During this eternal lockdown, I’ve become invested in celebrities’ lives. I’m not proud of it, but surely I’m not alone
Recently I learned that Robert De Niro will only drink martinis if they’re garnished with English cucumber, and he goes to great lengths to check its provenance. I don’t have concrete evidence of this, just as I can’t prove that the first gig Banksy attended was Erasure in Shepton Mallet, that Maradona kept his cocaine inside footballs or that Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer are enjoying the company of the same dog. But given we’ve been in a bit of a joy drought lately, reading this sort of celebrity nonsense online has provided me, endlessly housebound me during the pandemic, with some sliver of relief.
I never expected gossip to be something I missed, particularly in a year defined by profound loss, but here we are. I don’t miss mean gossip. More the banal, over-a-tea, occasionally scream-quietly-into-your-sleeve stuff. The sort of whispered chitchat that takes place in a lift or when you bump into a friend, and thrives on spontaneity but sometimes – sometimes – leads to something positive. Like revelations about pay discrepancy between colleagues, or conflicts of interest previously undisclosed. The casual stuff that weeds out low-grade sex pests or allows you to discover the person you fancy actually fancies you back. When the census asked if anyone was staying over in your property on Sunday night I wondered whether the celebrity gossip newsletter Popbitch had somehow hacked the system.
