What really happens when we die? The question has plagued humanity for millennia, but the good, if admittedly rather surprising, news is that it today becomes the responsibility of Lost in Showbiz to knock this question on the head once and for all. The long and short of it is that the afterlife consists of a nice bit of haunting, and leave your scepticism at the door, please, because there’s proof, with news arriving this week that at least two members of the undead have opted to spend their endless existences haunting none other than celebrated author Katie Price.
Reflexive suspicion regarding these claims may be partially based on the notion that Katie (in her own way a spectre, if only of a particular type of early-2000s celebrity) clearly enjoys and now requires publicity – amply summarised by the occasion a few years ago when she turned up to the launch of her own jodhpur range dressed in a garish half-woman/half-horse ensemble that made her both the centre of attention and, if you will, the centaur of attention.
But news of Katie’s ghostly encounters should not be seen as a modern retelling of that classic fable The Girl Who Cried Wolf to the Highest Bidder Who Usually Turned Out to be Richard Desmond, and her passion for publicity should in absolutely no way diminish the perceived veracity of her ongoing haunting woes, particularly as this week she delivered conclusive evidence via a series of photographs.
One terrifying Instagram post seems to show what Price describes as “a little boy” lingering in the hallway of her Sussex home. The photograph certainly does seem to depict a boy of about five, and it’s a jarring image. What could it all mean? As if one image weren’t proof enough, Katie, who lives with her five-year-old son Jett, posted a second spooky picture: a poorly lit photograph of a mirror, in which Price claimed to be able to decipher an eerie face. “Actually looks like me,” she noted.
STOP. You may already be taking that mirror observation to what you assume might be its logical conclusion, but you really do have to remember here that Katie exists in the parallel home furnishings world of the ultra-rich, where instant-hot-water taps garnish every wall, where things open and close when you press buttons, and where Lost in Showbiz can only assume that reflection technology is at such an advanced stage that high-end mirrors have developed far beyond the mundane business of, for instance, reflecting whatever happens to be in front of them: a development that would at least partially explain some of Simon Cowell’s more outre ensemble choices.
Can it be any coincidence that this exciting supernatural news comes in the same week that Paul Burrell has been discussing his own brush with the afterlife? Absolutely not – more of which later – but just to bring everyone up to speed on the former butler’s latest activities, Burrell last month took part in the Australian version of I’m a Celebrity, during which a clairvoyant started banging on about a hitherto-unreported car crash involving Diana, which a shocked Burrell confirmed had taken place due to a handbrake mishap in the weeks prior to the Princess of Wales’s death.
How, Burrell wondered on the show, could the psychic possibly have known about the other crash? Burrell, whose first stint on the UK version of I’m a Celebrity is best remembered for his shrieks and shouting while elbow-deep in a mysterious cockroach-inhabited hole, had an intriguing way of describing the psychic’s uncanny abilities. “He reached inside me,” Burrell told viewers, “and rang a bell.”
Looking, for one moment, past the musical adornments of this former royal butler’s large intestine, you might argue that we should be wary when verification of supernatural activity comes from a man whose millennium-spanning drip-feed of sometimes unverifiable claims comes with all the transparency and believability of a Netflix Originals logo slapped on a three-year-old terrestrial broadcast. But ask yourself this: what would Paul Burrell possibly have to gain from revealing new information about the Princess of Wales? Exactly.
The inquisitive among you are surely now wondering how and why these two news items could have arrived in the same week, and Lost in Showbiz is excited to report that this is more than simple serendipity. To illustrate, we must turn our attention to the Jeremy Kyle Show, and one of this week’s guests: Rebekah Shelton. In January the former Big Brother star was on the receiving end of a supposed Twitter hacking, which announced her death and was causing something of a stir on social media until Rebekah popped up to explain that she was, in fact, still very much alive. But speaking this week, Rebekah explained that even she initially had her doubts. “For a second,” she recalled, “I thought: ‘Am I dead?’”
The answer here, when you think about it, is incredibly straightforward. Rebekah did indeed die that day and, as per the terms and conditions relating to any reality TV-star death, her introduction to the afterlife involved learning of her demise via social media.
The clear result of this is that the rest of us now exist as no more than simulations in Rebekah’s own personal limbo, and it has become the responsibility of two brave heroes – Katie Price and Paul Burrell – to reach through the ether into what we will charitably assume must be the Good Place, so that Rebekah’s journey to her final destination may be permitted by Diana, Princess of Wales and some random child who could easily be mistaken for Price’s totally alive son but definitely isn’t.
And that really is the most convincing way of framing all this, because otherwise we would have to consider a world where people suspect a former reality star of faking her own Twitter hacking, where Katie Price has been leading portions of the UK media on a wild goose chase, and where either a jungle-based psychic got lucky or Paul Burrell’s bullshitometer is in severe danger of exploding. And who would want to live in a world like that? So let’s all just kick back and enjoy our time in showbiz purgatory. If you need anything to read, there’s a pile of NMEs in the corner.
Blink-182’s yacht: a fitting memorial to Fyre festival
It was an admirable goal: a new music festival in the Bahamas for the affluent Instagram-semi-famous, with luxurious surroundings, ludicrous ticket prices and absolutely terrible music.
But, as we all know, last April’s Fyre festival descended into a shambles and, as part of US federal investigations, the festival’s promoter, Billy McFarland, has been in court this week. He is likely to serve up to 10 years in prison for wire fraud, but details of the case have made for eye-popping reading. While festival-goers were eating underwhelming cheese sandwiches, Fyre was spending $18,208 on towels, $260,000 on carpets, that traditional festival necessity, and an impressive $160,000 went on a yacht for the use of Blink-182, who – and this is the saddest part of the whole sorry affair – didn’t turn up for their show, and therefore didn’t even get a chance to board the vessel.
Fyre won’t soon be forgotten, but the yacht deserves to take on legendary status in its own right. In Lost in Showbiz’s wildest fantasies, it is imported to Beaulieu’s National Motor Museum in Hampshire for a special vehicular hall of shame exhibition, to be displayed alongside the Brexit bus and that 90s truck/motorbike combo that ended up almost blowing Anthea Turner’s head off on live TV. Perhaps the museum’s curators could set up a special recreation of Fyre festival itself, achieving ultimate authenticity and saving themselves a lot of cash by charging vast sums for entry to the special attraction, and not actually bothering to import the yacht at all.
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