Issue 26

A wise man once said “If you must slander someone don't speak it - but write it - write it in the sand, near the water's edge!”. This man was author Napoleon Hill, who then went on to sell this wisdom in the form of neatly-packaged and highly-dubious self-help books. Now widely dubbed ‘the most famous conman you've probably never heard of’, he may not be the best guidance guru going.

Nonetheless, Big Hill’s advice has been followed for centuries. Humans have a biological need to discuss the trials and tribulations of other humans, and gossip is as inevitable in life as death and taxes. Before the days of burn books and tattle rags, civilization relied on the juicy word of ‘scandal sheets’. Think real-life Bridgerton- the big players of 1770s English society were under the watchful eye and quilled pen of Lady Whistledown-esque figures, ready to throw anyone under the gossip bus (or the proverbial horse and carriage). The bed-hopping antics of the Lords and Ladies of Ye Olde England proved particularly provocative, with marital whisperings printed for every plebs' pleasure.

Scandal sheets soon sailed Stateside and peppered different states throughout the mid-1800s. One US litterateur, William d’Alton Mann, declared that his aim was to “reform the Four Hundred (a.k.a. a gaggle of uber-glam, uber-wealthy gals in New York) by making them too deeply disgusted with themselves to continue their silly, empty way of life” - you get the impression that the Four Hundred were The Plastics of their day and that poor Billy was dying to be their Regina George. Undeterred, the Paris’s and Lindsey’s of 1800s society continued living in a silly, empty way while the general public lapped up their every salacious move.

Soon enough, scandal sheets swapped bonnets for bodycons and evolved into the tabloid journalism papers we know and love (to hate) today. Masquerading as news bearers, tabloids posed as moralistic surveyors of society. However, from the 1950s onwards there was a ten-tonne spanner in the works - the paparazzo. This was compounded with a growing sense of public entitlement towards ‘the celebrity’.

People didn’t just want to know who they were shaking sheets with - they wanted to eat, sleep and breathe their idols. Being branded a celebrity meant becoming public property and fame grew synonymous with zero privacy. Tabloid journalism feasted on this hunger for intimate information and soon the substance abuse, psychological issues and relationship break-downs of the rich and famous were littered across newspages alongside weather reports and horoscopes. Grossly, the Average Joe wasn’t just reading about Britney Spears heading home from a club sans underwear, but he was seeing it under the guise of public interest information.

The infamous red-top tabloids of the 1990s - 2000s had absolutely no qualms about using celebrities as sales bait (and arguably still don’t). Still in existence today, red-tops are a subsection of tabloid journalism named after their distinguishable red mastheads. They provide the usual fodder - crime reporting, politics, general news - then paint it all with the brilliant brush of sensationalism. Titles that rhyme with the Hun and the Daily Bar would pick and choose their famous favourites (influenced by a myriad of factors including race, misogyny and very often, big fat bribes) and mould them into either public sweethearts or popular villains.

During a time when paparazzi pictures could yield anything between €5,000 - €50,000, no image was too invasive to fetch a big buck. Amy Winehouse was relentlessly snapped in the throes of addiction, Kate Moss was dubbed ‘Cocaine Kate’ after she was unknowingly papped at a party and topless images taken of Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton as she sunbathed sold internationally. Sex, secrets and scandals sell and tabloids were happy to print whatever was guaranteed to shift copies.

One of the best displays of British tabloid pageantry happened in 2006 when the esteemed England squad jetted off to Baden-Baden for the World Cup with their WAGs in tow (wives and girlfriends, a term so cleverly cooked up by the British press). Focus soon fled from their nation's golden boys to the antics of their mega-glam partners, who enjoyed €50k spending sprees by day and Moet- fuelled karaoke sessions by night. The whole event was a girls trip on steroids filled with the campest of anecdotes (Victoria Beckham allegedly flying in 30 pairs of jeans? An iconic moment that in hindsight might be to blame for global warming).

Their fluorescent tans, 28 inch hair extensions and micro short/calf-length boot combos decked the front pages of every British tabloid and soon became international news, with the Spanish press dubbing them ‘hooligans with credit cards.’ Reporters swarmed the formerly quiet German town, with some checking into the same hotel and posing as fellow footballers beloveds to try score (wahey) the insider scoop.

When the England squad returned home empty-handed, all angry fingers pointed to the WAGs. Emergency conferences were held and some of the players even scapegoated them, with Rio Ferdinand whinging that our good time gals turned the team into a circus. The tone of the press soon transformed from playful fascination to caustic criticism and it became a true case of don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Looking back over a decade later, a lot of the press vitriol is hard to swallow. Most of the women were in their early 20s and from working-class backgrounds with sudden access to unfathomably lavish lifestyles. Given the chance, who wouldn’t go a bit nuts with their boyfriends’ blackcard and splash out on some new sunnies and a boozy brunch or two? Nonetheless, all WAGs were subsequently banned from England’s next trophy attempt in 2010’s World Cup in order to keep the press at bay and allow the boys to bring it home. They did not.

The relentless, invasive tabloid journalism of the 2000s finally received the kiss of death in 2011 when ultimate fish-wrap rag, the News of the World, permanently closed for business. The British paper shut after it emerged that a number of their journalists had hacked the voicemails of thousands of newsmakers and public figures including the British Royal family, Elton John, Tony Blair, the Beckhams and Paul McCartney. The final nail in the rotten coffin was their hacking of 13-year-old Milly Dowler’s phone, a schoolgirl who was tragically murdered. This obscenely-gross privacy invasion left a collective sour taste in the mouths of the public, and soon advertisers were clamouring to dissociate themselves with Rupert Murdoch’s snot rag.

Despite the death of printed tabloid culture, the primal need to bitch about our fellow man still courses through our catty little veins. We’re social creatures after all, and our uncontrollable urge to discuss someone’s dodgy haircut is nothing more than basic biology. In 1996, anthropologist Robin Dunbar declared that the act of gossiping with friends is the same as primates grooming one another - it’s a social service that allows for bonding and general merriment. Luckily, the emergence of the social media commentator means that there’s no need to go back to picking nits out of each other's mops.

Self-described ‘pop culture comedian’ Tefi Pessoa currently dominates YouTube and TikTok with her celebrity hot-takes, boasting 1.4 million followers on the latter. She creates mini-series on a realm of pop-culture topics like the death of Kurt Cobain, the rebirth of Bennifer and an in-depth look at Jennifer Anniston’s hair. Tefi is personable and opinionated but notably never mean, and there’s an obvious separation from fact and nosy speculation. Her delivery is as much a part of the series as the celebrities themselves, meaning you feel way less guilty about the fact that you’ve spent an hour listening to her talk about Shania Twain’s divorce.

Tiktoker and podcast host Shannon McNamara tempts controversy that bit more with her show, Fluently Forward. Based on her satirical exposé-esque blog, she discusses celebrity ‘blind items’ aka rumours found swirling around the deepest pits of the internet. As they are very much unconfirmed and often a product of morbid speculation, legally she can’t name names but will invite listeners to play a guessing game with some hilariously bad clues (Arm and Hammer = Armie Hammer, incredibly I managed to crack that one myself). Shannon is often heralded as the real-life Gossip Girl by her 335.5k TikTok followers and is famed for her no-nonsense, rational views on celebrity culture. Similarly to Tefi, there’s no nastiness here - it’s simply pure escapism into the parallel universe that is modern Hollywood.

Evidently, modern palettes have evolved past the need for grainy pap-shots of models popping pills in L.A. nightclubs and the four-page sportstar kiss and tell. The public have served as voyuers to the hounded lives of Princess Diana, Britney Spears, Heath Ledger and Amanda Bynes and we’ve seemingly learned our lesson: celebs are human too, just with more money and better looks. We may still crave the juiciness of the scandal sheets of yore, but these days we don’t want anyone exiled for smoking opium or enjoying some extra-marital horizontal refreshment - maybe just give us a podcast episode on it. On that note, it only feels right to end as we began with more wise-words from our pal Napoleon Hill: - “Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.” Big Hill may have been full of sh**e but he sure was great for a good quote.