For the Ground Zero of the celebrity is that she is 100 per cent, be-your-best-friend relatable. We the people can therefore absolutely connect with her, and she is so like us when it comes to the important stuff that she even understands our feelings of jealousy and bitterness about her very existence.
And furthermore, if only we knew just how down with us she was, inside, then we would love her even more/hate her even less.
So it was clever of Victoria Beckham to major on compulsory self-deprecation when she took to the stage the other day with Vogue editor Alex Shulman.
‘I’m nice! Everyone thinks I’m going to be a cow,’ she said. ‘I understand it, actually. I think the same when I see the pictures.’
Posh went on to leave no cliche relating to the challenge of modern motherhood undisturbed: we had all the statutory references to juggling, spelling and times tables, late nights and early starts. She even remembered to give the important credit to the nanny. Indeed, Posh is just the same as any other working mum, just as J-Lo is still Jenny from the Block, and that is the thought we must hold on to.
Meanwhile, actress Isla Fisher is on the front of June’s Easy Living with the strapline ‘Family is everything, the rest is irrelevant’ and actress Michelle Williams is on the cover of AnOther magazine, proclaiming: ‘There’s no place like home.’
More... SIMON HEFFER: There's only one way for Dave to stub out Farage Farage: Sack Dave and I'll join the Tories! UKIP leader follows election triumph with dramatic coalition offer Daisies in her hair and skipping to La Mairie: Gorgeous Keira's boho chic Provence weddingAnd so, as night follows day, we move on to Gwyneth Paltrow, whose increasingly sage pronouncements will, I predict, be scrutinised by future generations as intently as scholars of Judaica studied the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Paltrow is an interesting case because she completely understands the power and charm of apparently negative publicity and appearing to tell it like it is.
So she must have whooped when, after being crowned Most Beautiful Woman In The World by People magazine, a publication called Star named her Hollywood’s Most Hated Celebrity, to balance things out.
In interviews, she carefully talks about regretting Botox rather than her blazing blonde beauty. She mentions her occasional nights of red wine and cigarettes rather than her days of quinoa and wheatgrass.
Gwyneth Paltrow confessed that her marriage to Coldplay singer Chris Martin has been through some 'terrible times'On chat show sofas, she talks about her hairy thighs and fails to mention the premiere with co-star Robert Downey Jr. And she talks with openness and candour about marriage, which is the cleverest shtick of all. Or is it a shtick? Hold on for a second.
Could we, for a moment, possibly entertain the notion that a famous female is beautiful, funny, clever, talented and honest?
Take her cover interview with the latest Glamour magazine. Gwyneth indeed looked honey-limbed in a white mini-dress and, more importantly, still scooped everyone else to win the coveted Most Grounded Celebrity Award.
‘It’s hard being married. You go through great times, you go through terrible times. We’re the same as any couple,’ she said.
Now, people make retching noises when she says these things but I don’t. She should be allowed to say that marriage is hard, even if you’re Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin.
Some may find it’s irritating when she says ‘I’ve learned more about myself by being married than anything else’ and that she drives her own kids to school! And she cooks! And is a grounded, homey person! But I find I can take any amount of this stuff.
For it was when she went on to talk about her parents Bruce and Blythe that she knocked it out of the park for me, as she came up with the solution to the mystery of the falling UK divorce rate, a trend that has been puzzling statisticians for a couple of years.
Out of the mouths of total babes, etc, but she suddenly started saying that the reason her parents never got divorced was because, well, this was yet another thing they couldn’t agree on. Which was about as relatable as you can get.
She said: ‘I asked my dad once, “How did you and Mum stay married for 33 years?” And he said, “Well, we never wanted to get divorced at the same time.” And I think that’s what happens. When two people throw in the towel at the same time, then you break up, but if one person’s saying, “Come on, we can do this,” you carry on.’
I’m sorry, Gwyneth-haters everywhere, but I genuinely appreciate her for keeping it so real and taking the trouble, during her hectic promo for Iron Man 3, to honour the existence of the many thousands of couples rather like her own parents: couples who find it hard to co-ordinate their emotional schedules, to synchronise their rages, let alone find the energy and will to sit down and list their grievances, prior to dropping the D-Bomb on their families.
I could never do the Gwyneth diet plan, which cuts out everything I eat and drink, but I admire her for being honest about the muddling along of her marriage, and her parents’ marriage, and so many marriages – and for daring to tell the truth about love and wedlock in middle age.
...and well done to brave Catherine, tooWhy the surprise that Catherine ‘picture of health’ Zeta-Jones is unwell?
You can’t conclude that an actress is in the pink simply because she looks stunning once a year on the red carpet. Turning up and looking a million dollars is her job.
Catherine Zeta-Jones recently announced that she had checked into a psychiatric clinic for treatment for bipolar depressionSo well done to CZJ, right, for being straight-forward about her bipolar condition, which will help ‘acceptance’ of mental illness for less starry sufferers.
Even those to whom the tooth, hair and talent fairies have been so generous have down days.
Keira Knightley wears shapeless Erin Pizzey dungarees as wimmin’s mag Spare Rib returns to newsagents’ shelves... A theatre troupe puts on a hilarious-sounding musical called Mis Les about grumpy lesbians ... just as hipsters are wearing new Joy Of Sex-style scratchy beards.
Are the Seventies, as fashionistas say, ‘having a moment?’ As so many creepy celebrities appear to have spent the decade assaulting females, I sincerely hope not.
Nostalgic for the Iron Lady? Do not despair. An unsung heroine is taking on the Establishment and bringing tax-dodging plutocrats to book.
She may have almost brained a cyclist with her car door by accident last week, and may sit on the other side of the House, but please be upstanding for Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, who is shaping up to be a true keeper of the flame.
