Gareth Gates

Flop, Idle
Gareth Gate's autobiography does have one secret, apparently. From Private Eye 1.11.02

Flop, idle
Right from the Start
Gareth Gates
(Virgin Books, £9.99)
RIVETTING though the arguments over the Booker may have been for those who still believe literary merit and bookselling are in any way connected, a look at the
bestseller lists should be top of the reading list for next year's judges.
And how long before television produces Book Idol, in which the three people in Britain who still have pretensions to literary garndeur will be e Painstakingly whittled down to one over 52 weeks, and the public will vote for none of fhem and elect Andy McNab president instead? It might at least alert the literati that the dumbing-down debate is whistling in the wind. The books most people actually read are already so dumb they will soon be coming with instruction manuals. Pace Lisa Jardine, all the public really wants is annotated photo albums of faces off the telly.

Hence Gareth Gates's autobiogy Anyone who has taken an interest in his short career will know that Gareth is a very young pop singer who was a nobody until he came second on Pop Idol, a contrived ITV ratings winner in which he was a cherubic, stuttering pawn. His 'story so far', therefore, reads "Nobody. Pop idol (2nd). Watch this space"
But if the public can stomach , or indeed embrac two Geri Halliwell autobiographies in two years (between which the update was "became, androgynous; took up yoga") they will indeed be rushing to the shops to pick up the life-story of an 18 year old who can at least sing.
You get 18 years in 79 Pages for your tenner, telling a tale so dull it gives dltchwater a bad name. The subjects are how it felt to found a career on not winning a TV show,the story behind his subsequent singles (which is that he didn't write them) and a whole chapter devoted to how much girls love him (and remember, this shag-happy sex-machine is so totally not gay that he always reciprocates - Gareth has clearly not heard of protesting too much).
In the cat-sat-on-the-mat prose that is the parlance of the celeb glossies, we also learn when he got his first big tooth, that he's a Christian and how he wants to help he homeless. His is a story of triumph over adversity. The triumph? Not winning a TV talent show. The adversity? A stutter which turned out to be his biggest vote-winner.

There is, however, one intrigui ng thing about Right from the Start.
Throughout the text, the occasional word is highlighted in colour. As a sequence these words make three sentences a conundrum that is by far the book's most interesting feature. Together they read "Gareth started singing every day to friends. The great response was so fantastic and girls decided they wanted to be his girlfriend. Gareth focused on music."

Its hard to avoidthe conclusion that this precis of his entire life is a piss-take - a three-sentence summary of a book within that same book, as if the publishers are laughing at the futility of the whole undertaking. Let's hope all the kids out there get the message.

To bash the boy wonder himself tor putting his name to a pre- chrlstmas cash-in is not fair.

Doubtless this was an afternoon's interview with ghostwriter Sian Solanas, who by coincidence also scripted Pop Idol: The Inside Story of TVs Biggest Ever Search for a Superstar. Gareth is just the latest in a line of TV faces whose managemen look to diversify their media portfolio with random biographical flotsam peddled as the inside line.

The bestsellers list in the Christmas run-in consists of Gareth Gates, George Best, Geri Halliwell, Victoria Beckham, Robbie Williams and soon Will Young, all airing their pre-laundered dirty linen All are either tied-in to people on TV, or official TV tie-ins. But not one of them is a book in the "words with meaning" sense.