The Trib

by David Kenny

  She is too embarrassed by the cut marks on her skin (the most recent episode was last November) to ever swim again.

  ‘I’m sorry to say this,’ says her mother, sitting beside her on the couch, holding her hand and looking searchingly into her daughter’s empty eyes, ‘but, sometimes, she’s like the living dead.’

  VALERIE SHANLEY

  Profile: Adele King (Twink)

  They’re behind you! The banks are behind you!

  Will there be a fairytale resolution to the latest unfortunate twist in the Panto Queen’s life?

  21 February 2010

  As the number of house repossessions rises, there are the ordinary folk out there finding some reassurance that the rich and famous are not immune from losing their homes either. Idrone House, a 300-year-old Georgian mansion in Knocklyon, South Dublin, fell under the public spotlight last week due to proceedings issued by Bank of Scotland (Ireland). The owner is the actor, comedian, veteran pantomime star, and recently turned ‘sugarcrafter’, Adele King.

  It’s not the first time Twink, as King is better known, has faced a repossession order. Back in 1993, she nearly lost her former home in Rathfarnham due to what she claimed were debts accrued from her dealings with jailed solicitor Elio Malocco. In 2006, the fifty-eight-year-old and her former husband David Agnew (forty-eight) had to pay a joint court judgement for €19,000 after being sued by a firm of builders for unpaid debts. One of the alterations to Idrone House in recent years is the creation of what King has described as her ‘sugarcraft loft for big little girls’. The room was originally her ex-husband’s office, and is now a confection in pink in every sense. This is where she now crafts her ‘edible art’. But she long ago gave up trying to ice over the cracks in her marriage.

  King’s personal as well as professional life have been played out on the public stage practically since she became a ‘Gaiety Kiddie’ at the age of five. But expletive-laden lines delivered to Agnew’s answering machine after their twenty-one-year marriage broke down in 2004 have typecast her in a new role – that of wronged, and very fearsome, wife – ever since.

  The tirade allegedly resulted from the failure of Mr Twink, or, as she dubbed him in that infamous message, the ‘fat, bald, middle-aged dickhead’, to attend the birthday party of their eldest daughter Chloe (20). The message spread like wildfire via email, and went around the world and back again as a YouTube hit.

  Undoubtedly she is what might politely be called ‘high octane’. Someone who has met her professionally over the years describes King as ‘draining. That said, I really like her. She’s our Cher, the kind of star you rarely see in this country. Once you can get beyond the fact that she always seems to be ‘on’, she’s a very bright, well-read, informed and talented woman.’

  She looks after herself, too. And you won’t find her eating any of that cake she ices – she hates the stuff. Sweets, likewise. One gym member recalls seeing the formidable panto queen in action.

  ‘She really doesn’t do things by halves and would go at the gym equipment like a woman possessed. Definitely not the sort of person you want to have a row with.’

  In interviews, she invariably comes across as a resolute self-promoter. Who doesn’t know that Twink wanted to be a doctor, can write and direct panto, do serious acting (The Vagina Monologues, Menopause the Musical), impersonates everyone she refers to, and ices cakes like a sculptor? Then there’s the collecting passion, from dolls’ houses to dogs. Among her many adored ‘mutts’ is one ‘Bertie Ahern’ who she found abandoned and tied to a lamppost under an election poster.

  Shouldn’t the star herself be deserving of some public sympathy just now?

  ‘I don’t think we like people who are that ‘full on’ in this country,’ says a former showbusiness colleague. ‘And some people will secretly be pleased she’s having financial problems. She doesn’t deserve that.’

  The woman herself doesn’t harbour delusions about the fickleness of public affection. ‘I know people think that I’m brash, arrogant, full of meself,’ she has said. ‘But that’s only one side of things, and most entertainers are terrible cowards underneath it all, terribly shy, insecure people.’

  She views motherhood as her most important role; she frequently refers in interviews to daughters Chloe and Naomi (15). Her relationship with her eldest, a successful singer in her own right, is like that of ‘an auld married couple’. King has said they were both very protective of the younger girl when news broke of Agnew’s relationship with clarinetist Ruth Hickey (32), and the impending arrival of their child. Naomi was ‘very crushed, terribly hurt, particularly by the news of the new arrival. And they both felt he did not understand that he wasn’t just cheating on me, he was cheating on them.’

  But she recently revealed that on the day their divorce was finalised, both she and Agnew exchanged sympathetic looks. ‘We both started crying, and he wrote me a lovely card.’

  Now her formidable focus is not only on writing her autobiography to raise funds, but building on that sugar-crafting business. Recent commissions included christening cakes for Gay Byrne’s grandchild, Harry, and Lucy Kennedy’s baby son, Jack. But the bank is closing in, assessing those debts on Idrone House, formerly valued at €2 million. And that’s an awful lot of sugar.

  Profile: Simon Cowell

  This Briton’s got talent ... for making a £100 million fortune.

  24 October 2010

  Supposedly the richest man in television, Simon Cowell is the Brit who’s got talent for raking it in. Worth £100 million (€113.7 million) at the last count, he’s arguably also the reason why a nation too broke to head to the pub instead tunes in every weekend for the diversion of seeing this latter-day Svengali of pop make another hapless wannabee redundant.

  Having just turned a well-preserved fifty-one, displaying an impressive chest rug curling over one of his trademark V-necks, and with a smile more menacing than genial, Cowell pretty much sums up the current popular music industry in one neatly-coiffed package.

  The object of The X Factor ‘is not to be mean to the losers, but to find a winner’ he has claimed, but Cowell is smart enough never to underestimate the public’s taste for that thinly-disguised meanness. Unlike excitable Louis, tearful Cheryl, or Dannii Minogue, he’s the judge all the contestants dread.

  After all, he has his bad-boy image to maintain. When invited onto BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs four years ago, he said, if stranded, his one luxury would be a mirror ‘because I’d miss me’. Former girlfriend Jackie St Clair likely wished him marooned indefinitely when he presented her with a life-sized oil portrait of himself for her fiftieth birthday last year.

  As an extremely eligible bachelor, he’s also known a string of ex’s. His engagement to St Clair’s replacement, Afghan make-up artist Mezhghan Hussainy, has reportedly just broken up, while his longest relationship – six years with Terri Seymour, the US Extra Extra presenter who became Cowell’s ex-ex in 2008 – ended after she finally admitted defeat in breaking his resolve never to marry or have kids. She was given $5 million cash and another $4.6 million to buy a Beverly Hills home.

  Inevitably, there has been speculation about Cowell’s sexual orientation, and that he might be gay or bisexual. He has refused to refute such rumours, sensibly telling one British newspaper that denial ‘would imply that it’s some sort of evil’ and given that there are ‘plenty of gay people working in television, so if I was, it wouldn’t be a problem saying I was’.

  Cowell is no working-class hero, despite having left school at sixteen. He attended public school, and his parents weren’t short of a few bob. But they insisted he use his pocket money for ice lollies when they went on luxury holidays, and instilled in the boy the need to make his own lolly as an adult. He’s made no secret of that devotion to money – ‘as much as I can get my hands on’. He famously told Rolling Stone magazine he regretted not being around in the 1960s to sign The Beatles – not for Lennon and McCartney’s timeless music, but for the ti
meless royalties.

  Another of his crimes against humanity was Robson and Jerome’s cover version of Unchained Melody, which blocked Common People by Pulp from the number one slot in 1995.

  Still, as the nation huddles around their tellies from now until the austerity Christmas ahead, it’s unsentimental Simon who will go on, like a murdered ballad on an endless loop, bringing a glow to the nation’s cheeks each weekend.

  Profile: Jeremy Clarkson

  Clarkson’s way with words has once again put him and the BBC in hot water.

  9 November 2008

  When the opening bars of The Allman Brothers’ 1973 hit ‘Jessica’ strike, it’s the signature tune for viewers to either crank up the volume, or change channels at turbo speed. Top Gear is one of the BBC’s most enduringly popular series, with motoring presenters James May, Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson a winning team. Of the three, it’s self-confessed petrol-head Clarkson who provokes mirth and moral indignation in equal measure.

  For some inveterate telly addicts, his all-round ‘ordinary bloke’ persona bears an uncanny resemblance to spoof TV presenter Alan Partridge. The Lexus-driving, failed chat show host Partridge is the comic creation of comedian Steve Coogan. On a guest appearance on Top Gear, Coogan declared his indebtedness to Clarkson as part inspiration for caricature, cringe-inducing I’m Alan Partridge sketches, such as the programme idea for Crash! Bang! Wallop! – a show about car crashes – or when Partridge quotes from the pages of Top Gear magazine to rubbish the make of car belonging to his wife’s lover.

  When motormouth Clarkson performs such stunts as testing the crumple potential of a pick-up truck by slamming it into an ancient horse chestnut, torching a detested caravan, or describing the Ferrari 355 as being like ‘a quail’s egg dipped in celery salt and served in Julia Robert’s belly button’, it’s easy to see why The Daily Mirror dubbed him ‘the dazzling hero of political incorrectness’ in 2000.

  The ‘dazzling’ bit turned out to be somewhat prescient, funnily enough, for Piers Morgan. The former Mirror editor was doused with a glass of water during an argument with Clarkson on a flight; then, at the British Press Awards, Morgan was sworn at and punched in the face by an enraged Clarkson, who claimed his privacy had been invaded. None of which seemed to do the presenter’s testosterone-fuelled image any harm. Even in the Channel 4 viewers’ poll listing the 100 Worst Britons We Love to Hate, Clarkson was placed a reasonably respectable sixty-sixth.

  To lighten the techno jargon of his supercharged pronouncements on all things motoring, Clarkson, on occasion, drives a metaphorical truck over the sensibilities of quite a sizeable group of innocent bystanders, which include women, the gay community, environmentalists, and Korean car manufacturers.

  And, in eerie coincidence with Partridge’s turn as Radio Norwich presenter, a ‘We Hate Jeremy Clarkson’ club was set up by residents of Norfolk after he said people living in the ‘flat and featureless’ area were backward and would point and exclaim, ‘Hey, look, it’s a car!’ whenever he drove past. Hyundai complained to the BBC about his comments at the Birmingham Motor Show after he said one of their designers had most likely ‘eaten a spaniel for lunch’. He agreed with an audience member that a car could be ‘a bit gay’, or as he put it, a bit ‘ginger beer’. ‘Eco-mentalists’ as he calls them, are just a bunch of ‘old trade-unionists and CND lesbians’.

  His concern about the tough lot of lorry drivers on last week’s Top Gear has added more fuel to the general debate about editorial standards at the BBC. ‘Change gear, change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, murder. That’s a lot of effort in a day,’ exclaimed Clarkson in one scene. There is no doubt that Clarkson delights in winding people up, particularly what he calls ‘lefties’, ‘Guardianistas’, and ‘those of a sandal persuasion’.

  So is he just having a laugh? Is he wittily exposing extremes of political correctness? Or is Clarkson a prime example of the arrogant pub bore, an ethnocentric chauvinist embodying the worst aspects of a certain English stereotype, a man accused by more than just Korean car-company executives as being ‘bigoted and racist’?

  Clarkson attended Repton, one of Britain’s elite public schools. His working-class parents – teacher mother and travelling salesman father – are said to have paid for the fees through the success of their soft toys’ business. Eventually expelled for ‘making a nuisance of himself’, the teenage Clarkson nonetheless fitted the profile as he played the role of a public schoolboy in a radio adaptation of the Jennings novels.

  His career in journalism revved off on a local paper in his native Yorkshire. Writing has continued to be a major source of income, with a stint on The Sun, and a regular column in The Sunday Times to this day. But his passion for motoring, combined with a way with words and childlike enthusiasm, made him a natural as presenter of Top Gear.

  Last week saw two forced resignations and a suspension at the BBC over the offence caused during a prank call [Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand’s offensive phone call to Andrew ‘Manuel’ Sachs]. Clarkson is now part of the general debate about editorial standards with regard to maverick presenters, free speech and comedy’s right to breach boundaries. The corporation has responded to the latest criticism by asserting that most Top Gear viewers know exactly what to expect from Clarkson and that he was ‘comically exaggerating and making ridiculous an unfair urban myth about lorry drivers’.

  So that’s sorted, then, for anyone troubled over suitable targets for humorous focus at the Beeb: respected seventy-eight-year-old actor = offensive; murdered prostitutes = fair comment. In the past, Clarkson has dismissed as nonsense any perceived influence on what he says: ‘I enjoy this back and forth, it makes the world go round. But it is just opinion.’

  At this stage, the forty-eight-year-old anti-eco, pro-hunting, Countryside-Alliance-supporting Clarkson is unlikely to undergo a socially liberal conversion anytime soon. Especially, as he so unreservedly exclaims: ‘God, I love being middle-class!’ An incurable road hog too, he won’t even accept the need for something as innocuous as a bus lane: ‘Why do poor people have to get to places quicker than me?’

  Crash! Bang! Wallop! it is then ... on bags or tee-shirts, owning property abroad, or going on spending sprees in New York. And that identity is priceless.

  KEN SWEENEY

  Profile: George Lee

  Merry Lee on high. It’s all gone horribly right for George, the man ‘who told us so’.

  6 July 2008

  Last week, the BBC’s former economics editor, Evan Davis, claimed that UK journalists could have done more to warn the public about the credit crunch that triggered Britain’s current housing price crash and general financial turmoil.

  ‘I do ask whether we did our best to warn people of impending problems during the upswing of the [economic] cycle,’ Davis said at a radio festival in Glasgow.

  Such a question could never apply to RTÉ’s George Lee, the station’s economics editor, who has been predicting an economic Armageddon twice nightly on the TV news for as long as anyone can remember. Often accused of turning glum into a fine art, his nearest TV equivalent is Dad’s Army’s Private Frazer who was always howling ‘We’re doomed, I tell you. Doomed,’ at Captain Mainwaring in the BBC comedy.

  His pessimism did not go unnoticed. ‘George Lee could tell you that you’d just scooped the Lotto jackpot and still leave you wondering how you were going to pay your mortgage,’ one commentator wrote at the height of the boom. ‘Why can’t he enjoy the good times like everybody else?’ His tendency to see clouds where others see silver linings has brought him to the attention of political satirists as well. Today FM’s Gift Grub and 2FM’s Nob Nation have both milked great humour from Lee’s instinctive glumness.

  But it seems Lee was right all along. Educated at Coláiste Eanna in Dublin, he graduated from UCD before getting a scholarship to study for an MSc at the London School of Economics. He then joined the Central Bank, from which he moved to the ESB as a
treasury economist. While there he started writing an economics column for the fledgling Sunday Business Post. Bitten by the bug, he jumped when offered a chance to join the newspaper full time, even though it meant taking a 40 per cent pay cut. He is the first to concede the transition was difficult. ‘I can put my hand on my heart and say that the communications learning curve was one of the hardest things I have ever done in terms of learning,’ he has said. ‘I had to change from writing about economics for people who understood economics to writing about economics for people who really did not care a hoot, but you had to interest them in it because it was important to them.’

  When the newspaper ran into rocky times, Lee left for a job with Riada Stockbrokers, but journalism beckoned him back when RTÉ offered him a job on its Marketplace programme in 1991. This turned out to be another challenge. ‘TV was even harder than print because you have people’s attention for a mere fifteen minutes, or one minute and forty-five seconds. Every week I had to present three minutes of the history of the Irish economy – really difficult for somebody like me.’ After three seasons on Marketplace, Lee moved to the newsroom, and in the years that followed he was a regular fixture on RTÉ’s nightly news. He became a household name in 1998 when a story he worked on sparked one of the country’s most high-profile libel trials.