Thursday, April 13, 2006

Libby Rees update

The arrival on the publishing scene of 10-year-old author Libby Rees was noted here on 16 December 2005. Libby, you may recall, is from the Aultbea stable of pre-pubescent authors, and Aultbea is a firm which is chiefly famous for getting newspapers to publish wildly exaggerated stories as if they were solid fact. For details, see my post on Dragon Tamers from June last year.

Then, on 10 March 2006, I noted with some scepticism the claim that Libby was soon to host her own Trisha-style TV chat show (think UK Oprah). And now there's more.

The BBC now tells us, with cute picture, that Libby is 'helping to develop her own TV show.' Libby, it seems, has 'signed a development contract with TV production company Redback Films.' The show, under the working title Ask Libby, has 'not been commissioned yet and is still in the early stages.' In other words, it's all just a gleam in someone's eye. An idea which might happen one day but stands about a 1% chance. Tops. More realistically, 0.1%.

And who, you may reasonably ask, are Redback Films? Well they aren't actually a brand-new company, which rather surprises me. They have made a number of TV documentaries, including one about Lockerbie.

Well, as a certain novel published recently makes clear, TV companies produce some odd programmes these days. And, according to yesterday's Sun, Chantelle is to marry Preston. So who knows. Libby may yet appear before your very eyes.

'To have a TV show,' says Libby, 'would be a bit surreal.'

Yyyyyup. I think you could say that.

I suppose it would be terribly boring of me to point out that this story isn't really news at all. It's idle gossip. And to find it coughed up as if it actually meant something, by an organisation like the BBC, is deeply depressing. The BBC was once the acknowledged the source of reliable news for the oppressed peoples of this world, but the organisation was well nigh destroyed in the 1990s by the 'management guru' John Birt, and now seems beyond rescue.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry to make my first comment at you fabulous blog about celebrities and not books but I just have to rant about Chantelle and Preston. At the weekend he was on Channel Four saying there was no way he and the girlfriend were going to get married soon. He said he hates people who get married after a short time. Now they're engaged (I am wondering if making such a public statement about how he had no intention of marrying her any time soon meant he was forced to propose).

Anonymous said...

ayee. leave her alone. you're blatantly some sad little guy whose jealous of the money & publicity this girl's getting.