Celeb Scandals

This week everyone is still talking about celebrity Big Brother and the racist bullying scandal involving Jade Goody, Jo O’Meara and Danielle Lloyd. You can play bingo online here at Mecca and read all about celebrity scandals past and present right here with our fabulous weekly celebrity column…

With all the furore surrounding Celebrity Big Brother and Jade Goody, it’s little wonder that many – including the reality TV star herself – are questioning the future of Jade’s career. At this point things don’t look too good for Jade, who started off as a fairly unpopular contestant in Big Brother 3 and went on to win the affection of much of the nation, making a lucrative career as a regular face in tabloids and magazines. Whether she will be able to claw her way back to this level of success seems unlikely. One thing is for sure though, Jade Goody is not the first celebrity to face a scandal, and she certainly won’t be the last. We take a look a few celebrity scandals of the past and see who managed to salvage their careers, and who didn’t.

What Katie Did Next

One British celeb who seems to have shaken off a big scandal with relative ease and no signs of permanent damage to her career is Kate Moss. Kate had undergone previous scandals in her career as a top supermodel; in 1998 she checked herself into a rehab centre suffering from “exhaustion”. She later admitted to drinking and smoking dope before going on the catwalk, but denied ever taking any harder substances. Once she started dating singer Pete Doherty (front man of indie band The Libertines and then Babyshambles) however, it was clear that things would not stay sweet for Kate much longer, what with Pete being renowned for drug problems, arrests and court appearances. The inevitable blow for Kate came in September 2005 when the Daily Mirror ran a front page story showing what could surely only be described as Kate Moss doing cocaine. She was swiftly dropped by fashion houses and clothes companies keen not to have their reputations tarnished by association. H&M and Burberry were among the fashion names to drop her like a hot potato.

A short twelve months after her cocaine scandal however, Kate made a full scale comeback by bagging no less than eighteen top modelling contracts with names including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Calvin Klein, Versace and Rimmel, to name but a few. She went on to be named Model of the Year in November of last year and even her on/off relationship with Pete Doherty (currently very much on; there are rumours they are planning to marry) did not seem to hamper her return to the spotlight. One explanation for this is that Kate maintained an almost complete dignified silence throughout the whole scandal. Her only real comment on the matter was an official apology soon after the story broke: "I take full responsibility for my actions. I also accept that there are various personal issues that I need to address and have started taking the difficult, yet necessary, steps to resolve them," she said. "I want to apologise to all of the people I have let down because of my behaviour which has reflected badly on my family, friends, co-workers, business associates and others." She has never been one to talk about her relationships and it’s a pretty safe bet that she and Pete won’t be posing in Hello! magazine any time soon. It could be this privacy and refusal to rise to the bait that has saved Kate, or it could be the rock n roll edge that the scandal and her tumultuous relationship with a self-confessed drug addict has added to her already mysterious image. If it is the latter then perhaps that says a lot about the fashion world and where a pretty face will get you!

All Just Childs Play?

You might expect this kind of scandal to follow models and rock singers around, but there is a certain category of celebrities that seems to produce surprising scandals. We are of course talking about the world of the Children’s TV Presenter, expecially Blue Peter presenters! This family friendly BBC staple has produced more than its fair share of scandal-scarred celebrities. One such celebrity would be Richard Bacon. He joined the long-running children’s TV show in February 1997 but was the first presenter in the show’s history to have his contract terminated when he was sacked in October 1998 following newspaper stories of his cocaine-taking. The head of BBC children’s programming at the time had to go on air to try and explain the situation to the young audience. Although it was clear that a BBC children’s presenter could not continue to do his job after a drug scandal, it was also known to most in the industry (and some of the viewing public) that he was not the first presenter to do coke. And this goes some way to explain how he survived the scandal and moved into adult presenting roles. The Big Breakfast, Top of the Pops and Back to Reality are just a few of the programmes that Richard has presented. Some have said that his scandal actually did him some favours and that he is now in demand more than he would have been without it…

Another Blue Peter name to endure a scandal, this time a somewhat more serious one, was John Leslie. It was not until after his Blue Peter stint and once he had established an adult presenting career on This Morning, that John Leslie’s scandal hit. His name is now more readily associated with alleged rape than it is with TV presenting, thanks in part to a slip-up by Channel Five presenter and one-time tabloid columnist Matthew Wright in 2002. Swedish born TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson had recently released her autobiography in which she said a well known TV presenter had raped her. Once Matthew Wright let it slip that the whole media world knew who she was talking about, she refused to either confirm or deny it. Once the cat was out of the bag, several more women came forward with accusations of a sexual nature. All the cases were eventually dropped or not pursued and Leslie maintained his innocence throughout. Despite this, his career has never recovered.

Continuing with the trend of children’s presenters being caught in the scandal headlights, we move on to Jamie Theakston. Best known to a generation for his Live & Kicking days, he had moved on to regular presenting stints on Top of the Pops, among others. His squeaky-clean image was tarnished in 2001 when his visit to a prostitute was exposed by tabloid paper The Sunday People. Theakston’s previous attempts to block the revelation had failed and he apologised publicly to friends and family, later admitting that he had been caught red-handed. His TV presenting career barely stalled and he continues to present such shows as The Games.

There are of course many more celebs we could name who are now synonymous with scandal. Angus Deayton for example, who combined some Richard Bacon and some Jamie Theakston when he was exposed as dabbling in both cocaine and prostitutes! He lost his job at Have I Got News For You; a role made basically impossible to continue due to constant digs by team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton and by the very nature of the show: political and celebrity based satire. Like the aforementioned TV presenters, Angus’s career has not nosedived however, and he continues to present shows such as Hell’s Kitchen and act in other shows including Absolute Power.

There are celebrities who have no chance of recovering from their scandals however; Gary Glitter aka Paul Gadd is a prime example of this. While Jade’s crime is not much compared to his or indeed to many of the examples we have talked about (in the sense that no definable crime was committed), it just remains to be seen whether she will rise from the ashes of her scandal like so many have before, or whether she will sink into the depths of notoriety like so many others.

Cheer yourself up after all that talk of celebrity scandal and misbehaviour, with a game of online bingo here at Mecca Bingo. And come back next week for more news and views on the crazy world that is Celebrity.