improbably and fantastically from an absurdly tight, plunging periwinkle T-shirt, all his blood had rushed to his groin. Now he only had to see a certain shade of powder blue – on a magazine advert, a breakfast cereal packet, a curtain pattern – and he found himself semi-erect.
Meanwhile, amid the magazines in her dining room, Sylva banged her small fist on Kerry Katona’s cleavage and called for her mother.
‘Order the Complan and the Ben & Jerry’s, Mama. I am going to have to put on weight again.’
‘Please, no!’ Mama Szubiak gasped.
Her daughter nodded with a resigned sigh. ‘There is no other way.’
‘You could fast. Lose weight instead.’
‘I did that last time, remember? I have to stick to the rules.’
Sylva was a brand name, a new breed of celebrity who was most famous for being famous and consequently knew that she had to keep her name in the headlines to maintain her status. In addition to dating stars, wearing a path in launch party red carpets, bearing beautiful babies, merchandising endless products and living her life in the full glare of non-stop publicity, Sylva had discovered a route to guaranteed front-cover stardom which was quicker (and less messy) than marrying a Premiership star. The media was obsessed with size, equally damning of fat and skinny yet unable to stop itselfsalivating over the slightest hint of weight change. As a result, dramatic shifts in any celebrity’s dress size were always a headline-grabber. Every six to eight months, faced with a headline drought, Sylva piled on about twenty pounds, taking her from her size six petite perfection to a size ten tabloid-dubbed ‘porker’, or on one memorable occasion when she’d overdone the milkshakes, a size twelve ‘super-porker’. The glossy weeklies loved it, printing gruesome and unflattering shots of her thickening waist, hefty thighs and double chins, daubed with day-glo shout-lines like ‘Sylva Cellulite Shocker!’ Then, while the box-out editorials were still sympathetically and hypocritically speculating as to the reasons for all this ‘misery eating’, she would just as swiftly drop the weight again, guaranteeing yet more media coverage as her new fabulous figure was admired while her ‘drastic weight loss’ was now contemplated. Then, the next time she felt her IFOJ and IFOP ratings drop towards BKK, she would go the other way, fasting her way to a dangerously gaunt size four, which would launch another paparazzi feeding frenzy as shots of her ‘dangerously thin’ body were plastered over the front facing pages opposite the beauty ads and the editorial commentaries sympathetically speculated why devoted mum of two ‘Super-skinny Sylva’ was ‘starving herself’. After a few weeks of conjecture she could let her body weight return to its meticulously maintained norm. Thus her status as tabloid headliner was continually reinvigorated in a cyclical pattern of feast and famine. It was an admittedly drastic way to stay famous; such extreme yo-yo dieting was hard work – the drastic weight changes played havoc with her body, and she had not had a period in almost six months – but it was highly effective.
Mrs Szubiak was a hugely ambitious woman who loved nothing more than to see her daughter on the front covers of all the magazines piled up in the Amersham hairdressers where she went to get her blonde bullet hairdo welded into shape each week, but even she could see that the regime was not healthy. Every time Sylva piled on the pounds she was also terrified that, this time, she wouldn’t be able to lose it and would lose her fame and fortune completely. A star getting fat was a great story; a star staying fat was old news.
‘I think we must find another way,’ she said now.
‘It is the best way, Mama. We know that.’
‘A new lover, perhaps?’
‘I have a new lover,’ Sylva pointed out. The hotly tipped young British actor was both gay and living in LA, but their ‘relationship’ was
Meanwhile, amid the magazines in her dining room, Sylva banged her small fist on Kerry Katona’s cleavage and called for her mother.
‘Order the Complan and the Ben & Jerry’s, Mama. I am going to have to put on weight again.’
‘Please, no!’ Mama Szubiak gasped.
Her daughter nodded with a resigned sigh. ‘There is no other way.’
‘You could fast. Lose weight instead.’
‘I did that last time, remember? I have to stick to the rules.’
Sylva was a brand name, a new breed of celebrity who was most famous for being famous and consequently knew that she had to keep her name in the headlines to maintain her status. In addition to dating stars, wearing a path in launch party red carpets, bearing beautiful babies, merchandising endless products and living her life in the full glare of non-stop publicity, Sylva had discovered a route to guaranteed front-cover stardom which was quicker (and less messy) than marrying a Premiership star. The media was obsessed with size, equally damning of fat and skinny yet unable to stop itselfsalivating over the slightest hint of weight change. As a result, dramatic shifts in any celebrity’s dress size were always a headline-grabber. Every six to eight months, faced with a headline drought, Sylva piled on about twenty pounds, taking her from her size six petite perfection to a size ten tabloid-dubbed ‘porker’, or on one memorable occasion when she’d overdone the milkshakes, a size twelve ‘super-porker’. The glossy weeklies loved it, printing gruesome and unflattering shots of her thickening waist, hefty thighs and double chins, daubed with day-glo shout-lines like ‘Sylva Cellulite Shocker!’ Then, while the box-out editorials were still sympathetically and hypocritically speculating as to the reasons for all this ‘misery eating’, she would just as swiftly drop the weight again, guaranteeing yet more media coverage as her new fabulous figure was admired while her ‘drastic weight loss’ was now contemplated. Then, the next time she felt her IFOJ and IFOP ratings drop towards BKK, she would go the other way, fasting her way to a dangerously gaunt size four, which would launch another paparazzi feeding frenzy as shots of her ‘dangerously thin’ body were plastered over the front facing pages opposite the beauty ads and the editorial commentaries sympathetically speculated why devoted mum of two ‘Super-skinny Sylva’ was ‘starving herself’. After a few weeks of conjecture she could let her body weight return to its meticulously maintained norm. Thus her status as tabloid headliner was continually reinvigorated in a cyclical pattern of feast and famine. It was an admittedly drastic way to stay famous; such extreme yo-yo dieting was hard work – the drastic weight changes played havoc with her body, and she had not had a period in almost six months – but it was highly effective.
Mrs Szubiak was a hugely ambitious woman who loved nothing more than to see her daughter on the front covers of all the magazines piled up in the Amersham hairdressers where she went to get her blonde bullet hairdo welded into shape each week, but even she could see that the regime was not healthy. Every time Sylva piled on the pounds she was also terrified that, this time, she wouldn’t be able to lose it and would lose her fame and fortune completely. A star getting fat was a great story; a star staying fat was old news.
‘I think we must find another way,’ she said now.
‘It is the best way, Mama. We know that.’
‘A new lover, perhaps?’
‘I have a new lover,’ Sylva pointed out. The hotly tipped young British actor was both gay and living in LA, but their ‘relationship’ was
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