Smell you later

Have you been into a Perfume Shop recently? It's like reading the index page of OK! Magazine - major and minor celebrities battling for supremacy on the shelves, in a cacophony of gaudy packaging. Celebrity fragrances are big business these days. You're nobody until you've got your name on a tacky bottle that looks like a zirconia-encrusted spleen.

Although she didn't invent the concept of celebrity fragrances, Elizabeth Taylor was definitely a pioneer, if only in terms of proving what a fantastic money maker they could be. Since launching Passion back in 1988, Liz has conjured up ten other best-selling nose-botherers, each one said to reflect her "famously indomitable spirit".

Regrettably, not all the celebrity fragrances that followed could boast such legendary heritage. Jade Goody, Katie Price and Colleen Rooney have all achieved huge sales from their personal brand of stink.

It's tempting to assume that the main reason for their success was that they had little or nothing to do with the creation of the scent itself. After all, who'd want a perfume that actually made them smell like Kerry Katona? Kebab meat, special brew and desperation is a pungent combination.

Speaking of unpleasant smells, Sarah Jessica Parker is planning another assault on your olfactory senses, having already given the world Lovely and Covet. This time around she's planning something a little unconventional, rather than the usual floral and vanilla notes you might expect.

In a recent interview, the long-faced shoe fetishist claimed: "It has taken me three years to decide on the scent because I really like BO and I think it's sexy. I wanted to figure out a way to make it palatable to everybody. I was like, 'How do you get BO in a bottle and make an atomizer of it?' Then it was all about trying to capture the sense of naughtiness in a bottle that it would be good for a man and a woman."

There you go - BO in a bottle. Because nothing says delicate romance and feminine sensuality like the stench of an amateur football team's locker room. Thanks to SJP, women all over the world will bathe, moisturise and get all dressed up, only to spritz themselves with the scent of three-day old gym shorts.

I suppose it could be worse. After all, it's only a month ago that Sarah was telling Elle Magazine that one her favourite smells in the world is a dirty nappy: “I love the smell of diapers; I even like when they’re wet and you smell them all warm like a baked good." If that's what she thinks cakes ought to smell like, she really needs to find herself a new patissiere. And maybe lay off the chocolate frosting.

Size is everything

Pity the poor unauthorised biographer. Their lot can't be a happy one. All that time spent poring over back issues of OK! magazine whilst waiting for a root canal. Or fishing through the bins of their favourite celebrity in the hope of finding some greasy tidbit to help piece together the details of their private life. 

Given the lack of access they have to their chosen subject though, it's easy to understand how such a hack might grow to resent the very talent they're writing about. Take Alison Bowyer for example. She's an obnoxious hack who fills in her time between poorly-reviewed character-assassinations, by penning equally ugly little articles for the tabloids. 

Having already coughed up two dodgy 'biographies' of corpulent comedienne Dawn French, she's penned a new article about her favourite subject for the Daily Mail. Apparently, Alison thinks that Dawn is a hypocrite for criticising people who make jokes about people of girth, sorry - fatties. Because, according to Bowyer at least, Dawn has made an entire career out of fat jokes. 

Although it's tempting to wonder whether she even understands how comedy works. For instance, she cites Dawn's famous appearances as Pamela Anderson, suggesting that the joke was Dawn's size. Actually, the joke was actually the unconvincing and preposterous nature of the recreations - as with all of French & Saunders' spoofs.

Then again, maybe that's why Alison is so unhappy with Dawn's PC ouburst - because she clearly finds fat people hilarious. She describes the Vicar of Dibley as being funny thanks to Dawn looking "so gargantuan in her black cassock and absurd tartan pyjamas." If that's all it took to get the audiences falling about laughing, Richard Curtis could have just taken the the last decade off work. Maybe then we'd have been spared Love, Actually and The Boat That Rocked - so not a bad idea in itself. 

As usual with the Mail, money also has to come into it, with Bowyer claiming Dawn's "expanding waistline has been the making of her career (the spoils of which include a £3 million home in Cornwall and a £2million residence in Berkshire)". I love the fact that writers at the Mail still use words like 'spoils' - conjuring up an image of Dawn French dressed like a highway robber on a Thelwell Pony. 

Dawn's biggest sin, however, is her unwillingness to be disgusted and ashamed by her size. In Bowyer's skewed world view, Dawn is actively waging a "campaign against her slimmer sisters (she refers to non-fatties as 'coat-hangers')". Of course, none of this is true. In fact, the 'coat-hanger' comment was made in an interview 15 years ago, in relation to the skinny women that men choose to wear like accessories. Still, the way Bowyer spins it, Dawn thinks everyone should have cardio-vascular disease and a mobility scooter. 


Regardless of how many more unauthorised volumes Bowyer chooses to scribble, the fact remains, she'll never get any closer to understanding Dawn French. Not because she's an inordinately complicated woman, but because she's happy. She looks in the mirror and sees comfort, beauty and femininity, rather than a bunch of problems that can be blamed on someone else. In the world of the Daily Mail, that's the biggest mystery of all.