Tens of millions of people loved Susan Boyle for her talent and her down-home looks. Now she’s gone and dyed her hair and jazzed up her wardrobe. Was she advised to change her image or is her new leather-jacket-look simply the rock star in her breaking free … Bring back the old Susan!
Controversial Australian former politician Pauline Hanson, who has made and lost a career on race-based policies, is trying to make her umpteenth political comeback - this time on an anti Muslim and African platform. Er, is that a vote winner, Pauline?
While on the campaign trail, she has reportedly been shocked by nude photos of herself from the 1970s being published in newspapers and websites around the world after an old boyfriend sold them.
But one wonders if, given the nature of her policies, she should stop being embarrassed by the photos and realise that they may be the only (ever-so-slightly) positive and widespread publicity that she will get!
Update (16 March): Some commentators say it a deliberate political ploy. Pauline says it is not her in the photos. Whatever the story, she certainly knows how to play up the publicity!
Update (22 March): Pauline wasn’t elected. The Australian newspaper that broke the nude photo story has apologised to her saying the photos were of some one else and they had been fooled by a con-man.
If, like me, you spent the 1980s jumping up and down to the camply theatrical and dirtily rockabilly punk sounds of The Cramps, you would be sorry to hear that lead guy Lux Interior died this week.
Here are The Cramps at their abrasive best:
Borrowing sounds from all over and melding them into his own “psychobilly” stew, often dressed in very little and a cross maybe between an off-the-wall Elvis Presley and Iggy Pop, Mr Interior was a crazily charismatic frontman for a crazily charismatic and now-influential band.
Mr Interior’s death has brought him masses of mainstream press that his 30 year career largely did not see.
He often said that his unique personal style was not an act but a way of life. If so, then — to kinda keep this post on topic — it’s a good illustration of the power of personal branding!
With some mildly, soft-core bedroom scenes, including one with her gay male friend from New Zealand, the thinly disguised auto-biographical (reportedly), online novel by Moscow expat, American lawyer Deirdre Dare, and her see-through lingerie photos, have taken Ms Dare to centre stage in the world’s mainstream media. Personal branding sent viral to the max.
