Top ten celebrity internet searches of 20121
Kim Kardashian
Justin Bieber
Miley Cyrus
Rihanna
Lindsay Lohan
Katy Perry
Selena Gomez
Jennifer Aniston
Nicki Minaj
Taylor Swift
These ten people are basically my bread and butter.
In my time as a showbiz reporter, the biggest change I’ve seen is just how much we rely on these internet searches. The web might have started out as a geek’s playground in the nineties, but it’s now entirely mainstream – and it’s my biggest outlet. I write stories that go up on it, I research celebs that I’m interviewing with it and I buy things from ASOS through it when I’ve got an event to attend. Like it is for many people, the internet is part of my job’s daily routine.
In my line of work, though, the internet has achieved a fairly unique breakthrough: it has given you more power. You’re my boss. True, someone needs to write features about these stars in the first place, but once they’re online, it’s up to you who you search for. Just look at the first two names for proof. Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber became global brands purely through the power of the internet; fans latched on to their appeal way before us in the press. I’m not sure the people watching grainy footage of Kim getting it on with her boyfriend were the same as those watching a 12-year-old Justin singing R’n’B on YouTube, but the principle is the same. The media can still do a lot to fuel a showbiz fire, but more now than ever, what’s hot is often out of our hands. With a largely free internet at our fingertips, the celebrity world is more accessible than ever before.
So after I’ve done my bit – writing and researching articles, interviewing celebrities, attending junkets – it’s over to you. Who you spend your time looking up determines who we spend our time focusing on. If you resent that eminent scientists and liberal thinkers are missing from the list, start searching for a few and maybe we’ll have to take notice. But that’s the great thing about modern media: it’s no longer so full of snobby journalists hiding out in their ivory towers, bleating about what they fancy and taking no notice of their audience. The internet’s too transparent for that. These days, we’re all in this showbiz world together.
And what a world it is …
Sunday 12 February 2012. It’s the night of the BAFTA Film Awards ceremony and I’m bloody freezing.
We’re in the heart of what we call the ‘season’ – those few months during which all the key awards ceremonies seem to take place, everything from the Brits to the Oscars, the BAFTAs and the Elle Style Awards. The trouble with the ‘season’ is that it’s always during the winter. Fine, maybe, for the celebs who party until the small hours in the heated surroundings of the Royal Opera House or the O2, but for us reporters standing outside on the red carpet waiting for them to talk into our microphones, the setting is just a few degrees away from being positively arctic.
I watch my breath blossom into steam in the icy air and crack open yet another hand-warmer pad, tucking it discreetly into the back of my knickers so that it warms the small of my back. Bliss. There’s the first lesson from the showbiz world for you: underneath the opulence there’s always something significantly more unglamorous.
I’m huddled behind a rope with a group of fellow reporters, all women in evening dresses as per the rules of such an upmarket event. Even at an occasion like the BAFTAs, it seems odd to see people so smartly dressed packed into a small space like animals. We’d probably look more at home in the orange suits worn by caged prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Still, we all courteously compliment each other on our outfits, despite recognising that it’s difficult to look fabulous when you’re shaking harder than a nervous X Factor contestant.
An ice-cold wind blows up this back street of London’s Covent Garden area, a road that has been transformed into something truly special, with huge spotlights, advertising banners and that all-important crimson flooring. On one side of the carpet are scores of reporters; on the other are crowds of fans. Every reporter is required to wear an all-important accreditation around our necks and be in position about an hour before the famous people actually start turning up. We’ve now been here about 55 minutes. The tension is palpable. So is the frost forming at the end of my nose.
… And then it begins, not the celebrity procession, but an unstoppable thought growing in my brain. Every time I have to cover one of these events, it’s always the same. I can’t help it. I’m gritting my teeth; it’s still there, a loud scream in my head, shouting out in capital letters as I check my watch for the millionth time:
‘I BLOODY HATE THIS JOB!’
The bubbly girl huddled next to me is someone I’ve only seen reporting from the red carpets for the last few months; she smiles at me and giggles. Newbies – they’re the only ones that look happy.
‘You okay?’ she asks.
‘Hmmmmm,’ I mumble back.
On the outside I smile back at her. Inside I’m crying. She’ll understand one day.
Then, suddenly, a roar of excitement erupts from down the line. I crank my head around to see what’s happening. Someone is arriving! I rise up from my frozen slouch, microphone at the ready. The carpet is finally starting to fill, a stream of invited guests, not all famous, but each lucky enough to have a ticket to the British movie world’s most important night. The screams in the distance suggest a big star has stepped out of their limousine and is beginning the long walk past the crowds. Around me I hear mumbled suggestions as to who it could be:
‘Is it Clooney?’
‘Please let it be Michael Fassbender!’
‘Knowing our luck it’ll be Peter Andre.’
The shouting is getting louder, deafening almost. Camera flashes spark out from the crowds. Okay, Holls, I tell myself, here we go. It’s time to snap out of the black mood. Women with clipboards are scurrying about at the fence in front of me, talking into headsets and suddenly pointing in my direction. So much action after so much nothing. I shift the hand-warmer pad on my back slightly and take a deep breath. Then someone says …
‘Brad, this is Holly Forrest.’
In the blink of an eye, Brad Pitt is standing in front of me. Shit! Brad ruddy Pitt! He’s smirking, rubbing his hands together to keep warm and looking at me expectantly. The PR girl who’s introduced him stands silently to his side. After an hour of twiddling my thumbs, I have about half-a-second to crank into gear.
‘Hi,’ I say. Except I don’t. What I actually say is more like ‘huh’. My mouth has become so frozen from the cold that my face is more like a ventriloquist’s than a professional journalist.
‘Oh. Hi, Holly. Are you okay?’
‘Yersh, fine.’
Brad Pitt is looking at me weirdly. In an attempt to regain feeling in my lips I’m pouting like a Page 3 girl, and it’s clearly got him a little worried.
‘We’ve met before, right?’
Suddenly, my face flushes. I can feel warmth in my skin again. In fact, I’m blushing. Well, that’s certainly one way of getting my facial features back into working order, I think – get a major Hollywood heart-throb