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I've spent some time trying to think of an appropriate style genre for this story. There are several pre-existing ones working together to deliberately conflict. There is the excess of the 1960s. This should really be decorated with pop art, something kitsch. Instead, there is strictly art deco (which fell out of favour in the 40s) geometry with occasional hints of art nouveau in some of the older decors. I've attempted to apply washed out, deliberately and audaciously bad choice of colour - something I associate strongly with the sixties. The resulting 'style' was initially going to be defined as 'messed-up glamour' which is a slight variation on what Clive Barker once described his intentions for the design of his cenobites in the Hellraiser franchise. (It was, in fact, "repulsive glamour"). I'm not sure if this one has been coined - I daren't google it to disappoint myself - so I'll say it first. I would like to describe this style as 'Art Merlot'.
WHAT IS ART MERLOT?
Art Merlot takes it's name from the general appearance that the artist embarked on his design sober; he put down clean and bold lines with a grand vision in mind. Somewhere between drawing and applying colour, he was introduced to a large volume of red wine and the result of this becomes apparent in the final grubby aesthetics. Stylistically it is inspired by the Art Deco movements and fantastical art, as well as Film Noir and expressionism.
In terms of narrative, Art Merlot is characterised by excess and debauchery; it is often set out in the same way as a party - beginning with a boisterous introduction, fizzling out quickly to shyness before growing into a transgressive and hideous train-wreck of rambunctious events where there is no such thing as 'too much' and subsequent regret is almost certain. It is decorated with malice, humiliation, passion and sickness. (Frequently all four simultaneously.) It paints a landscape filled with adulterous lovers, prostitutes, elitist socialites, corrupt politicians and thieves. In a similar manner to the visual style, it is as if the writer introduced a set of noble and virtuous characters and eventually decided to turn them into monsters for a laugh.
There, now there is at least a ready-made label to stamp over the style. Anything to avoid 'gothic'.
I know. Not again!
I had intended to write my little piece on the drama unfolding at the House of Rooney and move onto better things, leaving it behind like a family pet being abandoned in the middle of the woods. But as the story vanished from the rear-view mirror a new headline caught my eye during a break at work. A brief glance at the article headers proved even more exciting. One read; 'Further revelations made about second girl in threesome'. I know the Daily Mail wouldn't use the word 'revelations' unless something of truly Biblical proportions was unfolding.
The story does seem to have momentarily dried up with the lips at the House of Rooney remaining tight. It has descended into a sparse collection of quotes from 'close sources' in which Wayne Rooney emerges as a strange David Lynch-esque dual character; the pleading husband desperate for forgiveness, and the heartless hooker-rutting cad. Not one to be put off by a lack of new facts when there is something naughty to write about, the tabloids have kept their focus sharply on the dark and enticing world of the WAG.
Before I spoke of class snobbery and hypocrisy. This little piece is about the history of sex and scandal, and the desperate attempts people will make to ignore it so that tales such as this fit nicely into their hysterical view that Britain is falling apart.
"Strange how prostitutes never used to publicise their choice of work, now these women are parading themselves - up front and proud." observes Maggie from Hertfordshire in the article's comment section, "A true sign of the hugely sexualised and promiscuous times we live in."
Truly.
(DID YOU KNOW: Sex was only discovered in 2003? There is a popular misconception that it is an act that has been around since prehistory. This is incorrect. Tales of the debauchery of Ancient Rome or the widespread prostitution in Victorian England are actually elaborate fabrications marked by scholars in order to justify the loose morals of modern society. Atheists will scoff at the concept of God hiding dinosaur bones simply to confuse the mortals, but even in today's enlightened times few people are prepared to confront the myth of human sexuality. Sex is thought to have been discovered by Paris Hilton who carefully utilised it into a business model and launched herself into stardom with a 'how to' tape recorded by her then-boyfriend. Little did Ms Hilton know she was in fact opening Pandora's box and unleashing a deluge of relentless promiscuity upon the world.)
New characters have emerged in the ongoing chronicles of Slappergate.
The first is Amy Leigh Barnes, who actually has nothing to do with the current events. She was introduced in an article delicately entitled 'The prostitute and the murder victim', wherein two pictures of her posing with Jennifer 'Juicy' Thompson were used as some sort of justification to include her in Slappergate. Amy Leigh actually has no involvement with the Rooney affair. She was a girl who apparently frequented the same social circles. She was murdered by football coach Ricardo Morrison.
I wish I could say more about it, but a scan of the article reveals that only a third of it actually details her life or death before going onto repeat the tales of 'Juicy' Thompson's wild child life alongside more pictures of her in her underwear. What a lovely read this must make for Amy Leigh's parents, to prop up a murder victim next to a woman currently being flouted as 'shameless' and imply they are birds of a feather. Delicately handled, as I said.
The second is Helen Wood. She is the red-haired prostitute who, in tales that make for somewhat emetic reading material, joined 'Juicy' Thompson and Rooney for a ménage-à-trois. (I'm trying to spare you the harrowing mental images that come from the clumpy word of 'threesome'. No need to thank me.)
'Miss Wood’s father said he too had no idea how she had become caught up in the sordid affair' has to be the most unintentionally amusing line in this article, simply because it conjures up the idea that a Daily Mail reporter has phoned up a prostitute's father and asked "Why did she do it? WHY?"
In fact much of the article is about the parents. The father of Helen Wood (regrettably she lacks an audacious self-styled name. Hell On Wood? The Woodpecker? It's no 'Juicy' Jenny, is it?) has explained that he is 'desperately sorry' for the heartache he has inadvertently caused for Coleen Rooney, as it is apparently now expected for the parents of an adult woman to make their apologies for unleashing a future home-wrecker out into the world.
"Miss Wood, 23, a university lecturer’sdaughter, and Miss Thompson,21, the privately-educated child of a wealthy oil company executive, have turned out to be flag-bearers for the celebrity-mad, lascivious culture that has consumed the nation." writes Daily Mail columnist Barbara Davies.
(I would, by the way, mark her mistakes with [sic]s but it would rather clutter up the paragraph. The spacebar misuse gives an image of her tripping over her own bile in a rush to shove her two cents into the slot.) But there you have it - they are the 'flag-bearers' for the nation's culture. The 'celebrity-mad' culture. Which her paper has had no part in creating what so ever.
"Such depressing behaviour has become commonplace among the drunken ladettes who plague town centres each weekend. But if ever there was a sign of how deeply the social rot has set in, this pair’s story provides it in a deeply troubling way."
In my last article I made a snooty comparison to the Profumo affair, and I promised myself not to say the words again because I've already repeated the same joke three times and verge on milking territory, but I need to mention it one final time. To the uninitiated and those that cannot be bothered to click the link I've so helpfully put there, the eponymous affair was between John Profumo, then Secretary of State for War, and London prostitute (sorry, 'call girl') Christine Keeler.
So which aspect of Slappergate indicates social rot? A high figure sleeping with a prostitute? A man cheating on his wife? A girl shamelessly venturing into a dubious career? The media cheerily rewarding her publicity for it? Much to the dismay of anybody wishing for social apocalypse, none of these things are new. All of the above apply to Slappergate just as they did to Profumo well over forty years ago. You can argue the aspiration of 'WAG stardom' is a new gloss, but the motives have always been monetary.
I'll sum this up with the famous and much-replicated photograph of Christine Keeler taken shortly after the affair, and a quote from today's column by Barbara Davies. You will probably recognise the pose even if you're not familiar with it - yep, this is the original, something iconic born from a salacious scandal.
"In the history of kiss and tells, the British media has never seen anything quite like it."
Mrs Coleen Rooney gazes at herself in a mirror in a fashionable upmarket hair salon. She has just been appointed 'style ambassador' to Littlewoods and is having her hair suitably fixed up; one must remain appropriately glamourous when holding such an important position in the harsh eye of the public. Perhaps she was sipping champagne or idly reading through a magazine - we can only imagine. Her phone vibrates on the counter in front of her and she picks it up.
You have 1 New Message from: Wayne
She taps the button to open it with a perfectly manicured hand.
bin boffin sum hooker n d press av found out. soz lol. wayn xx
This, friends and acquaintances, is the closest thing we will see to the Profumo affair in our generation.
Okay that isn't what the text said, I made that part up but the revelation of the alleged infidelities was indeed made via the elaborate method of SMS; something that initially surprised me because I wasn't aware that Wayne Rooney was actually able to read and write - even within the generally less refined literature of texting. You really do learn something new every day.
As the nature of the tabloids dictate, they lept onto the story claws out and salivating like a fat befringed groupie at a My Chemical Romance gig. Interviews were denied and Facebooks were looted for all the titilating pixels available. The alleged prostitute was named and not particularly shamed as Jennifer 'Juicy' Thompson, middle-class, professional village bicycle and long-time wannabe WAG. Today's article in the Daily Mail illustrates her biography with no less than thirteen pictures of her, seven of which offer the reader a glimpse of cleavage to either scoff at or oggle (presumably, for your hardcore Mail reader, both).
Now I know what you're thinking - who cares?
I have no interest in football, overpaid footballers or the women they climb on top of. Yet this story fascinates me simply because of the interesting Upstairs, Downstairs style mechanics at play. It doesn't take much insight to see that there is more to this web of deceit than fury on behalf of Coleen.
Wayne Rooney has always been a joke. In a similar vein to the much deified David Beckham, Rooney is from a working class background and has escalated to millionaire stardom for kicking a ball around. Regrettably, unlike Beckham, he remains ugly as sin; a podgy ogre-featured being who looks like he would glass you and steal your shoes as soon as look at you.
So his marriage to the passable Coleen has always been perplexing when considering that the pair had been dating long before he found success and wealth with professional football. If it isn't the money, it was assumed, it must be love. How sweet!
But no.
He had been cavorting with a lady of the night, and while his wife was pregnant with his child. "That's not how working class heroes are allowed to act", howls the over-interested public as they peer over the garden fence into his private life, "Sack him. Sack him! We can't have a somebody adulterous out there kicking balls on behalf of our nation."
The story therefore becomes the amusing adventures of a boy who done good but now has too much money and isn't spending it on good but on evil: orifice rental.
But there has actually been a distinct lack of focus on Wayne in the deluge of coverage on the scandal. All eyes have turned on 'Juicy' Thompson - presumably because she's less offensive to look at - and because it's easier for your average reader of such publications of the Daily Mail and The Sun to pour bile over a prostitute rather than the man who paid for her services. Here the class aspect is reversed; she is middle-class and that is alien upbringing for a prostitute by these standards. Prostitution isn't for public schoolgirls, they subtly infer, it's for poor people who have ruined their lives and now have to sell themselves to survive. They aren't allowed to actively enjoy their work unless they're being played by Billie Piper in a rompy show on the telly.
There is an interesting bit of hypocrisy at work here. The papers sniff amusedly at her fall from grace of public schoolgirl to wannabe WAG, her desperate attempts to break into the social circles frequented by the rich and famous. And yeah it is funny, in a sort of tragic way, that somebody can live by the goal of bagging a footballer. But to smirk at it you need to overlook the fact that it is these exact same papers who have created the industry in which WAGs become equally important as their footballer HABs. All clothing choices, hair extension lengths, tan levels, sunglass circumferences and heel heights are examined with scrutiny. It feeds out a deceptive loop in which these things gain importance. In fact they've even tried observing the wives of politicians with similar intentions - naturally doomed to failure because government WAGs are generally repellent. So the media has made this the place to be. Yet they can't help scoffing at the seedy tragedy of a woman being allured by it. She must be a tart.
There was a show on ITV a few years back called Footballers' Wives. It depicted the life of Tanya Turner, a chain-smoking, cocaine-huffing WAG with two-inch fake nails and a long line of dead husbands. The series was shameless trash full of champagne sipping and sports cars. The genuinely horrifying thing about it is that it was actually quite a realistic television portrayal of how the world of the WAG is represented on paper: a debauched elite in which scandals are not a question of 'if' but 'when'.
I wanted to round this up with a selection of the best reader comments but it has proved difficult to choose them as the articles have attracted a lot of attention - 171 on this one alone, most of which can be summed up as 'slaaaaaag'. Funnily enough, meanwhile an article on the same website about how Iran is reportedly on the verge of nuclear capability sits alone with no similarly insightful comments. But who gives a toss about the threat of nuclear war when there's mouths to be frothed at the idea of a footballer's sex life? I only hope that in the event of the country being dragged into another war in which the battlefields and targets are all within our own borders that the government smarts up to the fact such a volume of its public's minds have turned to Puritan mush and counter it by printing post-apocalyptic survival techniques in Heat magazine.
