Why it should have been ME naked on Grammys red carpet with Kanye and not Bianca Censori
IN the tub-thumping words of Seventies Motown legend Yvonne Fair: It Should Have Been Me.
Oh but it were me butt naked on the red carpet at the Grammys on Sunday night, narrowly avoiding arrest and garnering widespread public humiliation/pity.
September 7, 2008 — the night Kanye West, aka The One That Got Away, asked me out.
And a night that could have changed the course of showbusiness history forever but for a cruel, cruel twist of fate.
To recap, it was the MTV awards in Liverpool and I was there in my role as an intrepid gossip columnist.
Prior to that night, I’d never shown any remote interest in Kanye West, and TBH, wouldn’t have recognised him if he’d bowled over to me singing Gold Digger, with a lanyard bearing “Kanye West” around his neck.
After the awards, which had seen Beyonce, Katy Perry, Pink and Take That perform, (alas I’d been having a wee when Kanye sang), and several glasses of champagne down, a small man kept trying to make eye contact at the after-party.
Wearing a borrowed D&G dress, I smiled politely back at the sweet man clutching a nice glass of whisky in VIP.
Minutes later a giant security guard tapped me on the shoulder and said my presence was requested in the VIP area.
I was duly guided behind the velvet rope, and plonked in front of a man I still failed to recognise as Kanye.
“Hey, what’s your name?” he asked, laconically.
Replying, I asked him his. He looked at me oddly, and said nothing.
“Cat got your tongue?” I continued, inexplicably. “Just tell me your name, you’re being weird.”
“You’re funny,” he replied, not smiling.
By now parched, and with no champagne to be seen, I reached over and plucked his glass from his hand.
From here, I downed the contents in one before handing him back an empty crystal tumbler.
He looked a bit stunned. “So, where’s Kanye?,” I asked, ever the crack reporter.
(This story doesn’t get better for me, FYI, no matter how many times I repeat it.)
‘So, where’s Kanye’
“Huh?” he said, rapidly losing patience with the evidently insane, minesweeping blonde before him.
Two flunkies then came over asking Kanye if he needed anything.
Realisation dawned, excruciatingly, as he had someone fetch me my own drink.
We then made painful small talk for the next few minutes – before ACTUAL KANYE asked what my after-after-party plans were.
Half an hour later a bodyguard came over, took my phone, and asked me to recite my number. I did so excitedly.
I was 26. I wasn’t thinking marriage or babies. Or even a snog.
Love of my next-36-hours
But I did realise going on a date with Kanye West would make for a great dinner party story one day.
AND THEN MY NOKIA BATTERY DIED.
For the next two hours I paced the venue, pleading for a phone charger — this was 2008, remember — convinced the love of my next-36-hours was frantically messaging and calling.
Getting back to my hotel room at 4am, and plugging the stupid thing back in, I waited with bated breath. Nada.
Clearly Mr West had moved on.
Which is where my story ends. His, though, continues.
Lucky escape
While I may have had a lucky escape, I feel for his poor wife — the ironically named Bianca Censori; a woman who must be censored before she can appear in a family newspaper.
Sunday night’s debacle was painful to watch.
No one knows what goes on behind closed doors but clearly the US singer is a troubled man.
I also feel especially sorry for his two daughters with Kim Kardashian, a woman who made her name with a sex tape.
And now they have Bianca as a role model.
With his own fashion brand, Kanye is a self-styled fashion guru.
So why wasn’t he in five-inch stilettos with his winkle hanging out?
Because men like Kanye West are all about control — and I pity anyone who gets in their way.
Cher’s got a new babe, literally
SO, Cher found the love of her life at the grand ol’ age of 78.
Her whippersnapper, a chap not long out of short trousers, is a music exec called Alexander Edwards.
He is 38 years old.
Presumably, then my very own soulmate is busy reciting Humpty Dumpty in a nappy as I type . . .
WEAR BEHIND YOU, KATE
CATHERINE MIDDLETON has played an absolute blinder.
The Princess of Wales’s diktat that flunkies no longer tell the media what – or who, as posh people say – she’s wearing is long, long overdue.
By making people focus on her work, not her £400 Boden frock, she is single-handedly helping drag Buckingham Palace kicking and screaming out of the 20th century.
The breathless obsession for every sartorial spit and cough of Kate’s outfits – £3.99 Accessorize earrings!! Woman of the people!! £3,000 Alexander McQueen dress!!! She’s so patriotic!! etc – is as dull as it is weird.
Sure, she’s done loads to boost sales of lesser-known Brit designers by displaying their wares, but that’s what Google’s for.
From memory, I couldn’t tell you the make of a single suit William has worn. I am, though, aware of his great homeless initiative, his mental health campaign work and environmental Earthshot Prize.
Evidently Kate, who has so bravely and publicly fought cancer, has had a wake-up call: Life is short.
Let her get to work in marmalade-stained pyjamas if she so wishes. It really doesn’t matter.
But her legacy does.
GEN Z DOES IT
IT’S not often I agree with Gen Z, but in this instance they’re bang on.
A poll of 18 to 27-year-olds showed that more than two thirds thought sex offenders should be castrated.
For a generation famously soft when it comes to most day-to-day practices – think WFH, teetotalism, work/life “balance”, journalling and “raw-dogging” (going on long-haul journeys without headphones or screens so to be “in the moment”) – they have a decidedly hardline view when it comes to morality.
Which is no bad thing.
MISS TAKES
AH, what fresh bulls**t is this, Daily Telegraph?
The snooty broadsheet ran an article declaring, and I quote: “If a woman wants to achieve the ultimate power status, she needs to be married.
“Frankly, if you want to be taken seriously you need to be a Mrs rather than a Ms.”
Right.
HOWEVER, if one was to tie the knot . . . oh to be Mrs Crapo.
The unfortunately-named US senator, Mike Crapo, was addressing the hearing last week to consider the appointment of controversial Robert F Kennedy as Secretary of Health.
A JABS ARMY…
HOW reassuring. Around 500 prescriptions for fat jabs are being dished out for frontline troops.
Our wobbling warriors, if you will.
The drugs have been signed off at the same time as exercises are being scaled back and equipment purchases cancelled to save money.
Call me old-fashioned, but I’d like to think of my Armed Forces racing over walls and sprinting up enemy hills.
Not squishing lumps of flesh between their portly digits and jabbing their tummies of a morning.