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“Catch a Rising Star"
• The rise of the celebrity personal assistant (CPA)
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By
The Minx, Entertainment editor
Sunday,
21 January, 2007
Nowadays anyone who aspires to be anyone has a personal assistant.
Personal assistants, of course, aren't new. They used to be called courtiers. Louis XVIII had Cardinal Richlieu, Henry VIII had Cardinal Wolsey, Count Dracula had Igor. Fast forward to the present and politicians like Tony Blair, George Bush or London Mayor Ken Livingstone have too many to name (only for politicians they are usually called Special Advisors).
First rule, for a personal assistant, whatever your nominal title, never ever forget you are an acolyte not an equal. Your boss made you and he can unmake you. Courtiers and PAs who start to identify too closely with their employer and harbour delusions of grandeur should remember the fate of Cardinal Wolsey, who started to think himself the equal of King VIII. He even built an even larger palace than the King's own, at Hampton Court in England. Retribution was swift, the King appropriated the palace and Wolsey lost his position, his lands and status.
When things get really tough the courtier must take the flak, even in extreme circumstances, fall upon his own sword for his or her boss. Or take the rap for the the gun if a member of a rap star's entourage. In criminal circles courtiers may also act as enforcers and eliminate troublesome opponents.
In political circles, courtiers who have fallen from favour are often maligned by rumour and innuendo, spread by the politico's inner circle. UK PM Tony Blair's erstwhile courtiers Peter Mandelson and Alistair Cambell used to specialise in this sort of black propaganda.
In entertainment circles the modern day courtier is known as the celebrity personal assistant (CPA for short). Some celebrities even travel with groups of courtiers, an entourage. And nowhere are celebrity egos larger or CPAs more servile than in Hollywood where, it is commonly believed fame is infectious and just being close to a star means you might catch a little bit of their star dust.
In Hollywood these put upon courtiers have their own professional association, the ACPA (Association of Celebrity Personal Assistants) which stages regular training seminars, and has a website. This explains the role of the modern CPA thus: “The evolution of stars and their personal secretaries has witnessed the emerge of modern-day personal assistants who are multi-tasking machines possessing the most resourceful, creative, thoughtful, creative, insightful and results-driven abilities”.
And by do they need to be. According to According to Breitbart and Ebner, authors of the searing "Hollywood Interrupted" … "Every celebrity, by design and necessity, is a narcissist. The desire to become a star requires an incredible appetite for attention and approval. To achieve fame and its accoutrements takes laser-like focus and a nearly commendable ability to stay self-centered in the service of the dream. Maintaining celebrity is a 24-hour-a-day process requiring a full-time staff to solidify the star's place at the top of the social pecking order."
So what does it take to be a celebrity CPA? Here are some tips from CPAs themselves in Jake Halpern’s new book “Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths behind America’s Favourite Addiction”:
1. Good Health: “Don't get sick." You are running a celebrity’s life and if you get sick their life just can’t stop.
2. Abandon All Personal Ties: “The job is easier if you don’t have a spouse, or kids or even plants.”
3. Put Your Employer First at all Times: “Your job is to keep them feeling up at all times. You don’t have time to think about yourself .”
4. Never Say No: “You have to be a can-do person. If there is one word that celebrities don’t want to hear it is No.” Don't EVER forget it.
5. Accommodate All Requests, however absurd or extreme:“ as in "Roseanne Barr wanted dancing poodles in tutus for her son’s birthday.”
6. Never Refer to Your Own Needs or Opinions : “If your employer has to think about you, it detracts from thinking about themselves.”
7. Be prepared to be humiliated on a regular basis. And perform the most menial and trivial of tasks.
8. Don’t Expect Any Time Off, Ever (especially if you work for Sharon Stone).
9. Always take the Blame. A celebrity is NEVER wrong. See also 3.
10. Never Forget, you are Always Disposable.
Frankly the role of a CPA shows neither star nor assistant in a good light. CPAs are there primarily, to hold up a self-reflecting mirror to the star, and woe betide them if it gets cracked. At the end of the day they are still only employees.
If you are a female CPA to a high profile male celebrity, there are other dangers. Sleeping with the boss can be a high risk strategy, when the wife finds out, as Sports CPA Rebecca Loos found to her cost when Victoria Beckham sent her packing after her alleged affair with David, Victoria's footballer husband. Today Loos says she can no longer find work in her original career as the publicity around her relationship with the Beckhams effectively left her black-listed.
A celebrity who only employs "yes" men and women, employees whose job security depends on them telling the celeb only good news, inevitably gets distanced from reality. Problems are concealed or spun and old friends turned away by CPAs whose livelihood depends on keeping the star dependent on them and more importantly, retaining their salary and associated perks. Some even start to embezzle money from the star's account. Leonard Cohen's savings disappeared in this way as his manager and (family friend) believed it was her entitlement.
All this sycophantic pandering, naturally feeds the star's ego and makes them ever more demanding and detached from reality. Nor is it easy to please them.
CPA Dean Johnson comments:
“Celebrities generally have so little control over what the public thinks or the critics say that when they get home they need to exercise the most monumental control. The daily minutiae. Organic raisins versus sun-dried. And if you get sun-dried they have to come from the booth on Third Street and not the one round the corner on Colorado.”
Still star-struck? Read Jake Halpern's new book "Fame Junkies" for the inside story on CPAs.
“Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths behind America’s Favourite Addiction” by Jake Halpern (Houghton Mifflin 2007).
For a "Roman a clef" read "the First Assistant" and "the Second Assistant" by Clare Naylor and Mimi Hare. These novels by two Hollywood insiders contain some thinly disguised portraits of real life Hollywood celebrities and throw an all too realistic spotlight on the vacuity of the world they inhabit. (Pan 2006).
OntheLam 2007
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Copyright OnTheLam 2006
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