An
encouraging week for those of us looking for jobs we could easily do as badly
as those who have risen to them. Not only has Theresa May’s former chief of
staff Nick
Timothy unveiled a newspaper column entitled Ideas to Win – oh,
mate! – but there has been an intervention from a gentleman who once styled
himself as Mariah Carey’s choreographer.
As Lost in
Showbiz always takes pains to state, Mariah is a Proper Celebrity, a breed of
which modern showbusiness is sadly in very short supply. But, with the best
will in the world, she doesn’t really “do” choreography. In fact, as far back
as 2000, her promotional-appearance riders were reported to state that Mariah
didn’t “do” stairs. It was also revealed, by a couple who briefly vocal-coached
her, that she didn’t raise her own beverages to her mouth – and thus risk a
lipstick smudge – but instead employed “a woman that held her drink with a
straw. That’s all she does,” one of them continued, “flies around the world as
a drinks holder.”
As far as
food goes, Mariah prefers to eat reclining, once inquiring rhetorically: “If
you can lay down, why would you sit up?” She is also almost the only celebrity
on earth who doesn’t pretend they would far rather travel by public transport.
“I hate the bus!” she once shrieked merrily at an interviewer who wondered if
she didn’t miss the trappings of being broke and anonymous. “I’ve already been
on the bus; I don’t need to go back on the bus.”
Much more
recently, her stage act has shown an increasing dependence on a chaise longue
borne aloft, as troupes of backing dancers heft her around the set as she
sings. Think of her as the anti-Westlife: instead of the key change denoting
the moment she gets off the barstool, she uses it as the cue to move off it and
on to the sofa.
Last year,
footage emerged of her being pushed around backstage in a desk chair, with
underlings getting her to the wings this way, presumably the better to conserve
her energy for the moment she would have to pop herself on to said chaise
longue. Last month, she was filmed performing with maximum energy conservation
in Vegas. It would feel the most natural thing in the world were she to make
the journey from limo to hotel lift in a sedan chair, toted gratefully by two
employees who would typically describe her as “the sweetest, most humble person
in the entire world”.
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Indeed,
having previously seen choreographer Anthony Burrell utter very similar words
about Mariah on her reality show, I am highly disappointed to find him now
suggesting she’s a bit … well, half-arsed about her choreography.
“Mariah is
clear: when she doesn’t wanna do something, she doesn’t do it,” laments
Anthony, who was let go by Mariah after her televised New Year’s Eve
performance suffered embarrassing technical difficulties. “She’s performing
with lacklustre and no fucks given, and it’s taking away her star.”
Performing
with Lacklustre? I don’t know him. As for no fucks given, that IS her star.
As she
explained airily of the NYE fiasco: “It’s just something where if I can’t
explain it to the entire world, then they’re not going to understand it,
because it’s not what they do. Just like I wouldn’t understand somebody who had
a desk job and how to do that. I couldn’t. I literally am incapable of being in
the real world and surviving.”
Well, quite.
Mr Burrell is cordially reminded of this reality, while I look forward to
Mariah formally announcing her Sit Soft tour at her very earliest convenience.
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