How to avoid the fast lane to obscurity

By WILLY TROLOVE*

I've been flicking through a few celebrity magazines lately and they are increasingly full of famous people whom I haven't even heard of. This is a very worrying trend.

More and more people are becoming celebrities and the pressure is on those of you who are already famous to stay that way. So this week I've put together a list of suggestions to help you keep fame's fickle spotlight dancing across your plastic features.

Top of the list is, of course, sex. When you get the chance, sleep with another celebrity. It helps if the celebrity is married, allegedly gay or three times your age. If the celebrity is all of these, you are really in the money.

If you sleep with two celebrities who are married to each other, your chances of staying famous increase tenfold - especially if you sleep with them both at the same time.

Have your breasts enlarged. Have your breasts reduced. Have your breasts enlarged again. Take your breasts on tour. Have your breasts caught in a compromising position with a senior member of the Judiciary. Accidentally have your breasts photographed by the paparazzi while denying that it was your breasts caught with the senior member of the Judiciary. Sue your plastic surgeon for making your breasts so large. Sue the senior member of the Judiciary for getting in their way.

Get yourself pregnant to a millionaire American property heir, a retired German tennis player, or your fitness instructor. Demand a paternity test and then refuse the money that the father puts into your child's trust fund. Better yet, refuse the money and then accept it later on. Whatever you do, keep the papers guessing.

If possible, ensure that your baby is a clone. Name it after some doomed character from Shakespeare (for example, Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo), a 1950s film star who died in a tragic car accident or, for the sake of variety, a kitchen appliance. When you get bored, swing your baby over the railings of your fifth-floor hotel room balcony.

Come out of the closet. Go into the closet. Get caught in the closet with a vicar. Get married. Get divorced. Get married and divorced. Need I emphasise how important it is that you marry and divorce another celebrity? It is sometimes acceptable to marry your limo driver, but only if you have had four or five divorces.

Check yourself into a rehab clinic. Please note that it is no longer sufficient to just have an alcohol addiction. These days almost every celebrity has one of those. You need to check yourself into a rehab clinic with multi-addiction to drugs, gambling, sex and alcohol.

You should also have an addiction to something spectacular, such as laxatives. Feel free to fall in love with a fellow rehab patient (preferably with matching addictions), get pregnant, get married, get divorced and then have a baby - all before checking yourself out of the rehab clinic.

Contract a mysterious fatal illness which, despite all of its best efforts, is miraculously unable to kill you. When the pain becomes too much to bear, fantastically survive your own suicide attempt.

Get a record company to pay you $25 million to have a mental breakdown. Rewrite your past. It doesn't matter if your parents love you and keep in touch regularly to make sure that you are coping with the harsh world of fame, it is best if you claim that your mother is a drug addict and your father is a wife-beating pimp who sold you into prostitution.

If anyone asks, the last time you spoke to your parents was 10 years ago, when they threatened to expose to the press your underage affair with a Cabinet minister.

Do what you have to do to get on television. I know it's a given but I cannot emphasise it enough. Television is our lifeblood. Anything will do: game shows, reality shows, even the CCTV in your local department store. That's right, shoplift if necessary.

If all else fails, perjure yourself in a high-profile court case. This could be about, for example, libel in a tabloid newspaper or sexual depravity in your swimming pool.

Better yet, have yourself thrown into prison. Not only will you get a book deal, you'll have all the time in the world to write it. And every time you appear in public when you're supposed to be behind bars, the flashbulbs will ring like cash registers.

That should be enough to be getting on with for now. Keep me in the loop and when things get exciting, refer your calls to me. In the meantime, don't get caught doing anything remotely decent, sensible or selfless. That's the fastest road to obscurity there is.

* Willy Trolove is a London-based New Zealand writer.