Saving Ryan's privacy

Better brace yourself for some bad news. Ryan Phillippe has announced plans to end his acting career because he's tired of the paparazzi lifestyle in L.A. Sorry, what's that? Ryan Phillippe? You know, Ryan PHILLIPPE. Phil-leap-pay. He's been in all kinds of things - Crash, The Way Of The Gun, Amanda Seyfried.

Anyway, he's sick of the pressures of fame of has decided to put his house on the market, so he can move to New York and live off the radar. He told journalists from the New York Post "I'm ready to be behind the scenes. I'm 36, but I've been doing this for 20 years", presumably whilst holding up a black and white headshot, just so they didn't think they were scoring a scoop on Justin Timberlake.

Back in the late nineties, he and his then-wife Reese Witherspoon were Hollywood's hot new 'It' couple. They'd met on the set of 'Cruel Intentions' and their onscreen chemistry soon turned into the real thing. But whereas Reese made some smart choices and ended up bagging herself $15 million for the sequel to Legally Blonde, Ryan ended up taking smaller roles in ensemble pieces.

As much as he might have tried to convince himself he was doing it for the art, movie-goers were less convinced. In 2002, the pair turned up at the Oscars to present an award together, prompting Phillippe to hand the envelope to his wife and say "After you. You make more money than I do." Of course, the audiences laughed, but then they'd just sat through a couple of hours of Whoopi Goldberg playing host. After that, you'd laugh at an angry voicemail from Mel Gibson. 

By the time they divorced in 2007, Reese was an Oscar winner and Ryan was attempting to hold his own in 'Five Fingers'. In more ways than one, I'm sure. Who knows, maybe he'll be better suited to a life out of the limelight. At least then he can look back on his starring role in 'I Know What You Did Last Summer', and fondly recall a time when at least somebody did. 

The bitch is back

Imagine Jan Moir's frustration - a handsome young gay TV presenter wanks himself to death and she can't say what's really on her mind. Having famously blamed Stephen Gately's death on his lifestyle, rather than the congenital heart defect that actually killed him, here was the perfect opportunity for the poisonous podgester to resume her one woman crusade. But unlike the arsonists who can't resist returning to the scene of their crime, Jan managed to bite her forked tongue and let this auto-erotic escapade pass by.

The problem is, ugly sentiments like hate and malice will eventually bubble to the surface. And poor old Kate Winslet is bearing the brunt.

Today Jan published a breathtakingly cruel attack on the Oscar winning actress, simply because her marriage to director Sam Mendes has failed. There's nothing like kicking someone when they're down.

With a metaphorical deerstalker perched on her fat head, Moir sets about picking apart the ruins of Winslet's relationship. In the absence of any incriminating weapons, Jan has to resort to the age-old technique favoured by crooked cops everywhere - planting evidence.

Jan's Jessica Fletcher-instincts were first triggered when she saw Kate at the Oscars, looking "a little glum" and "clinging to Jeff Bridges" when presenting an award. She even imagines an alternative scenario where Kate and Jeff wrestle on the floor of the auditorium. It's enough to make Columbo squint.

At first, it almost seems as though Jan is genuinely sad for the once-happy couple's loss. She even describes them as the seemingly perfect couple, grounded, talented and attractive.

But like all the great detectives, she's just lulling people into a false sense of security by pretending she's on their side. Jan thinks Kate and Sam looked too alike for the marriage to work, commenting "It would take sonar imaging to fathom the daily depths of narcissism they must have experienced as they once devotedly looked into each other's eyes."

As for Kate, well, she's no better than the council mums that Jan likes to take occasional pot shots at - "How has girl-next-door Kate Winslet found herself, at the age of 34, with two divorces already on the charge sheet and two children to care for... Despite her professions of normalcy, Kate is an ultra-glam Hollywood film star... yet even she cannot keep a man, or make a marriage work."

Is it normal for someone to express quite so much glee in someone else's misery, especially when children are involved and there's no evidence of foul play on either side?

The way Jan sees it, Hollywood marriages have no chance of working. The stars live in a "gated community of celebrity life" where they develop warped sensibilities and "grow used to being the magnetic north in any social or work situation."

Kate Winslet has never presented herself as anything other than an ordinary girl from Reading who has been fortunate enough to pursue her career with some success. That's more than enough ammunition for Jan to accuse her of not having the aptitude or ability to work at her marriage. Painting in broad brushstrokes, she suggests that all famous people "grow weary, dabble in casual treachery, give in to temptation, fail to respond to any situation where they are not the centre of attention."

More specifically, Jan doesn't believe that Kate is interested in anything but herself: "don't you think that there was always something rather phoney about old bangers-and-mash Kate? Only someone who believes that she is secretly marked out for an extraordinary destiny would protest about her ordinariness so much."

As well as presenting a thorough deconstruction of La Winslet, Jan even speculates on the next likely casualty of the curse of female Oscar winners, naming 'poor Sandra Bullock' as her next target.

Sadly, just hours after Jan's article was published, the tabloids were filled with scurrilous rumours that Sandra's husband has been cheating on her with a tattoo model. This evening the UK premiere of The Blind Side was cancelled due to 'unforeseen personal reasons'.

The Mail may claim to be pro-marriage, but it seems that no-one is happier than its writers when another once-happy couple bites the dust.

Katie pays the Price

Oh Katie. It was all going so well. You'd successfully managed the transition from zeppelin-chested trollop to horse-riding, child-rearing, book-authoring (cough), advice-giving everywoman. Suddenly you were championed as an inspirational celebrity mother by women who usually view Page 3 models with the kind of warmth and empathy that they usually reserve for people who drown kittens.

But you didn't know when to stop. Without any fear of being over-exposed (literally or figuratively) you charged into yet another series of fly-on-the-wall fakeumentaries, following your exploits in LA. But it didn't quite work out. It turns out that America already has its fair share of plucked, tucked, pinned and lifted talent vacuums. Turning up in your babydoll T-shirts and ridiculous Ugg boots, you were surprised to find that the birthplace of plastic surgery was a little more sophisticated than perhaps you'd given it credit for. To quote The Castle, the greatest little movie of all time, "The secret is to make them real, but not too real, just real enough to know that they're fake."

But you don't handle rejection particularly well, so you took it out on poor Peter Andre. OK, so he has about as much depth as a leatherette friendship bracelet, but he manages to stay remarkably upbeat, despite the fact that he couldn't sell a CD if he worked in HMV. Maybe you've lived your life in front of the cameras for so long that you forgot they were there. Either way, you chose to belittle Peter for the sake of entertainment, reminding him that everything he had was down to you. And he walked.

When Dwight Yorke dumped you before the birth of your son Harvey, you cleverly managed your reputation, distancing yourself from 'Jordan' and rebranding yourself as 'brave single parent' Katie Price. What a shame you didn't have your wits (or for that matter a decent management team) to help steer you through these troubled times. As a consequence, your fan-base appears to be dwindling as people suddenly find themselves warming to Peter Andre - in itself a concept as troubling as a plague of locusts or a rainstorm of blood.

Just like in any divorce, there's a point where the couple's friends have to decide who they're closest to. Making comments about Peter's 'shortcomings', calling him names via Twitter, and generally acting like an objectionable slattern have given people pause to think about who deserves their support the most. Should you decide to write another follow-up to your best-selling debut novel, you might want to consider 'Fallen Angel' as a title.

Divide and conquer

It's long been a Hollywood tradition that when something successful ends or at least begins to stagnate, it's customary to pick out a core element that worked and transpose it into a new setting. It's called the spin-off, and over the years has given us Frasier, Mork & Mindy and Private Practice. Of course, it has also given us Joey.

So congratulations to Katie Price who has taken the principle of the spin-off and applied it to the reality TV show that is her life. Those cynics who speculated that Katie and Peter's split was a short-term fly in the stretch-mark ointment, obviously never counted on Ms Price's willingness to do absolutely anything in front of a camera.

It was announced this week that Katie and Peter have both signed up with ITV for rival 'reality' shows depicting their post-split lives and the gruesome details of their divorce. Since neither of them has any shame at the best of times, the bitterness and ignominy is likely to be at near toxic levels. And if they look like this when they're happy together, you can just imagine how ugly this is going to get.

He said, she said, apparently...

The papers have been unsurprisingly falling over themselves to feed the Jordan/Katie publicity machine this week, with the news that Mr & Mrs Andre are to divorce. The great thing about a story like this, is that there are so many angles to cover.

Cynics can carp that it was fake all along, and Katie was simply biding her time to ditch Peter like the accessory he so clearly was. And the really cynically ones can contradict themselves by suggesting that the whole separation is another stage-managed publicity stunt, and that the couple will be happily reunited with a magazine story about them renewing their vows. In doing so, of course, they accidentally infer that the relationship was real to begin with.

Meanwhile, the rest of the bottom-feeders can flood the press with 'alleged' comments and insights (all in exchange for a handsome fee) into what's really going on between the estranged two-some. And that's precisely what they've been doing - how else would we know about the sexy texts, Peter's tears in Cyprus, the visits to divorce lawyers and, most recently, the two-year sex ban?

At the risk of sounding sympathetic to the couple, the alarming number of stories attributed to 'friends' and other unspecified 'sources' really shows up just how this culture of celebutainment infects the people on one's periphery to such a degree that everyone feels there's money to be made in it. Who cares if it's unquantifiable bullshit - as long as someone's paying, there'll be people who'll talk.

The wryly ironic postscript to all this is that the latest word from Camp Katie is that she's keeping a 'dignified silence'. This of course comes from her regularly updated Twitter feed, which allows her to give updates on the status of her marriage from the Maldives.

Interestingly, for a couple with no boundaries, limits or sense of self-restraint, none of us really have any clue as to what will happen next. Katie Price's talent is for being the most open 'closed book' on the celebrity circuit. And although we might not know what she's got up her sleeve, chances are, it'll turn into something lucrative.