Soruce : [url="http://www.smh.com.au/news/people/spotlight-on-suri/2008/08/18/1218911561090.html"]Sydney Morning Herald[/url]

A LONG time ago, in the mists of celebrity's early years, gossip columns and paparazzi photographs were about famous people at official events.

The famous people carefully emerged from big cars before walking down a long, red carpet while waving to assembled fans. Halfway down, they posed for photographers before answering questions such as, "What brand of moisturising cream do you prefer?" and "Are you enjoying married life?"

The famous people also allowed photographers to catch them "enjoying a day at home", often in poses and outfits so contrived that they resembled waxwork dressed for a coronation preparing a steak dinner. This charade handily disguised the celebrity's real life, often a desperate, lonely, uncorseted affair carried out between official engagements.

These days, the official celebrity events are mere advertisements for the up-close, unattractive and scurrilous gossip magazine features around them. That's no photograph of a celebrity looking glum in a shop while sucking a drink through a straw! Pah! That, the magazines swear in an ever-changing array of fluorescent cover headlines, is a star committing adultery, looking ugly, losing their mind or having a tantrum.

Take Suri Holmes, daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, a two-year-old who, according to Who, rarely smiles, is consistently dressed in expensive, rather than casual, children's clothing and rarely plays in the dirt.

She is "Suri Under Siege", because she stared mutely at photographers, covered her ears and "grimaced" when she was carried past screaming fans in New York.

Famous ups the heat on Jennifer Aniston's search for happiness by showing her holding her forehead with closed eyes and mouth open beside the headline, "Jen Dumps Cheating John" and inside with the caption, "The actress is devastated - her biological clock is ticking and she was hoping to marry John before her 40th birthday next year." Poor darl. One burp in the car park and she's back to being a desperate spinster on the cusp of a barren future.

Similarly, Sienna Miller's affair with actor Balthazar Getty gets the mags huffing. Who shows Miller at a petrol station in LA with clenched fists and a pained expression, allegedly shouting, "Can you leave me alone? I'm trying to get gas and this is really harassment" before driving to a police station to complain. Clinical insanity cannot be far off.

Best of all is an image, also in Famous, showing David Beckham sporting an angry-looking sore on his upper lip beside the headline, "Eww Manky!" Amid all the crap, it is a welcome pustule of truth bursting forth.