Web of deceit: the internet has killed the celebrity death hoax

I was travelling in Peru when the news broke, enjoying myself at a beachside bar. All of a sudden the music stopped and over the microphone a sombre-toned barmaid announced the sad news of George Michael’s passing. A respectful minute or so of silence passed and then the sound system started up, screeching Michael Jackson’s Bad. After a further minute or so the music cut out again and said barmaid returned to the microphone to clarify the “sad news of Michael Jackson’s passing”.  We stared at each blankly, unsure what was going on, until an Australian friend asked with genuine concern “how is George Michael?”

He was fine of course, unlike poor Michael, but for the first time in my life I found myself worrying about the former Wham singer’s well being. I hoped for instance he was finally getting the upper hand in his battle with cannabis addiction. A year later when he ploughed his car into the Snappy Snaps in Hampstead, I felt a palpable relief that he escaped the crash unscathed. The premonitory effect the mishap had on me brought to mind the celebrity death hoaxes of my schooldays. I recall one such playground rumour that Derrick Errol Evans, better known as Mr Motivator, had expired. The details are a bit sketchy, perhaps that throbbing vein in his head and finally given him the aneurism it had always threatened. Or maybe a naked flame had come into contact with his Lycra spandex. Either way, for the remainder of the day I was certain that sometime between first break and lunch we'd lost a giant of the televised workout world.

The Art of lying

As morally dubious a practice as spreading these rumours was, it's hard not to admire the artistry and effort which went into them. First of all the inventor had to pick a celebrity big enough that everybody knew who they were, but not so big that it would seem far-fetched and unbefitting of their stature for them to die on a school day. Then, because this was the pre-internet halcyon age, the rumour had to be started by actually telling somebody face-to-face. Granted that somebody was more often than not a wide-eyed and gullible 10 year-old, but even so you had to be prepared for even the most rudimentary interrogation. How did they die for instance? When? How do you know?

But it’s not like that anymore. A recent online Eddie Murphy death hoax started on the site Global Associated News gained so much momentum that his brother Charles was forced to respond - "It's really astounding how low people will go for attention. Eddie Murphy is fine!" And this was despite the fact that the website contains the quite unambiguous disclaimer that: "This story is 100% fake! This is an entertainment website, and this is a totally fake article based on zero truth and is a complete work of fiction for entertainment purposes".

Mind you, at least a fatal Swiss snowboarding accident involving the star of Beverley Hills cop is possible, if not exactly plausible. Last week, the comedian Michael Legge started a rumour, (I believe twitterstorm is now the preferred term), that fictional character Gregg Jevin had died - proving you don't even have to exist for rumours of your demise to be greatly exaggerated. Type the word "is" into Google and the search engine prompts you to ask "Is David Guetta dead?” proving both the staying power of internet pranks and the stupidity of people who believe them.

Gotcha!

The virtual playground that is the internet has made killing off the stars easier than ever before. As the famous 71 character tweet goes ‘a lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on’. But the spate of celebicide that has seen Charlie Sheen, Owen Wilson and Adam Sandler go to that great rehab centre in the sky is much less believable than the pranks of yesteryear, especially since they were all said to have died in Swiss snowboarding accidents. Such is the lack of imagination in modern hoaxes they have left me mourning the loss of an art form rather than any celebrity. But maybe I’m just nostalgic for a simpler time, when people remember where they were when they first heard the news of Noel Edmonds’ tragic helicopter crash.  

Why we won’t go to war with Argentina and the solution to world peace

The Royal Navy dispatched £1 billion worth of its newest hardware. In response the Argentines renamed their football league and made friends with Sean Penn. The end result is conditions in the South Atlantic that are even frostier than usual.

Yes, in the spirit of 80s revivals that have been sweeping the nation – from sky high unemployment to inner city insurrections – it looks like a second Falklands war, “30 years on, this time it’s territorial (same as last time)” could be next. 

Democracy rules OK! 

Except it won’t. Because unlike then, Argentina is now a democracy and democracies don’t fight each other. Or so goes the democratic peace theory. You’ve probably heard it before, spouted with barely concealed smugness by some insufferable pub bore. We may have even met. If you’re lucky you’ll have heard an even smugger bore cite, with great triumphalism, some apparent exceptions. The Greek Wars of the 5^th century BC for instance, the American War of Independence or even the American Civil War. At this juncture the first bore may have responded with the rationale that slaveholding states such as ancient Greece and the US Confederacy can hardly be considered democratic and that pre 1832 Britain was essentially a monarchy with an incredibly restricted franchise. He probably even looked your way to see if you were impressed, not realising you were long gone. 

Nevertheless it’s true and it’s a truth that irks liberals - who believe it is too often used as justification for self-serving regime change in oil rich nations - and fans of war, who feel it makes any interesting match-ups nigh on impossible. 

I’m lovin’ it

If further evidence is needed that Prince William and his pals are going to be absolutely fine on the Islas Malvinas, just look at McDonald’s. The Golden Arches theory of conflict prevention, as proposed by Thomas L Friedman, states that no two countries that have a McDonald’s have ever fought against each other in a war. Granted NATO briefly dropped a few bombs on Yugoslavia in 1999, but as they didn’t land on the McDonald’s itself it seems a shame to throw away a perfectly good theory. In 1982 Argentina didn’t have any McDonald’s and look what happened. But since 1986`when they joined the 123 strong international McFamily they’ve not had any bother. If only they’d opened one four years earlier it would have saved us all the trouble. 

Those pesky Iranians

So as with everything else, don’t believe the hype. The chances of Argentina challenging us to a war, thumb or otherwise, would require the refutation of two flimsy and overly simplistic political science theories. And that ain’t gonna happen. If you do feel the need to fret over future international conflicts, I’d suggest Iran as a country more likely to confirm your worst fears. 

First of and shock horror, it’s not a democracy. Equally predictably it doesn’t have a single McDonald’s. Then there’s the small matter of the alleged nuclear weapons programme and president who says things like Israel should be “wiped off the face of the earth”. Indeed if profiting from conflicts which threaten the future of mankind is your thing, bookmakers In Trade are giving odds with a 62% likelihood that either the USA or Israel will execute an air strike against Iran before the end of the year. 

For all those out there who’d rather give peace a chance, there is a solution: give Iran nuclear weapons. Admittedly there aren’t too many political commentators out there advocating this view, but they are overlooking the crucial fact that bar a couple of months handbags between India and Pakistan in 1999, (which I’m once again discounting), there has never been a war between two nuclear powers. As long as we keep hold of ours we’re bound to be safe. The rest of the Middle East I’m not so sure.  So there’s the answer to world peace: proliferation. Of democracy. Of Nukes. And of Maccy D’s. There, that wasn’t that hard was it?

Revelling in Rivalry

Amid speculation about the possible demise of their arch-rivals Rangers, it must have seemed strange for Glasgow Celtic’s chief executive Peter Lawwell to be fielding questions on whether his own club could survive without their Old Firm counterparts. 

After all, surely any mishap befalling your oldest and bitterest foe can only be good news. Especially when that mishap takes the shape of a 10 point deduction and makes the small matter of your 43^rd Scottish league title a mere formality. 

“We’ll survive very well”, the Celtic chief executive responded. Adding with just a hint of schadenfreude, “We’re going to be in better shape than them if their problems cause greater difficulties.”

Lawwell’s reasoning was based on practical considerations, the level of Celtic’s debt for instance and the viability of Scottish football minus one of its two behemoths. But his answers won’t have reassured everybody. The last Scottish team outside of the Old Firm to win the title were Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen in 1985. In a league rightly criticised for its lack of competiveness, switching from duopoly to a monopoly will leave a spectator sport about as interesting as its board game namesake. 

Trouble down by the riverside

But let’s set aside the enthralling world of Scottish football for a minute. The issue of Rangers’ difficulties and their potential impact on Celtic highlight an important dynamic present in any rivalry: that both sides define themselves antithetically to the other. 

‘Rivals’ is a Latin word in origin, derived from rivalis meaning ‘persons dwelling on opposite sides of the river’. The symmetry in this image of two rival camps across a river is quite apt. Both camps may think they have the best river bank, or the greenest grass, or whatever people squabbled about in Roman times. No doubt they hate each other, but what made them noteworthy and set them apart from the numerous other riverside encampments of olden times was the competition between the two. Like it or not - and the answer for anyone in Glasgow is bound to be not - to outside observers the animosity between Rangers and Celtic is viewed similarly. Like two sides of the same Old Firm coin it’s impossible to conceive of one without the other. 

The good old days of the Cold War

The early 1990s saw the termination of one of the world’s greatest rivalries. Since 1945 Western democracies led by the United States and the communist states of the Eastern Bloc led by the Soviet Union hadn’t seen eye to eye on such trivialities as whether communism or capitalism was the best ideology to live by. Being a contest between two diametrically opposing worldviews encompassing the majority of the planet’s population, as opposed to say two football teams, the Cold War didn’t manifest itself in the same way as other rivalries.  Instead of a derby, both sides participated in a nuclear arms race. Bragging rights focused less on famous FA Cup victories and more on first moon-landings. 

But despite having been concluded for over 20 years you can still find some of the victors lamenting its loss. George W Bush mused: “It was us versus them, and it was clear who ‘the them’ were.” And while it may be surprising to hear such a renowned peace-lover and intellectual express nostalgia for a state of heightened military tensions in a grammatically incorrect manner, Bush is not alone in his views. He’s not even alone among former US presidents.  Whilst in office in 1993 Clinton joked “Gosh I miss the Cold War” as conflicts in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia brought home how unpredictable a post-Soviet world would be. Winning the Cold War had eradicated the Soviet Union, but left a void that needed to be filled and a question to be answered: who will be our rivals now? 

No star-crossed lovers they

As successive details of Rangers’ worsening financial situation have been leaked to the press, Celtic choruses of “we’re having a party when Rangers die” have grown louder. These may be two football clubs alike in dignity, but they’re hardly a pair of star-crossed lovers. But if Celtic get there way and it ends in tragedy for Rangers, what then? Perhaps more than any other, the identities of these two clubs are counterbalanced; each one validates the other. And if you think nobody would miss the unsavoury scenes and sectarian songs that accompany Celtic and Rangers whenever they clash, just remember the former US presidents who pine for a day when the threat of nuclear war loomed over us all.

The Band Wagon Reunion

"The day after Man City win the European Cup"- that was bass player Mani's prediction for the day when an eager public could expect to see a reformation of one of the great Nineties groups yet to jump on the reunion band wagon. United-supporting Mani probably thought his quip, made back in 2006 following City's modest 15th place finish in the Premier League and two years before Abu Dhabi investment transformed the club, was the sporting equivalent of declaring "when hell freezes over". Well times, as we know, have changed; maybe he jumped before he was pushed.

The Stone Roses' reunion, initially two concerts in Heaton Park, Manchester next June that will be followed by a world tour, grew to seem increasingly likely, not just as the fortunes of Manchester City improved, but also as a growing number of their peers succumbed to the temptation of one last swansong and, let's face it, one last payday. Mancunian compatriots The Happy Mondays did it in 2004, as did James in 2007, when Tim Booth rejoined the band's original line-up. Blur finally set aside their differences in 2008 only to be rewarded with a headline slot at the following year's Glastonbury, as were Pulp, the band who struck lucky when they replaced the unavailable Stone Roses for the festival in 1995, who reformed in May and made a critically acclaimed cameo at Worthy Farm this June.

Going further back, the list of rock and roll second comings is pretty illustrious: Led Zeppelin, the Police, the Sex Pistols, the Velvet Underground. But given that all those reunions ended up being temporary and not a single studio album was recorded in the brief hiatus when all those hatchets were buried, are we foolish to get excited by the latest get-togethers, and what is the effect of this phenomenon on artists trying to make a name for themselves for the first time?

Simon Reynolds, author of Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past, is clearly concerned about the potentially stifling impact that the "bands reunited" trend may have on creativity: "There is something peculiar, even eerie, about pop's vulnerability to its own history ... When we listen back to the early 21st century, will we hear anything that defines the epoch?" he writes. It's easy to see why, for many festival and concert organisers, booking acts made famous in days gone by is a safer option. The secret to the success of reunions like those of Blur and Pulp is that they chose to play a limited number of high profile concerts, thus maximising their appeal to their pre-existing and newly acquired fan bases. The limited edition approach to the comeback if you like. And for many fans that is the appeal: tick a box you didn't think you'd be able to, say you've seen Jimmy Page play live, never mind that he's in his sixties, not this thirties. This, though, clearly leaves the returning artists with a limited shelf-life - once the novelty of their reappearance has worn off, so will their ability to fill stadiums. Indeed, in the modern era it is only Take That who have managed to maintain their popularity in both their pre and post break-up eras, and that largely is due to the fact that they aren't still churning out the same old tunes they were 15 years ago.

Whether the Stone Roses reunion endures long enough for them to make a long overdue appearance at Michael Eavis's festival in 2013 (there is no Glastonbury next year) remains to be seen. But if it does it'll be hard to shake the feeling that the crowd is participating in the mass re-enactment of a musical era long since passed. Although there will always be those über-nostalgics on hand to tell you it's not as good second time around. Now, what odds on Oasis headlining Glastonbury 2020?

Ladies and gentleman, please stand for the National Embarrassment

Billy Connolly once joked that the dirge-like pace of God Save the Queen would cause the British Olympic team to be lapped during an Olympic opening ceremony. Whilst Lord Coe and co are sure to have more important matters on their mind in the build up to London 2012, it’s hard to deny that there is an element of truth in the comedian’s assessment. Its lyrics make no mention of the country it supposedly celebrates until the fifth verse, (which is never sung) and the only surprise in racing driver Lewis Hamilton’s criticism of the anthem’s length this July, with the tune still ringing in his ears following a grand prix win in Hockenheim, was that he felt it was too short and not too long. Yes, the general consensus seems to be that as far as national anthems go, God Save the Queen is pretty bad.

But it wasn’t always this way. The inaugural performance of the world’s first ever national anthem took place in London in 1745. God Save The Queen went on to become, in the words of Nicholas Smith author of Stories of Great National Songs, “the most potent national anthem in existence” and was adopted at one time or another as the national song of countries including;  Germany, Russia and Switzerland. But over time each of these countries abandoned the tune in favour of something less derivative, much like teenagers turn their back on embarrassing and short-lived musical crazes. Great Britain however, along with poor Liechtenstein, who continues to emulate an older relative who has long since ceased to be cool, are yet to grow out of it.

Let’s face it, on the modern international stage any glory the anthem may have once had, has long since faded. Compared to the call to arms of La Marseillaise, God Save the Queen is toothless. Compared to two merged songs and five incorporated languages which comprise post-Apartheid South Africa’s hymn of reconciliation, Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika, it is characterless. Not that we have to look abroad to feel inferior about our anthem. The English among us have the pleasure of being doubly discriminated. Unsatisfied with mere international embarrassment, lucky England gets the dubious honour of using God Save the Queen when competing domestically against the other home nations in most sports. And while en masse singings of Wales’s Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau and Scotland’s Flower of Scotland, raise the hairs on the back of your neck, God Save the Queen induces barely stifled yawns. No wonder English football fans are famed for their booing of foreign anthems, they’re clearly hoping to provoke a retaliation of catcalls that will spare them the humiliation of listening to another mind-numbing, uninterrupted rendition of their own.

Maybe though there is a degree of appropriateness about our national anthem. Perhaps like governments, countries get the anthem they deserve. After all, we are British, it is not just our climate which is temperate it is our temperaments too. Keep calm and carry on, that’s what we do isn’t it? Every now and then the wind of change threatens to blow, but it always dies down. We’re hardly going to decide to ditch a ditty we’ve had for over 250 years just because it promotes an antiquated social order that few of us believe in now are we? No, we should take inspiration from the stiff upper lips of our millionaire footballers, so proud that they are visibly moved to muteness as possibly the worst national anthem on the face of the planet is played out. Why, it almost brings a tear to your eye.

Beware of the clap!

If you've ever been on a plane then you'll know just how stupid people can be, because inevitably, as the wheels touch down on the runway for landing, there will be some jokers who will feel the need to clap.  This is something I've never understood. If it's a joke, then it's a done to death man walked into a bar gag, and if the applause is genuine, well for me, it's undeserved. When I board a plane the very least, the absolute bare minimum, I expect is for that plane to arrive in it's chosen destination, ideally with all parties still alive and kicking on board. I may hope for a nice inflight meal, a comfortable journey, an undisturbed sleep, but I understand that these things want them as I might, are all a bonus. But, and call me old fashioned, avoiding death by crash landing into the sea from 35,000 ft., isn't. Especially since we are constantly being told that more people die each year from severe nut allergies, or squirrel attack than in aeroplane accidents. Rightly or wrongly, I've come to believe that air travel is only a fraction behind being carried inside a kangaroo's pouch as the safest mode of transport. So the only logical conclusion to make is that the people who clap are idiots. And apparently they are not the only ones, there's a lot of clapping idiots all over the world. 

Take for instance Wednesday’s Republican Party presidential debate, shown live on TV throughout America and filmed live in front of a studio audience. Clearly there were quite a lot of idiots in the audience, who decided the best way to show their appreciation for Texas Governor Rick Perry was to clap his execution record, which currently stands at 234 not out, of which 59% are ethnic minorities incidentally. Not bad for an anti-abortionist who’s gone on record to say "I believe the right choice is life". 

The fallout of the ‘applause for executions’ incident, which has generated a fair few column inches on both sides of the Atlantic, proved two things. One that, shock-horror, the death penalty is an emotive subject and two, the simple act of clapping is a slightly more perilous business than we often think. You don’t need to look hard for examples closer to home. This Saturday will mark a close to the BBC Proms season a series of classical concerts at which the act of banging your hands together in appreciation has never been so heavily scrutinised. For the blissfully ignorant clapping at classical concerts is bad, so bad in fact, that classical music aficionados have felt the need to lay down a few rules, the long of short of which are clap only in the right places or fuck off. Martin Cullingford, the deputy editor of Gramaphone Magazine suggested concert goers “don’t clap unless there is spontaneous uproarious applause, in which case it is safe to do so”, advice which if followed by everyone in the audience would be a sure-fire way to guarantee complete silence. Cullingford’s approach however seems positively laid back though, when compared to that of Jonathan Lennie, editor of Time Out magazine and author of a hilarious open letter, (read rant), to "Loud Clapping Man Who Sits Behind Me At Concerts". Lennie’s main concern? People who begin to clap too soon after the music finish. God, Guantanamo Bay isn’t good enough for those scum. 

But while the powers that be are trying to do everything they can to keep the proles out of classical concerts by outlawing clapping, in football they’re encouraging them to actually clap more often. The minute’s silence is now all but dead as a way for football fans to commemorate their tragedies and deaths, replaced with the utterly depressing minute’s applause. We are told it is because silence is too somber and depressing whereas the celebratory nature of applause is a more fitting way to commemorate sporting greats like Sir Bobby Robson. And in certain instances, like the example given, this may be true, but surely not on occasions like that in 2008 when Manchester United marked the 50^th anniversary of the Munich air disaster with the sound of clapping instead of silence, much to the dismay of many of their fans. There is something incredibly powerful and poignant when thousands of people in a football stadium stand in complete silence that is lost in the minute’s applause. Of course, the elephant in the room is that all too often the silence isn’t silent and one idiot shouting some obscenity or another marks the occasion in an entirely inappropriate way. But whereas fans of classical music are being urged not to clap for fear they do it in the wrong place detracting from the performance, football fans are being told they have to because the game’s bigwigs don’t believe they have the self-control to stay quiet for 60 seconds when it matters. What next, two-minutes applause on Armistice Day? 

Whether it’s to show support for the death penalty, enjoyment at a concert or appreciation for fallen heroes, applause, or the lack of it, looses all meaning when we are told when and when not to do it. Of course, good luck explain that concept to Bono a man who actually gets off on the idea that the claps of himself and his audience actually send innocent Africans to their deaths.   

Just Cook Will You…

“James Martin is on a mission to transform the standard of food at Scarborough General Hospital, North Yorkshire.” On the face of it, this sentence might sound like good news. Unwittingly, you're probably thinking ‘Great, it's about time somebody sorted out the food in that place’, but then, slowly, it'll dawn on you just who James Martin is, at which point you're probably likely to emit a dejected sigh, followed by the most obscene phrase in the English language, a phrase which contains no less than three C words...Celebrity...Chef...Campaign. Then you'll probably call James Martin a cunt.

No longer content to teach an ignorant nation the frankly vital skills of cake decoration or how best to season a risotto, today's television chefs are following in the footsteps of yesterday's pop stars, by (deep breath), trying to save the world. Like everything else in the universe, it all started with Jamie Oliver. Once content to drive his scooter round the English countryside blind drunk after gorging on an over inflated sense of self-importance and first pressing extra virgin olive oil, Oliver now gets his kicks hanging around the UN building in New York pestering Ban Ki Moon for a “global movement to make obesity a human rights issue”. And on that, isn't it about time that someone told Jamie Oliver he's a little bit overweight himself? I mean we all like to have a go at fat kids in Rotherham, but if you spend your entire working life guzzling Sainsbury's taste the difference confectionary, ostensibly bought for your ridiculously named children, despite the fact they never even get near them then aren’t you a bit of a hypocrite. Talk about the sous vide calling the soufflé ramekins black.

Yes truly TV chefs are the protest singers of our time, although in the case of James Martin he's clearly lip-synching to a cover, as anyone with a TV set and even the vaguest knowledge of popular culture knows that Cordon-Bleu mad scientist Heston Blumenthal already solved the issue of hospital food earlier this year, right after he dealt with the slightly more pressing matter of the quality of snacks served at motorway service stations. And therein lies the problem: there are clearly not enough evils in this world to give one each to our talented band of celebrity chefs to solve. Of course, it doesn't help when busy bodies like Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whatshisface aren't practicing what they preach and are clearly being greedy. Not content with bagsying all the problems in the world's oceans with his Fish Fight, apparently some ingenious pescatarian preservation scheme based upon the premise that we should NOT kill all the living creatures in the seas; HFW branched out to poultry with his latest venture, Chicken Out, a campaign designed to give chickens bigger houses and access to superfast broadband launched because -  and I quote -  "I feel so strongly about the welfare of our chickens”. However, this is still small-fry compared to Oliver, who, completely unperturbed by such trifling matters as a lack of any expertise or indeed natural ability, single-handedly revolutionised the national curriculum in Jamie's Dream School. According to leaked reports his next project will see the phonetically challenged Oliver team up with everyone's favourite lowly billionaire Bono, in which the pair successfully achieve the writing off of all third world debt and all in good time for Oliver's duet with Deila Smith on the Norwich City FA Cup song, conveniently released in the lead up to the 2014 election, at which he'll be standing in place of Nick Clegg.

You have to feel sorry for the old school, those TV chefs being left behind who foolishly believe that the barometer by which they will be judged is the number of Michelin Stars awarded and not the number of fashionable causes they can lend their name too. Should we expect to see Raymond Blanc attempting to cut teen pregnancy rates in 2011? Ainslie Harriot spearheading an inner city literacy campaign and that really young looking one from Ready Steady Cook advocating the decriminalization of heroin as the most effective method of reducing the harmful impact of drugs in society? Almost certainly, yes.

Once upon a time, before he rode his high-horse onto the bandwagon, James Martin used to make fun of people who tried to make a difference, specifically those of the environmental variety. In 2009 he wrote this in the Daily Mail about the cyclists who used to frequent the roads near his countryside house: “God, I hate those cyclists. Every last herbal tea-drinking, Harriet Harman-voting one of them”. Now sadly, instead of ridiculing those who try and change this world for the better, James has joined their ranks. Such a shame.