[James]

Here's a comment about the Chantelle book that appeared in a piece about celeb-bios in the Telegraph...

By Jan Moir
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 29/11/2006

Whatever you may think, it is not easy being a D-list celebrity. Chantelle Houghton went through suicidal hell before being catapulted to a certain kind of fame when she won Celebrity Big Brother on Channel 4 earlier this year. In Living The Dream, her autobiography rushed out for the Christmas market, the 23-year-old reveals that, boy, oh boy, did she have it rough in the early days. "Who do you ring when you've called every model agency in Essex and they don't want to take you on?" she wails in chapter four. A plastic surgeon, perhaps?

Still, mum was a brick, especially when the melodramatic miss wanted to end it all when even Page Three didn't want to know. "Poor Mum. What do you say to your daughter when she tells you that she doesn't want to live any more?" writes Chantelle, before popping around to nan's for egg and chips, and realising that life isn't so bad after all. Know why?

"The thing that made the most difference was plucking my eyebrows when I was 16. I can't imagine why I didn't do it earlier," she concludes.

Good grief. It's not just the banality of this type of celebrity memoir that makes you want to turn your face to the wall and sob, it's the empty predictability that stuns. In a titillating genre practically invented by mercenary topless model Jordan, the format remains the same; after the loving but troubled childhood comes the glossing of attributes, the plug for the new product, the false modesty and then the loud, squelching sound as the wannabe milks it for all its worth. And all this from kids who have little experience of real life — or the intellectual resources to cope with it even if they did.....

Full article HERE