Celebrities routinely complain about popular newspapers. But editors are quick to point out that the bellyaching celebs are happy to do business with them when it serves their purposes.
Two examples in the past week are Russell Brand and Coronation Street actor Bill Roache.
Brand, in a wonderfully entertaining Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman on Friday night, made a lot of sense in talking about the cult of celebrity.
At one point he railed against the Daily Mail and Rupert Murdoch for using the incident in which he and Jonathan Ross were damned for their phone messages to Andrew Sachs in October 2008 in order to pursue their campaign against the BBC. Fair enough.
But which paper was given serialisation rights to Brand's latest book? The Sun (prop: Rupert Murdoch). Which publisher produced the book? HarperCollins (prop: Rupert Murdoch).*
Then there is Roache, better known as that Ken Barlow off the telly. In his latest memoir,** he has devoted a whole chapter to his infamous 1992 libel case against The Sun (which he sued for calling him as boring as Barlow).
Having turning down an out-of-court settlement of £50,000, he eventually won, but the costs led him into bankruptcy. So which paper has been carrying extracts from his book? None other than the News of the World, The Sun's stablemate.
*Booky Wook 2: This time it's personal (HarperCollins, £20)**50 years on the Street (Mainstream Publishing, £14.99)
Two examples in the past week are Russell Brand and Coronation Street actor Bill Roache.
Brand, in a wonderfully entertaining Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman on Friday night, made a lot of sense in talking about the cult of celebrity.
At one point he railed against the Daily Mail and Rupert Murdoch for using the incident in which he and Jonathan Ross were damned for their phone messages to Andrew Sachs in October 2008 in order to pursue their campaign against the BBC. Fair enough.
But which paper was given serialisation rights to Brand's latest book? The Sun (prop: Rupert Murdoch). Which publisher produced the book? HarperCollins (prop: Rupert Murdoch).*
Then there is Roache, better known as that Ken Barlow off the telly. In his latest memoir,** he has devoted a whole chapter to his infamous 1992 libel case against The Sun (which he sued for calling him as boring as Barlow).
Having turning down an out-of-court settlement of £50,000, he eventually won, but the costs led him into bankruptcy. So which paper has been carrying extracts from his book? None other than the News of the World, The Sun's stablemate.
*Booky Wook 2: This time it's personal (HarperCollins, £20)**50 years on the Street (Mainstream Publishing, £14.99)
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