Strictly star STRIPPED in front of me & left me stunned – there’s reason why celebs think they can behave how they want
IT was a typically sunny Los Angeles afternoon and I was sitting in a trailer at the ABC Studios car park watching Bruno Tonioli strip down to his underpants.
Bruno was all hot and bothered after a full afternoon rehearsing for Dancing With The Stars, the US version of the show that made him a household name, Strictly Come Dancing.
I was there, in this oven-cum-caravan, to interview him about his transatlantic life as a judge on both shows in the same week.
I had only met him about two minutes before he decided he simply had to get out of his TV clobber.
Then suddenly there he was, mere feet away from me wearing nothing but a pair of tighty whities and a very expensive-looking gold chain.
He was gesticulating wildly by now and, in between puffs on a cigarette, was tearing into then Strictly pro Anton Du Beke who had been caught out calling Laila Rouass the P-word.
“You say that to me and I’m gonna punch you in the f***ing face,” he boomed.
Strong stuff. A bit too strong for his BBC paymasters, who asked me to exclude it from my subsequent interview for this newspaper.
I would say I am very hard to shock but he had made me feel awkward during his rant about how his fellow Strictly star had made someone else feel awkward (and worse).
The irony seemed completely lost on Bruno, who has famously stripped off for the cameras on many occasions.
Common thread
You say that to me and I’m gonna punch you in the f***ing face
Bruno Tonioli tearing into Anton Du Beke
Yet I made no fuss because it was by no means threatening and only mildly uncomfortable.
Also, I had an interview to do and, well, I quite liked Bruno and he was giving me some good copy (most of which the Beeb would not later request to be ignored).
And, well, some stars are just a bit bonkers, aren’t they?
But I couldn’t help thinking later, back at my hotel, would he have done that if I was a woman?
I was reminded of that episode this week when the Gregg Wallace scandal blew up again.
Not that Bruno’s behaviour was anything like that which Gregg is being accused of.
But I would argue there is a common thread. Here was a star doing as he pleased without much of an apparent thought for whoever else was in the vicinity.
It is behaviour that smacks of a supreme sense of entitlement where the star is the only person who matters.
It is behaviour that smacks of a supreme sense of entitlement where the star is the only person who matters
Much of this attitude comes from the “talent” — a word now banned by BBC chief Tim Davie to describe those “front of camera”.
Many believe they are God’s gift to whatever line of work it is that has propelled them on to the flat screen 55-incher on your wall.
Confidence is a prerequisite of fame.
Sharp elbows will get you the audition, only then will talent get you the gig.
Bad behaviour
But while celebrities and their egos are the frontmen and women of TV shows, it is the production teams that get them on the air.
And unfortunately television is full of enablers — nervous executives and producers who will tolerate almost anything to get the show out.
When it’s a hit they care even less how badly their stars might behave.
Don’t mess with success!
Indeed, the industry is awash with bad behaviour from famous faces and anyone (honest) who works in it will tell you that pretty much every star they work with can behave like a complete **** (and it’s usually the full-strength Anglo-Saxon term used).
I can attest to this. In my many years of covering TV I met and wrote about the biggest names on the box on a regular basis and they all had their moments.
Yes, even the saintly Ant and Dec. Just ask Kelly Brook, who blamed them for her sacking as a judge on Britain’s Got Talent in 2012.
So the Gregg Wallace saga goes much deeper than Gregg Wallace, his potty mouth and allegedly wandering hands.
It goes much deeper than the BBC and its patently piss-poor complaints procedure.
It is about how the entire industry behaves.
How time after time it has been shown to foster a toxic environment where stars are considered just too important to sack, no matter how appalling their behaviour.
And it will continue to be that way until the people who perpetuate it decide enough is enough and enact the changes that are so urgently needed.
They? We won’t forget them Emma
EMMA “don’t call me a woman” Corrin has been doing her, sorry “their”, bit for gender diversity this week by appearing at the premiere of a new horror film with a brace of presumably non-female breasts, proudly on display.
The star, who plays a female character in the film, showcased the daring braless look on the blood-red carpet for the remake of the classic 1922 Dracula-inspired Nosferatu.
Vainglorious Emma insists on being called “they”, in keeping with the pronoun demands of her fellow non-binaries.
Well, we certainly won’t forget them.
Price to pay at BBC
NEWSREADER, Mastermind host and one of the only male stars left at the Beeb who hasn’t been revealed to be a sex pest, Clive Myrie has got himself into a pickle.
He apologised this week after confessing that due to “administrative issues” he had failed to disclose extra-curricular activities totalling up to £250,000.
Strict BBC rules insist that people like Clive, who are supposed to be impartial, declare what they are up to elsewhere.
Clive says he now won’t take on any other extra stuff for the time being and will instead struggle by on the £310,000 a year he gets from our licence fees (u ok hun?).
But this whole episode reveals a fundamental flaw at the heart of the BBC’s argument as to why it must pay so much.
The corporation says it is because of what the commercial sector offers. So it pays “market price”, despite insisting it rarely does pay that.
But once installed at the BBC, stars like Clive can trade on that to make even more cash in the commercial market.
So simply by having a job at the BBC, their stock rises.
That would also be the case if we paid them less.
Maybe if we did, executives could stop claiming to be skint – and then stop jacking up the increasingly unjustifiable licence fee.
SPOTIFY’S Unwrapped week is upon us, when folk with the audio streaming app take to social media to boast about how cool their music choices are.
Unless you’re a parent of young kids.
Unwrapped collates all your most-played songs to reveal a bespoke top five. So my No1 was not one of the cool new indie bands I’ve been streaming all year but a song by Taylor Swift.
Now I happen to like this particular tune but not as much as my daughter, who insists on it being streamed in the car from my Spotify account at least five times a journey.
But it could be worse. A friend with younger kids revealed her number one was Wheels On The Bus. Cool points for that one: Zero.
Ad ban a waist of time
A HARD-and-fast rule of any new public policy is that by the time it’s actually ready to be implemented, it will be completely outdated.
Take the plan to ban “junk food” ads before 9pm on telly or in paid online adverts.
We’ve heard about this since cavemen created their first brontosaurus smash burger.
And still it won’t come in until October 2025.
But even if it was introduced now it would a waste of time, as a cursory glance at social media will confirm.
The number of junk food influencers – aka snackfluencers – is expanding faster than their viewers’ waistlines.
Food porn accounts Only Scrans and El Burrito Monster already have a million followers.
Instagram and TikTok are stuffed to the gills with six-patty burgers deep fried in cheese.
Or my favourite, a burrito made of about ten items from McDonald’s.
Once again, the internet charges ahead while government puffs and pants behind it like someone from My 600lb Life.
No fan of Jim
MANCHESTER United’s new boss, Jim “local lad” Ratcliffe, has decided to endear himself to fans by ripping us off at the turnstiles.
Ratcliffe – net worth £12.5billion – has whacked up ticket prices and scrapped all concessions so my lad’s £20 ticket is now £66.
Squeezing more cash out of already fed-up Reds is quite the PR masterstroke, as the huge protests outside Old Trafford at Sunday’s Everton game showed.
Now, Unlucky Jim is being spoken of with the same disdain fans have for owners the Glazers.
But at least he can console himself that he now has his very own terrace chant, to the tune of The Beach Boys’ Sloop John B.
All together now: “Jim Ratcliffe’s a c***, Jim Ratcliffe’s a c***, just like the Glazers . . . Jim Ratcliffe’s a c***.”