Do you fink I'm stupid? Chantelle shows what it takes to make a million as a reality TV star(idiocy)

At first, she proffers a comment made by fellow housemate George Galloway - to whom she said, incidentally, on hearing he was an MP, "does that mean you work in the big room with the green seats?"

"What was it George said about me?" she tries to remember. "He said I wasn't as stupid as everybody thought. I was sharp as a something - a tack? Yes, a tack!"

Nice try, Chantelle, but it won't do. George Galloway thought Saddam Hussein was a very nice man.

She thinks a bit more. "Well I got seven GCSEs and I was once offered a job by NatWest - and you don't get a job in a bank unless you are clever, do you?"

Heavens. I bank with NatWest. What a terrifying prospect. I try to imagine Chantelle - queen of the Reality TV epidemic - in a NatWest uniform. Nope, it cannot be done.

Today, she looks like a particularly lurid Ikea display - teak skin, canary yellow T-shirt, fuchsia peep-toe stilettos and a bale of hair extensions that seems to have been streaked with Tippex.

She apologises for the fact that her eye is "a bit odd", and the eyelid seems to be twitching. Little wonder. It doesn't take an opthamologist to work out that if you pile the entire green section of the make-up counter on there, something is going to give.

Anyway, the twitch doesn't affect her brain, which has gone into overdrive about this "clever" business.

"Do you think I'm stupid?" she asks. "Maybe I am, but I don't think I am. I just don't see why you need to know what capital goes with what country. Why would you need to know that?

"Or politics. Boring. Who cares? Does it make me stupid if I don't want to have opinions about that? Does it?"

Who knows? Who cares? Well, quite a lot of people actually. Thanks to our celebrity-obsessed age, everything Chantelle does, says and thinks is documented, and served up for our entertainment. She truly does believe that such things are a matter of public importance.

"Maybe I should take an IQ test, to sort it out once and for all," she muses. Then she can presumably flog the results to a celebrity magazine, and we'll all be happy.

When she teetered breathlessly into the Big Brother house two years ago, Chantelle epitomised how mad our celebrity culture had become. She was a nobody - but a desperate wannabe, whose idol was Paris Hilton - placed in a housefull of "proper" celebs with a false "celebrity" CV to see if anyone would notice.

The audience was in on the secret, but the famous folk - including George Galloway, Michael Barrymore and Rula Lenska - weren't.

What happened was truly astonishing. No one questioned Chantelle's claims that she was a singer in a girl band, and in a game where the group had to line itself up in order of "famousness", she didn't even come last.

In a delicious twist, the nobody stole the show, and walked away with the £25,000 prize money, which she promptly spent on clothes that showed off as much fake-tanned flesh as possible.

Yet back in the real world, things took an even more surreal turn. Suddenly, Chantelle was a celebrity. She was on the cover of every downmarket glossy, and her hair extensions were public property.

Her place on the red carpet was consolidated when she married her Big Brother colleague Preston, from the band The Ordinary Boys. They were paid £600,000 to "share" their wedding with a celebrity magazine. Almost inevitably, the marriage was in trouble within days, and over ten months later, but no matter, Chantelle was already famous.

In short, in a world increasingly obsessed by celebrity - however pointless and shallow - she had succeeded. She had become an instant poster girl for a generation for whom fame for its own sake has become a goal to be pursued with almost religious fervour.

Now, after her own experience as an instant "star", Chantelle has "revealed" the depths of her private agony for another tidy sum. There have been claims of her bulimia and "inner torment", which would all be quite tragic had we not heard it all before quite so many times, and from people like Jade Goody, who really do have car crash lives beyond compare.

It is estimated that her earnings since leaving the Big Brother house have soared past £1million, not bad for a young woman who doesn't actually do anything.

When we meet, I'm fully prepared to hear a familiar tale of woe about how reality TV ruined her life, but I get nothing of the sort. She's positively fizzing. "Big Brother was the best thing I ever did. It's got me exactly where I want to be.

"Of course bad things have happened, but what is there to complain about? I'm on the cover of magazines. I've got a lovely new house. I've just bought a Queen-sized bed. It's French antique, but not old."

"Oh yes, I have down days. I did go home to my mum and cry for weeks. I loved Preston but we just couldn't make it work. And the bulimia thing was terrible. It was my way of coping, I guess.

"I probably need therapy, but to be honest I probably could have done with therapy before I went into Big Brother," she says, twirling one of those hair extensions round her finger. Really? Why would a 23-year-old who says everything is mostly sunny need therapy?

"Oh you know, bullying and stuff, childhood things. People resenting me. Therapy is always good because you have to talk."

But Chantelle does talk - about every single aspect of her life - and always for money. Before she entered the Big Brother house she sat her mother down and told her "every single terrible thing about my life that she might hear".

"They told me that the worst-case scenario would be that all my terrible secrets would be all over the newspapers, so I decided to tell my mother everything, even the things that no daughter should ever tell her mother."

"Yes," she grins. "But my mum was cool. She said, 'we've all done silly things'."

Chantelle talks to her mum "at least ten times a day", but her parents don't seem to exert the slightest influence. When she left school at 15 - "because I just didn't like it. What was the point?" - there was no parental objection. When she appeared once as a Page 3 girl her father seemed resigned rather than angry.

"I've been so lucky," she asserts. "I have parents who realise that I would do what I wanted, regardless. So they've always just let me be myself, which is great."

Well, no, actually. If she is honest, there have been times when Chantelle would have welcomed her mother, a sensible legal secretary by all accounts, charging into her life and saying: "No."

Now she looks back on that disaster of a marriage - she knew on the third day that she'd made a huge mistake because "I realised then that marriage was permanent" - and wishes someone had stopped her from getting hitched to a man she met in a bubble, and could barely have a conversation with.

"I said: 'Mum, why didn't you stop me. Why didn't you take me to one side and say, Chantelle - no!' Mum just laughed and asked if I would have listened. No, of course I wouldn't have.

"I don't know why I did it now. I just got caught up in the whole thing. He asked me to marry him and I went: 'Yes!' I'd forgotten that I didn't ever want to get married. I didn't want to have children. Now I've reminded myself of that again. I can be a bit indecisive, me."

Now she asserts that she and Preston were madly in love, but simply "from two different worlds".

She means they were from different social classes - he is a public schoolboy, from an academic family - but ultimately it seems to have been a case of Preston being grounded in the real world, and Chantelle living on, well, Planet Chantelle.

She screws up her dainty little nose, and paints a hilarious picture of dinner with the in-laws. "They sit round having dinner, drinking red wine and talking about stuff. It was sooo weird." What sort of stuff was discussed, and why was it weird?

She looks bewildered, as she clearly did then. "I dunno really. Politics, I suppose. I can't honestly say because I didn't understand. I'd just sit there thinking: 'My family don't do this. What's it all about?'

"When Preston came round to my mum's house, he had beer and a curry, and nobody asked him what he thought about anything.

"I'd just sit there looking at my plate, usually. If they asked me directly about something I'd just say I wasn't interested enough to have an opinion about it."

She wasn't remotely offended, or belittled, though. She wears her lack of interest in the world around her as a badge of pride, rather than shame. Although she admits that she and Preston ultimately split because they couldn't have a conversation, she didn't feel that he looked down on her.

"He said he thought it was great that I was so different to all the other girls he'd known. I liked parties and clubbing instead of going to a library or something."

There's something almost regal about the explanation as to why she and Preston felt the need to share their wedding with the world. Did it ever occur to them not to? "Actually, we did think about it, but not for very long. The way we saw it, we got together in Big Brother, watched by the whole nation, so we really felt it wouldn't be fair to deprive people of the moment we got married."

The same is true for the day they split up, the time she threw a fit and trashed their living room, and so on.

I ask if she feels she has made some sort of pact with the devil - she gets her publicity, but she has to hand over her life for it - but she simply doesn't see it like that.

"I don't mind it. Actually, no I like it. Even if it's bad stuff, I don't think I would mind. I'm in the magazines, aren't I? That's what matters.

"The only thing that does annoy me is when people say Preston and I only got married for a publicity stunt. That's horrible. I mean, if it had all been a publicity stunt we wouldn't have got married so quickly, would we? We would have strung the engagement out, and got even more money, wouldn't we?"

Eh? Since she's getting ridiculous now, I decide to join her. If "her" public was let down by a union that lasted only ten months, wasn't she morally obliged to give the £600,000 back - rather than demand equally giddying sums for the divorce "exclusive"?

She looks aghast. It is almost sweet. "Could they ask for it back? Do people think I should? Oh my God. What about the wedding presents? I'll have to go round packing up the wine glasses now. S**t. Most of them are smashed anyway."

She wonders if she was too working class for Preston, then confesses: "I don't know what class I am. Am I working class?"

A difficult one. The working classes traditionally worked. Chantelle appears to be Queen of an entire new class. What's curious is that she seems genuinely baffled by my questions about what she actually does.

"Some people go to work in a bank every day and get paid for processing cheques. I get paid for being me."

She tells me that when she fills in official forms, she puts "entertainer" in the slot for current occupation, no doubt replacing the "i" dot with a smiley face.

What Chantelle doesn't seem to grasp is that she has an awful lot of her life ahead of her, and no discernable way of filling it. Post-Preston, post-bulimia, the notoriously fickle mags will tire of her, and what then?

Girls who work in banks have visions about where they want to be in the future. Some see their path all the way to the manager's chair. Chantelle admits she has no ambition left.

"It's odd, I suppose, but I've got to where I always wanted to be. I wanted to be famous, and I am. Where do I go from here? I have no idea."

I try to fast-forward her ten years. Will it bother her if she is no longer famous? She looks stunned.

I can't help wondering what would have happened had NatWest actually got their hands on her before Big Brother did. Would they have stamped sense into her or the life out of her? It's impossible to know.

So off she totters, to count her own money instead of ours, thank God. It's a ludicrous sight, of course, but to some it must be a magical one.

The sorry truth is that hundreds of thousands of young girls would kill to have Chantelle's life. Who cares about exams and degrees and ambition and adventure when you can have instant fame - whatever the personal cost?

Oh yes, all those girls would love to walk in her shoes. And if they are emotionally and intellectually crippled by the experience - well, everything comes at a price.

No great groundbreaking revelations here, but a sad commentary on the state of popular culture.

It's also a reinforcement of impressions....when 'celebrities' say and do idiotic things in public, one might think "It's just an act" or "It was a planned stunt....nobody could POSSIBLY be THAT stupid!". There are cases where this may indeed be the case, but this article demonstrates that at least in some cases these people are indeed genuine, utterly vacuous and certifiable idiots and they have ABSOLUTELY nothing going on in their minds whatsoever except the pursuit of being a celebrity.

45 Goals of The Communist Party

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV & motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all form of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings,” substituting shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “ Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.” (note: look at what passes for art! I can hear pseudo-intellectuals now, “Oh, that lump of poo is so expressive of the artists feelings!”)

24.Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

I kinda like the whole ‘famous-for-nothing’ phenomenon, especially when the derailment starts.

It's like watching a train wreck, isn't it? It's hard to look away from a grandiose spectacle.

Unfortunately, the derailment doesn't limit itself to the parties directly involved. From the article:

She had become an instant poster girl for a generation for whom fame for its own sake has become a goal to be pursued with almost religious fervour.

I caught that, and have no problem with people wasting their time on myspace, etc. vainly proving to the world that they're "somebody". Less competition for those of that do rather than pose.

I think “Chantelle” should change her name to Chanterelle so that her name matches her IQ.

Hilarious article. One of those you just can’t believe it types.

Hilarious article. One of those you just can’t believe it types.

I'm delighted that you've enjoyed it. I couldn't stop reading, as I became more and more astonished at the huge volumes of money based upon absolutely nothing.

Some people spend their lives toiling feverishly to get good grades in school, and then are forced to take out college loans of hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to pay for advanced professional degrees.....and then they may find that when they get out of college after so many years of hard work that the occupation they had been training for doesn't want them. Or, even if they can get work, they spend decades living frugally while paying back the college loans

And then there's this absolute moron who knows nothing, cares about nothing of significance and is unable to point to a single meaningful accomplishment, and she is a millionaire.

Way more information than I am interested in.

WHAT?!

She didn't even get into itemizing all of the "bad things she's done in her life" that she told her 'mother' :-) (thank goodness)

so I decided to tell my mother everything, even the things that no daughter should ever tell her mother."

I know, I’m surprised that I read the whole thing too.

And I’m astonished that this pathetic, vapid, vacuous nit wit also made millions of pounds. You can’t make this stuff up.

This type of “celebrity” also exists in many other fields now. You used to have to actually have talent and be able to accomplish something to achieve fame and fortune, but now,......

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