Jordan or Posh - who will be the winner in this nuclear stand-off?
Marina Hyde - Friday April 13, 2007
Escalating tensions in Los Angeles, as a series of audacious land grabs by glamour model Jordan threaten to derail Victoria Beckham's plans to be the Brit Most Desperate to Make it in LA.
Until recently, it seemed that Victoria was the only dead-eyed succubus amassing strategic weapons, reality shows and dinner dates with infrequently sane movie stars in order to establish a West Coast power base. But new developments suggest some sort of attention-seeking arms race is developing. First off, Jordan and her funny little husband Peter Andre were in the city this week on business, and madam lost no time in explaining the superior firepower of their own reality TV documentary over a planned Beckham effort.
"I hear David and Victoria are making a one-hour show," began the Mae West de nos jours. "We'll be on eight times a week with a three-hour show each Saturday. At the end of the day she is just a footballer's wife and Pete and I are still individuals."
What, though, of the contrasting methodologies deployed by our expansionist Hollywood rubes? Well, the Andre-Prices are dining conspicuously in upscale restaurants, shopping and visiting the Playboy mansion, while the Beckhams are dining conspicuously in upscale restaurants, househunting and socialising with A-listers.
The distinction might appear complex. But basically it comes down to either gritting your teeth while a dotage-addled Hugh Hefner tails off in the middle of an anecdote about silicone, or gritting your teeth while Tom Cruise explains how very few hundred thousand dollars it would cost you to learn that we're all surrounded by alien spirits exiled to this planet by the galactic tyrant Xenu. You really have to want it, don't you?
The ladies' feud has, needless to say, been simmering for a while. Its precise genesis is lost in the mists of time, but as far as I can work out it dates back to when Jordan was going out with a singer with whom Victoria had recorded a duet. Whatever it was that Victoria did, it was sufficient for Jordan to answer in the affirmative when an interviewer inquired whether Mrs Beckham had benefited from "work" to her top half.
"I know she has," hissed Jordan. "I've seen them. She knows she has. When we all went out for a meal, we were in the toilets and she showed me them. I showed her mine as well. I did like her but I don't now. I think she's a conniving little cow."
And quite possibly, Victoria is a conniving little cow. But will she be the last conniving little cow standing?
Only time can show, but hopefully the power struggle will play out like that bit in Showgirls - Paul Verhoeven's nuanced and thought-provoking 1995 world cinema classic - when ambitious stripper Nomi Malone pushes better remunerated stripper Cristal Connors down the stairs in order to steal her job. As Cristal glosses this turn of fortune's wheel: "There's always someone younger and hungrier coming down the stairs after you." It truly is a movie you can learn from.
And learn we must, if Los Angeles's notoriously fragile ecology is not to be driven one step closer toward cataclysm by our heroines' reckless machinations. Should either Jordan or Victoria flout the prevalent doctrine of mutually assured destruction in the coming weeks, tectonic shifts beneath the city would very likely toss up another natural disaster, opening a gaping chasm that would swallow both these precious entertainment personalities. It'll be that or a public row over who's got the bigger Escalade, anyway.
A rat-infested prison cell awaits Liz Hurley
Elsewhere, Lost in Showbiz is distraught at the misfortune that continues to dog cinema's Elizabeth Hurley, whose only crimes are to have staged slightly vulgar weddings in two countries, flogged the pictures to Hello!, continued to dress her child in the manner favoured by young royals circa 1958 and been almost elaborately bad in Bedazzled.
It was bad enough to learn that her in-laws felt insulted by her treatment of them on the big day, especially when "a friend close to Liz Hurley" spat back that they should consider "everything she has done for them - raising their social standing in India through the roof, for example ..."
But news that a formal lawsuit has been filed against her in India forces recourse to the sedatives.
According to reports, a Jodhpur citizen has lodged court papers suggesting that Liz's marriage last month to waxwork nebbish Arun Nayar "made a mockery of Hindu customs". Having surveyed the Hello! coverage, Mr Vishnu Khandelwal judges the couple's sins to have included wearing leather footwear at certain prohibited points in the ceremony, drinking alcohol before the exchange of vows, and not both being fully converted to Hinduism. There is no mention of the fact that they forced guests Janet Street-Porter and Trinny Woodall into performing some sort of veil-based dance in the same photos, but you sense it's the great unspoken.
Still, the articles do contain that most evocative of showbiz reporting constructs. "If found guilty," they state, "Hurley and Nayar could face up to three years in jail."
"If found guilty," reads another story on taxpaying-averse actor Wesley Snipes this week, "Snipes could face up to 16 years in jail."
That such eventualities never come to pass is irrelevant. For a brief moment, just surrender to the image of Liz and Wesley doing a stretch in some rat-infested prison camp. Admittedly, it wouldn't be sufficient penance for their joint outing in Passenger 57. But you've got to start somewhere.
Calling all dysfunctional singing families
Of all the erroneous rumours I have heard of late - some of them not even involving myself - the suggestion that members of the Jackson 5 are being lined up to mentor other musical family acts seemed the most barking. Or rather the second most barking.
Yet there is now confirmation that three scions of the spectacularly dysfunctional family are indeed to front a show called Pop Dynasty, in which they will seek out a similar clan and help launch them into the entertainment business that has made them such well-adjusted people. Presumably Joan Crawford's adoptive offspring were unavailable.
According to a spokesman for US television network CBS, the programme will adhere to the format of American Idol, with brothers Jermaine and Tito joined on the judging panel by sister LaToya.
Though it's an obvious sadness that they will not at this stage be supported by famously sane sibling Janet - or indeed misunderstood Pied Piper Michael - it is hoped the venture will clear the way for shows in which Paris Hilton offers pastoral care to novice nuns, and Rio Ferdinand is charged with awarding fellowships of All Souls.
guardian
