Selling celebrity in France

For a sovereign who has just inherited the 800-year-old family throne, confessing to being the father of an illegitimate child was embarrassing enough. Yesterday's admission by Prince Albert of Monaco to a second offspring begins to look like a pattern.
   
The prince formerly rumoured to be the gay Grimaldi has provided a good moment to mention France's deepening state of celebrity-mania. First some facts.

According to Thierry Lacoste, the Prince's lawyer, Albert now recognises that he is the father of Jazmin Grace Rotolo, a 14-year-old Californian. Last summer, after succeeding Prince Rainier, an exposé in Paris Match forced him to acknowledge that he was the father of Alexandre Lacoste, the two-year-old son of a former airline stewardess from Togo.

The Prince's hand was forced this time by the publication of a book by two French journalists who recount the tale of a two-week fling with Rotolo, a waitress who visited as a tourist in 1991.  "Albert and Tamara Rotolo met on the Cote d'Azur in July 1991 where Tamara had come with her husband on holiday.... She was married, Albert was careless," a "friend" told Lena Lutaud and Thiebault Dromard, the authors, who are journalists on Le Figaro.

The outlines of the story were known to readers of the British and American tabloids and celebrity magazines -- what the French call la presse people. Over the years reports of Prince Albert's brief 1991 dalliance have made news, as I was reminded by Stephanie Parker, a New York photographer who e-mailed me overnight. She took exception to my reporting in The Times today that the Rotolo episode had only emerged in the past year. She said that she had contributed to a 1998 book that covered the affair.

This was yet another reminder that celebrity reporting requires as much specialised knowledge as any other domain, from politics to finance or football. Over the years, I have dipped in and out of the business in an amateur way, covering British royal trips abroad and spending the standard 10 minutes with Hollywood stars during film promotions. You write those "interviews" as if Demi or Tom had confided in you, though the publicist was sitting alongside in the hotel suite with a stopwatch. This week a CNN crew turned up to interview me by the Paris Opera for a package they are preparing on the British police investigation into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. I tried to sound as if I had some inside knowledge though I have not the slightest reason to believe any of the conspiracy theories over the 1997 Paris car crash.

Incestuous, mutually profitable relations between the stars and their media have probably been around for ever. Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte owed a lot to their genius at self-promotion. But the mutual manipulation never came close to the industrial scale of today, with events such as the past week's Messiah-like arrival of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt.

The Grimaldis were pioneers in the craft of image management. The late Prince Rainier used his "fairy tale" marriage to Grace Kelly in 1956 to relaunch a run-down statelet as a glamour capital. Their collaboration with the paparazzi and reporters was never anything like that of Diana or the entertainment world (see the diaries of Piers Morgan, former London Daily Mirror editor, for the hilarious inside story).

But Rainier and his children Caroline, Albert and Stephanie orchestrated the reports that turned up in glossy magazines while using France's tough privacy laws to attack unauthorised cover of their lives. According to the new French book, the "Monacos" earned 525,303 euros in damages from French court rulings in their favour in 2005.

Compared with the ferocity of British and American celebrity cover, France is still on the nursery slopes. There is no Gallic Paris Hilton, Heather Macartney or Kate Moss. Thanks to the privacy law and lingering distaste for intrusion, the lovers and mistresses of celebs cannot count on filling bank accounts with kiss-and-tell stories.

But the business has been growing fast with the success in the past few years of half a dozen new magazines, the latest being Closer, Public, Guts and a forthcoming one called In Touch. Despite their English titles, they remain pretty unaggressive, in part because of the recourse to the law by stars who  make their living by being famous.  The most litigious include Gerard Depardieu, Monica Bellucci, Emmanuelle Béart and Patrick Bruel, the pop crooner. According to Hedi Dahmani, Editor of Voici, one of the biggest people magazines and a frequent target of privacy suits, French celebrities are a hypocritical crowd who use the privacy law to make money.

The politicians are now dabbling in the business, to their cost in some cases. The media last year justified reporting that Cécilia Sarkozy had left Nicolas for an advertising man because the Interior Minister and would-be president had exposed his family to the media in a very un-French way during his campaigns. He still managed to intimidate a publisher into suppressing a book on the affair last winter. The rest of the political stars are left alone, although the Paris journalism world knows who is misbehaving with whom. Rumours abound, for example, over the state of the partnership between Ségolène Royal, the Socialist favourite for the presidency, and François Hollande, the party leader and father of their four children. They would not be given a moment's peace across the Channel, where such matters are deemed of public interest. France was appalled and fascinated when John Prescott the deputy Prime Minister, was exposed in anatomical detail by a vengeful former secretary last month. French editors and journalists boast publicly that the Gallic media are above such sordid matters while joining in the gossip at Paris dinner parties.

So, where should a line be drawn ? The existence of a monarch's illegitimate children is a subject that has always fascinated le peuple and is surely of public interest given that questions of succession are involved . The Paris media colluded for a decade in the cover-up of the existence of the illegitimate daughter of the late President Mitterrand, the republican monarch for 14 years.  That was a scandal, but surely a politician's private dalliance is not of public interest unless he or she preaches morality in an especially hypocritical way. When it comes to entertainers who make fortunes out of their celebrity, however, it is fair enough that people live by reporting their antics to the millions who want that sort of thing. Everyone else can just switch off.

============ PS. Houskeeping note: I am off to the Cevennes for the weekend. They still haven't fixed the telephone, so please be patient if comments are not posted with the usual speed. 

Comments

[Peter Carrington]

“They that take the pen shall perish with the pen” is perhaps the best way to view the rights of those in the public eye to a private life. Sarkozy did, as you point out, deliberately parade his family in front of the media and in doing so did, I think, invite speculation and coverage when his marriage collapsed.

To be successful all politicians, and entertainers, must court publicity and strive for celebrity status. Failure to do so will, in today’s world, limit and constrain their success. Sarkozy and Depardieu have different professions but not, when it comes to courting publicity, different objectives. Their willingness to hide behind the law when the publicity is not to their liking is understandable – the law exists, why not use it – but hardly admirable. They are, however, fighting a losing battle. Media is, like all business, now a global activity, and those who seek the protection of the law in one country will increasingly find that the stories they want to suppress will appear elsewhere and out of reach of their lawsuit. The competitive disadvantage that this puts the local media under will lead to pressure to reform the law or to it being ignored.

The fact is that if you chose to live in the public eye you chose to have your private life exposed to the public. If you don’t want that, chose another profession that doesn’t’ require you to live in the public eye.

The other part of this issue is the “public interest” test that is so often used by the media to justify intrusive reporting. Frankly I think this is a sham. The media will report what sells, what they think their readers/listeners/viewers want to know and will pay for. Invoking a public interest claim to legitimize sleazy gossip is self-serving and dishonest. Better to admit that they are meeting an age old human weakness for gossip and nosiness.

Where the subject becomes complicated is when the media allows itself to become the victim of manipulation. The Prescott case is a classic example of this. The initial reporting of his affair was, I think, fair game. He put himself in a very stupid position and when the story broke, as he must have known it eventually would, he had to expect embarrassing and damaging coverage. The manipulation comes when his political enemies seek to use the story to gain political advantage. The idea that sexual temptation weakness is indicative of failing political or administrative skills is tenuous at best and the willingness of some sections of the media to talk this up, encouraged, fed and nurtured by Prescott’s many political opponents is much more dangerous and unwelcome.

We need a free, enquiring and adventurous media. It is the best possible protection against hypocrisy, conspiracy and abuse in those we elect. It also serves to ensure that our ‘celebrities’ are not overly glorified. If it sometimes steps over the taste and decency line then the market place is the best regulator. We can, as you point out, just switch off.

Enjoy your weekend in the Cevennes…..

[anna de brux]

Anglo-Saxon media are notorious for turning the least unworthy celebrity news into sensational if not lurid scandals.

On the whole, we don't like that in France. Yes, it's good to know what Albert de Monaco is doing, to see what gown Princess Caroline is wearing or what hairdo Stephanie is sporting but really, whether they go around doing this or that with a Tom, a Dick or a Harry is not quite that important to us. Their dalliance with film stars, playboys, bodyguards are amusing but on the whole, their private life is their business. Basta!

[Sarah Hague]

Human nature is what it is, and I'm sure that if the French had access to gossip they would buy it. Paris Match does pretty well despite its relatively tame material.

Yes, enjoy your weekend! Should be sunny at least.

[Frank Schnittger]

We elect politicians to represent us, and our nation, in the most positive way possible. For most people that just includes their stance on matters of public policy, but for others the representation is understood in an altogether more personal way. For them political leaders are supposed to be living representations of the moral order; ideal citizens to be looked up to as exemplars of how we would all like to be.

Hence, for many people, private dalliances which contradict public utterances speak to the issue of integrity and trustworthiness. If you can't trust people in their private lives, why should we trust them with our public finances, laws, and administration?

A politician, who makes no bones about his private dalliances - such as the Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, is given a pass by the electorate even in conservative Ireland. But our experience is that often those who are most moralistic in public are often also the most venal in private.

Celebrities who use privacy laws just to protect their "Brand" - to ensure all disclosures are authorised or paid for - are effectively claiming their celebrity status entitles them to be the sole arbiters of what the public should know. It’s a bit like not being allowed to criticise a tin of beans in public – because somebody else owns the trademark and your criticism might damage their “brand equity”.

You do not have an automatic entitlement to a good reputation - you have to earn it

[Denis Martin]

The French like to think that they're above "this kind of thing" but in fact, the magazines sell well, the TV shows are watched - although no one admits to buying or watching them.

[Roger Goodacre]

I don't agree with Peter Carrington that the Prescott affair is a good example of someone in public life being unduly manipulated by his political opponents (in any case it's large sections of his own party who want him to go): Prescott is getting it in the neck largely because he was one of the loudest and most sanctimonious in accusing all and sundry of sleaze in the Major administration. What is also reflected in the reaction is the incomprehension that anyone so manifestly incompetent in his duties can be kept as a leading member of the government, and be paid a large salary out of the public purse for a job with no clear responsibilities.

As to what the French public wishes to read in the press, does the French citizen really prefer to turn a blind eye to what Mitterand and Chirac get up to behind closed doors, now that we know something of their covert activities?

[femme au foyer]

Anna, that is the official French line, but magazines like Gala/Voici/VSD and Closer sell pretty well in France - even if no-one ever reads them, except at the hairdresser's...

[John Halford]

It was Harry Truman (of sainted memory) who observed "...if you don't like the heat, stay out of the kitchen". Plus ça change....

[GAG]

Some years ago, while on a South Sea island, I stood admiring a magnificent coconut palm. After a while, a local woman came and stood beside me. I commented to her about the superb tree. She turned to me and in broken English said. “Oh no sir, to us this is the most boring tree in the world.” At that moment a coconut fell from the tree and tumbled into the lagoon.
She added laughing, “And like all boring species it plants its seeds elsewhere!” I didn’t agree with her and thought I must have misunderstood what she meant. Twenty years on and I realise what she was trying to say.
GAG

[Verity]

anna de brux - That is why French public life is so drab. That is why the French have so little to talk about. They don't even properly report monster scandales like Credit Lyonaise, for god's sake! $30bn dollars misappropriated and barely mentioned because "important" people were involved. How long can you talk about the "youths" burning cars in Paris? Basta!

For zip, flare, shameless self-promotion and ground-breaking bad taste, you have to come to Britain for coverage of sluts, indiscreet political secretaries who didn't realise that throwing their legs around the Deputy Prime Minister's shoulders at a drunken office party might give the game away, and gay MPs and their rent boys. The gay MPs are often only too pleased to cooperate with the press, and can sometimes parlay a TV programme out of the deal.

Our press is somewhat more robust than the French. If you're not interested don't tune in to our media. Stick with the latest announcements from your labour leaders and strike arrangers.

[marc de berner]

I have read that Sarkozy had an affair with one of King Jacques Chiracs. If i ever mention this to my French colleagues or friends they all have a look of total disbelief... Anyone who is intrested can do a Google search, just type the following...
chirac daughter sarkozy... There are many articles on this subject, but I have never seen any in the French media...

[anna de brux]

Verity,

You are forgetting that the Anglo-Saxon media probably harp enough about these celebs for both sides of the continent (across La Manche) ans so should make French life seem "less drab" for anybody, so where's the problem?

Also, the way you say it, it is as if "our robust" press only tackles scandals which is far from the truth and fortunately so, otherwise the whole British press would be just one big Daily Mirror or the Sun.

And of course, we read all about the juicy exploits of every single celebrity at the hairdresser's just as Femme au Foyer pointed out.

Why should you want to waste your precious time and money by going out and buying these magazines just to feel that life is less drab? An hour at the hairdresser's is more than enough time spent reading on the dalliances of your favorite stars if you really believe they make your "life less drab", don't you think?

[Frank Schnittger]

Many years ago I heard a joke which went something like this: "The Times is read by the people who run the country. The Telegraph is read by people who used to run the country. The Guardian is read by people who feel they ought to be running the country. The Sun is read by people who don't care who runs the country as long as she has big boobs!"

Has anything changed in the UK, and is there an equivalent in France?

[Gareth]

It reminds me of a Private Eye comment a few months back:

To have one illegitimate child is unfortunate. To have two is plain careless.

Gareth
http://www.paris-link.com/blogs

[laurent]

Probably if that kind of french press existed, would it be successfull...
the difference is how people feels about it
You talk about scandal for Mitterand's daughter...very anglosaxon and protestant view of things.
It was notorious that he and Mme Mitternand were just good friends and not anymore 'husband and wife'. So that he had a mistress (or several affairs) was most probable and not a scandal.
And about the prince of monaco, no one really cares about his private life...we follow it for fun and jokes, or for glamour, but he's just a ruler for his (very) few compatriots, not for french
No one has ever supposed that he should be a morality model for people (at least in terms of private life, sex)