Читать книгу Confessions of a Showbiz Reporter - Holly Forrest - Страница 15

Waiting around for celebrities might be part and parcel of my job, but no one has it as bad as bodyguards. A celebrity bodyguard needs to have the patience of a saint. Security men are meant to be on hand at all times to protect megastar X from any unwanted hassle or attention, but at the same time they have to be steadfast and invisible. In other words, they have a huge responsibility with none of the rewards. I encounter these boys all the time in my line of work – silent man-mountains who stand outside hotel-room doors or hover a few steps back on red carpets. Whatever is thrown their way, they display no emotion. As the owner of probably the worst poker face in the business, I never cease to be impressed by bodyguards.

Admittedly, even in all my years in the business, I’ve never actually seen a bodyguard have to do anything vaguely approaching combat. There has been the occasional moment where a bodyguard has had to spread their arms out wide to hold back the paparazzi or a bunch of hormonal teenage fans, but in all honesty, it seems that most of their time is just spent standing around, looking ‘hard’. And, unless bodyguards have some kind of zen-like meditative strengths, they must be bored out of their minds. It certainly doesn’t seem as exciting as Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston made it out to be.

Having security in one’s employ appears to have become less about safety and more about status for celebrities. Katy Perry or Rihanna having a bodyguard is one thing, but I’ve seen random, mid-level male actors with them too – having a bodyguard as a mark of importance instead of for protection. There’s a story that this is exactly what rock legend David Bowie did when he first went to America in the early seventies; Bowie supposedly hired an entourage of brutes to make him look like a superstar in a country where he was virtually unknown. With Bowie’s famous theatricality that kind of works – he taught Lady Gaga everything she knows – but a boring B-Lister in need of an ego boost is something else altogether.

It was one of these B-Listers who became the subject of the only story I’ve ever wheedled out of a bodyguard. This lone security man was on hire 24/7, and one day found himself accompanying his ‘celebrity’ client on an all-night drinking session around the booze dens of London without, of course, being able to touch a drop himself. He stood and watched in bar after bar, all the while maintaining the appearance that he was ready to pounce on any crazed fan that might throw themselves on this star, even though he knew that was highly unlikely to happen. I got talking to the big man before a junket the next morning while he stood in a hotel corridor and, while not exactly talkative (getting bodyguards to crack a smile is difficult enough, let alone persuading them to talk), he was so exhausted that his normal reticence was certainly less on show. His charge was in his hotel suite, he told me, pointing to the door behind him. In a bid to recover from his long night of partying this Hollywood-nearly man was getting a rejuvenating massage and plentiful room service. All my burly friend had to prepare himself with was a black coffee and a muffin, hardly fuel for another long day of standing outside a hotel room, looking tough. ‘I spent all bloody night playing gooseberry,’ he said, his stony face finally cracking under the strain. ‘I just had to loiter in the background as he snogged the face off some girl he picked up. And the worst thing is, he wants to do it all again tonight.’ I got the story of the young Lothario into a couple of papers the next day, but I couldn’t feel guilty – it made a pretty boring actor sound like a real stud, so I was probably doing him a favour.

As for the bodyguard … I salute you. You might think that being paid to essentially do nothing sounds like the greatest job in the world, but as my beefy friend will tell you, even doing nothing is tough when all you want is your bed.