Thank goodness Mark Frith is such a nerd. He’s religiously kept every fax,
e-mail and legal letter — and there have been a few — from his 10 years as
editor of the celebrity magazine Heat. “My memory’s also really good,” sighs
the 38-year-old over an orange juice at one of his old haunts, the Soho
Hotel, in central London (no celebs here today, except Syed from The
Apprentice 2, who gives Frith his business card). “My memory’s just . . .
ridiculous. I don’t know if bearing grudges is the right phrase, but if
someone’s been an idiot around me, I do remember it.”
The result is The Celeb Diaries, a fun- and feud-packed romp charting the
inexorable rise of Heat from an ailing general-interest magazine with 60,000
readers to a market phenomenon with a circulation of 600,000. It’s all
there: the time Posh saved his career, the time Jordan nearly ended it.
Lunches with Simon Cowell, fights with Jude Law, rambling e-mails from
George Michael. There’s even a scrap with the nicest man in TV, Ben Fogle,
when Heat mistakenly printed his mobile phone number. And, yes, plenty of
big idiots.
“I have . . . used it to settle some scores,” he admits. “Will Young I’m not
particularly a fan of: he’s a nasty little t***. He so rates himself. Jude
Law is a funny one. I lived five doors away from him. When I walked down the
street, he would walk in the other direction and openly grimace at me. Then,
when he got together with Sienna, he ignored me and she grimaced at me! It
became ridiculous — my own street.”
Certainly a few celebrities will be quaking, especially when they hear he’s
had to take out “hardly anything, actually. We had members of Will Young’s
family ringing up the office and screaming, which we never taped. But we had
the test case of the Piers book; hardly anything was taken out from that,
either”. Frith is unashamed that his book has borrowed the Morgan format
wholesale — same agent, publisher, editor. “I’m fine with that,” he shrugs.
“I’ve got loads of good stories as well. I’ve argued with famous people. I’m
very keen to sell copies: if people like Piers’s book, they’ll like this
one. I saw him and he went, ‘It’s all a bit Single White Female, isn’t it,
Mark?’ ”
There are differences, of course. At 6ft 4in, Frith is quietly handsome — a
fact that is emphasised more than is strictly necessary in the book. There’s
many a flirty exchange, even with the acerbic game-show host Anne Robinson.
Also, Frith continues: “Piers steamrollers over a lot of the moral
arguments. Piers’s view is, ‘I’m right and they’ll just have to deal with
that.’ I was really affected by loads of things that happened.” Certainly,
Frith is much more questioning. He is bothered about stuff, such as people
ignoring the power of celebrity culture. “People who think they’re above it
all annoy me the most,” says Frith, who, even as a child growing up in
Sheffield, was obsessed. (When he says, “I’ve read Radio Times most of my
life”, you really can see him as a five-year-old.)
So it was kind of inevitable that he would wind up as editor of something like
Smash Hits. “Smash Hits was about pop stars,” he says. “But pop died on us.”
And as editor of Heat, Frith was instrumental in turning that around.
Suddenly, you didn’t need to be a pop star or a film star, or achieve
things, to be famous.
These new celebrities were famous just for being famous, and it all started
with the Beckhams. “The modern age of celebrity started with Posh and
Becks’s engagement. Do you remember that day? They were both there in
matching polo necks. She was ‘the other one in the Spice Girls’, no profile,
reticent; he an up-and-coming footballer. They’d been styled. It was very
royal to have a photo call to announce their engagement. It felt like a huge
thing, really exciting.”
And then there was reality TV: Big Brother, Pop Idol, X Factor. The shows’
driving tenet — that celebrities are normal people in abnormal situations —
chimed perfectly with Frith’s view of fame. “I’m interested to see how
people are off duty,” he says. “They think they’re famous because of their
art, and actually it’s only a fraction who are famous because of that. Heat
debunked that: famous people look awful in the morning, too.” He pauses. “I
did sociology A-level. I find what makes people tick very interesting.”
Has he ever wanted to be a celebrity himself? “There was a time when I wanted
to be a TV presenter,” he says, referring to his stint as host of Liquid
News, “but I don’t aspire to that kind of life.” Besides, the only celeb he
ever wanted to be proper friends with was Zoë Ball. “In some ways, Zoë’s the
nicest person, but my friends are real people, people I went to college
with. I was never one of those people who was going to get sucked in.” He
ruined it with her anyway by passing off as an exclusive interview a press
release she and Norman Cook issued after her infidelity. So he’s left with
only two “celebrity” friends: one I’ve never heard of, the other is “Konnie
Huq, who went to school with my girlfriend, Gaby”. Even Gaby — they have
been together for nearly 10 years, have one son, 2½, and another baby on the
way — isn’t “into that world”.
So it’s Frith on his own, hanging around outside newsagents to see who the
paps are waiting for. His “outsider on the inside” stance has often enabled
him to see the bigger picture, such as the size-zero debate. “More and more
of these pictures would come into the office,” he says. “Someone else with
jutting bones looking skeletal. It became an epidemic. We wanted to say
‘this is not healthy’, put across a different opinion.” Was Heat’s own
coverage of the anorexic Big Brother contestant Nikki and her Tourette’s-
suffering boyfriend, Pete, okay, then? “They were positive people, and they
were saying, ‘I’ve come through this period, and here are the lessons I
learnt’. There’s a brilliant quote from Peter York, who said, ‘What the
world of celebrity is all about, what celebrity offers us, is two things:
tips and caution.’ ”
Whatever: the fact remained that Frankenstein had created a monster. This dark
side of fleeting celebrity finally crystallised last year, beginning with
the Jade Goody/Big Brother race row. “She was the most [pointless]
celebrity,” he says. “Famous for being famous, didn’t have a skill or a
talent, the very definition of a Heat celebrity. And there she was on the
main TV show of the celebrity decade in all her grotesqueness. We were
implicated in that.”
Suddenly, it sickened him. “I couldn’t see another picture of Amy Winehouse —
cuts on that bit of arm — the Mark Speight thing and Britney shaving her
hair. You pined for the days of Darius.” When the magazine printed a sticker
of Jordan’s disabled son, Harvey, with the caption “Harvey wants to eat me”,
Frith remembers “there were Radio 5 phone-ins where they were calling for my
head. Someone said it was the ‘lowest point in British journalism’. For me,
it was the beginning of the end. I left soon after”. He quit. An era had
ended, but he had the notes.
What next? Well, they’re thinking of turning The Celeb Diaries into a TV
series. Who’ll play him? “I have no idea. Brad Pitt’s a little too short.”
The Celeb Diaries by Mark Frith is published by Ebury at £14.99
Heroes and zeros: Mark Frith on . . .
Geri Halliwell Much maligned, but I like her. She’s sharp, funny and
the nearest I’ve come to being chatted up by a celebrity. She thought I’d be
good father material. It was more a height thing — I’m 6ft 4in and she’s
5ft. So for our photo, she refused to pose alongside me, and sat on my
shoulders instead.
Sienna Miller She sues a hell of a lot. She doesn’t realise she is a
tabloid creation: she was someone’s girlfriend — that’s what she was famous
for. All the people around her, manager, agents, publicity people, don’t
think readers of celebrity mags are the people who buy the tickets to go to
cinemas.
Zoë Ball She is a celebrity who is as near to being completely and
utterly normal as possible. She is brilliant: the most quotable person, open
about her hang-ups and her insecurities, indiscreet. She’s just a lot of
fun, and I think she deserves every bit of her happiness. I liked her
enormously.
David Beckham He’s fought a lot of demons, but takes his role
seriously. He’ll have had opportunities since Rebecca Loos, but he will have
made a decision between his family life and this other thing. Loos made him
aware of what he might lose. And the fact Victoria would have chopped his
balls off.
Victoria Beckham She is funny, sharp, clever and self-deprecating, and
just so interesting because she was that awkward teenager. She didn’t feel
she could smile because she doesn’t like her teeth. She never smiled in the
Spice Girls. She does have those hang-ups. Her story is absolutely
captivating.
Actually, Mark is a lovely, down-to-earth, exceedingly talented guy. I had the pleasure of working with him mainly on Smash Hits, then Sky Magazine whilst I was the publicist for the magazine publisher, EMAP, and he was nothing short of professional through and through.
Anita strymowicz, Barbican, England
Frith calls the Madame Arcati blog a 'fantasist' in his book. Yet it was Arcati that first reported he was leaving Heat when his spokesmen were denying it - Emap wanted him to edit Mojo but he had other ideas.
Madame Arcati, London,
He's made a lot of money by treating people's lives as circulation fodder to up his sales figures. I wonder how he sleeps at night?
S MEADOWS, Bristol, UK
It's a sad reflection on our society today that people like Frith can make money out of rubbishing the "celebrities" they created! Who will believe his tales?Why, the Great British public, who care little for truth but everything for tittle-tattle.
Jane, Norwich, UK
Is this book written by a man of integrity, I think not. When he said what he did about Jordans son, that was the end of his career, and thank goodness for that.
pauline ward, Derby, Derbyshire
I think the truth has very little to do with this book!
J.Rashbrooke, Hook, United Kingdom