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West on the Week: “Katie Price can resist everything except attention”

Andy West takes a swipe at the week with Brangelina, Bake Off and Pricey in the firing line

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What an incredible and very sexy week!

I got to go on a date with Fred Sirieix, the handsome and oh-so-French maître d’ on the hit Channel 4 show, First Dates.

He has a new book out called First Dates, The Art of Love and this guy could paint me with his love oils any day. Ooh-la-la on a massive scale.

He has the most astounding eyes I have ever gawped into.

He gave me some great tips on how to be confident when I meet new guys, which was handy because straight after I rocked up at Trafalgar Studios to interview the Naked Magicians. Can you guess how that went?

Let’s just say the chat was very, very revealing and there was more than a rabbit in that top hat.

Let’s wave my own somewhat less impressive showbiz wand on the last week which has been an absolute storm of celerity shockers.

Goodbye Brangelina

The first I knew of the Branjelina split was when Jennifer Aniston called me up laughing, two bottles down Champagne Street (she didn’t).

The cataclysmic news was a shock to me because one of my exes recently worked in a shop in Soho which was regularly frequented by Brad and Angie and he’d been telling me what quiet, understated, happy, calm parents they seemed to be.

And yet now we’re told the FBI is investigating allegations that Brad was verbally abusive to his children on a private jet.

Turns out the jet wasn’t so private because someone (going by the name Flangelina Bowlie?) called in the police who were there to meet the Pitt on disembarkation.

I think if I had a private jet I would be verbally lovely to everyone on account of my PRIVATE JET.

I hope the split doesn’t crash into a sea of acrimony for the sake of the couple’s 300 children.

At least their relationship seemed real unlike the Lewis and Marnie ‘romance’ which is apparently now floundering on the nonsense rocks just off the coast of credulity.

Bake Off goes to Hollywood

Now Paul Hollywood is getting some stick for being the only thing Channel 4 has got for its £75 million purchase of the Great British Cake Scoff.

Mel and Sue had already said ‘3 , 2, 1…leg it!’ and then Mary Berry marched off with the tarts. I think M&S are a great loss but am I the only one who found Mary’s teeth off-putting?

In bakeries at night when everyone has left and the pastries are all alone, ancient scones tell jam-curdling stories about the Berry Monster who will come and eat the young cream horns with a mouth like a cross between Stonehenge and that machine that dug out the Channel Tunnel.

I don’t really care whether the series is better or worse once it’s left the BBC.

The chinos at the Beeb will come up with something equally saccharine and twee for us all to love and Channel 4 will shove Jane Asher in to cook a cake that looks like a boob and all will go on as before.

Give Paul Hollywood a break. He’s a bit of a numpty (I interviewed him once and wanted to squash a doughnut up his nose) but he’s only following the show that made him famous.

The worst kept secret

So the X Factor is staged?! Someone tell the Queen there must be some kind of speech she can make!

Will she return from Balmoral to help us all cope with the shock?

Didn’t we all know that the strange contestants and the awful hopefuls were cast to be there just to allow the judges to be cruel?

Have we forgotten that Leona Lewis had already recorded an album before she found X Factor fame?

The Voice (now ITV not the BBC) is cast too, it just draws a veil over the process rather than shamelessly exploiting it for our delectation.

I know people might feel cheated but those people need to wake up and smell the Sherzinger because none of these shows have ever been ‘real’.

How far behind are these people? Are they writing letters to the Mayor of London telling him about a fire on Pudding Lane? Are they complaining that Deidre Barlow shouldn’t be with Samir?

These are the kind of people who would eat a pop tart direct from the toaster without letting it cool.

The rest of us can enjoy the entertainment knowing that that is exactly what it is.

The Price is right

It’s incredible Katie Price has written so many books considering the fact she can’t spell ‘book’…or ‘Katie Price’.

But that doesn’t matter as we all love her – she’s a national institution, right?

Nonetheless, she’s been hard at it in her study, bashing away at the type writer. I think his name is Neil. And here we have it, her shiny new book.

Apparently, she won’t be reading the work because the pain is too raw. The most accurate review the thing is likely to get.

By pure chance the book is one endless soundbite bin, able to satisfy the hunger of the tabloids, TV shows, websites and magazines for days.

Is it possible the Pricey is becoming our next Oscar Wilde? He once said he could resist everything except temptation.

Katie Price can resist everything except attention.


Nancy Brown
Associate Editor