10 NEWS People
THE WEEK 7 May 2022Targeted by the tabloids
In 2005, The Sun reported a
rumour that Sienna Miller
(below) was pregnant. She
was 23, dating Jude Law and
appearing in a production of
As You Like It. And she was
indeed pregnant – but less than
12 weeks, and she’d only told
her three closest friends. “I
realised pretty soon that [The
Sun] was blagging medical
records,” she told Emma
Brockes in The Guardian.
What made her think that?
“My doctor phoned and said,
‘We sent the documents you
asked for.’ And I said, ‘I didn’t
ask for any documents.’”
Devastated by the exposure,
and in a “panic”, she didn’t
continue with the pregnancy.
It was only last year that she
reached a settlement over the
phone-hacking scandal; and
though The Sun made no
admission of illegal activity,
she is convinced that “the web
was extremely large” – that
numerous people around her,
including her mother, were
targeted. But looking back,
what really shocks her is that
she was young, and vulnerable,
and yet reporters saw her as
prey, fodder for their stories.
“I heard a lot, at the time: ‘You
wanted it. You asked for it.’
Well, no. No one can prepare
you for what that experience is.
It was like big game hunting.
It’s so vicious.” Yet she does
understand the market for such
stories. “There’s a weak link in
human psychology, which is
the part that makes us
slow down on a
motorway and look
at an accident,” she
says. “That’s what
tabloids exploit.”A Tory rebel at
Westminster
Tory MP Steve Baker
is a serial rebel: his
pro-Brexit campaign
helped bring down
David Cameron
and Theresa May,
and he has now
turned on Boris
Johnson. But he
always was a bit
of a maverick.
The son of a
builder and a clerk,
he was a shy child,
says Ben Wright in
The Daily Telegraph.
Then, at 11, he won a
scholarship to a prep
school, and itchanged everything. “I was
bullied and, when I look back
on it, sexually harassed by
older girls. They tried to pull
your shorts down and give you
a squeeze.” Even so, he loved
his year there; he became more
outgoing, and “I learnt to
stand up for myself.” Later, he
joined the RAF, where he was
bullied again, and had to stand
up to senior officers. He also
acquired a taste for adrenaline-
fuelled sports, including
skydiving. At Westminster, he
says that as a “comprehensive
kid” he is “not like the other
boys and girls” in his party; he
is “willing to urinate on” their
conventions, and his politics
are “Christian libertarian...
which is enough to alienate
everyone in the room”. His
next battle will be to reverse
the Tories’ lurch to big
govern ment. It might, he says,
cost him his seat. “It’s typical
of me; it’s the precipice
moment, yeah? It’s the skydive,
the catamaran with one hull
out, the motorcycle.”The turbulent Osbournes
Sharon Osbourne’s life has
always tended towards the
extreme, says Laura Pullman
in The Sunday Times. Her
father, Don Arden, was a
notorious music manager; her
mother battled depression.
And the pair drove a wedge
between her and her brother.
“[They] pitted us against each
other,” she recalls. “One week
they loved me and then they
loved my brother. It was
always, ‘He’s a schmuck,
she’s a bitch.’” The
early days of her
marriage to her
rock-star husband
Ozzy weren’t any
easier. They argued
a lot and there
were violent
incidents; but she was
never tempted to press
charges. “I thought
it was normal and Ozzy
came from a family
that, on a Saturday
night, the husband
would go to the
pub, get loaded,
come home,
beat the wife,”
she says.
Besides, “I gave
as good as
I got. I can’t
say I never
hurt Ozzy. Of
course I did.”Wim Hof has become famous for his eponymous method, says
Hilary Rose in The Times. There are Wim Hof books and apps; he
runs Wim Hof courses; he even has his own BBC TV show. The
Dutch adventurer’s theory is that our comfortable modern lives
have stripped us of our natural resilience, and he is evangelical
about his techniques for building it back up, through a combination
of deep breathing and exposure to freezing water. The Wim Hof
Method, he says, will make people healthier, and happier. “I believe
that going into nature will change people profoundly,” he declares.
“THIS SHIT WORKS!” Hof found his calling at 17, when he jumped
into a freezing pool. In 1999 he became known as the Iceman, after
swimming under a frozen lake on Dutch TV. He has set 21 world
records, including one for the longest swim under ice, and has
performed numerous other feats of endurance, such as running
a half-marathon barefoot through the Arctic. All this has won him
a considerable celebrity following; it has also made him rich. But
money, he says, has made no difference to him, “because you can’t
buy health, you can’t buy happiness and you can’t buy strength.
I got them all before. The unconditional power of life, I have it.
Hollywood, all these actors, they are doing this. Why? Because you
cannot buy it! You can’t buy it with fame or name or money, but it
is accessible to anybody, and it’s the cold and the breathing.”Viewpoint:
The Ukrainian effect
“I have temporarily taken in two
Ukrainian refugees and suddenly find
that, for very little sacrifice, my stock
has soared. People who have regarded
me as a hard-nosed, right-wing
bastard are suddenly confused and
struggling to readjust. A woke young
relative who has despaired of my
ignorant, reactionary views on Black
Lives Matter, climate change, gender
and so on suddenly sees a halo above
my head. My mother-in-law on the
Costa Brava reports that mentioning
that her daughter and son-in-law
have Ukrainian refugees is like being
sprinkled with gold dust. Never have
I received so much praise for doing
hardly anything at all.”
James Bartholomew in The SpectatorFarewell
Michel Bouquet, veteran
French actor of stage
and screen, died
13 April, aged 96.
Cynthia Plaster Caster,
conceptual artist who
made casts of the private
parts of rock stars, died
21 April, aged 74.
Christopher Middleton,
journalist and Daily
Telegraph feature writer,
died 20 April, aged 67.
Gavin Millar, director
and arts journalist, died
20 April, aged 84.
Mino Raiola, football
agent whose clients
included Paul Pogba,
died 30 April, aged 54.Desert Island Discs returns on Sunday 8 May