Falling from grace (via coke, kebabs and kinky sex)

Space Cadet, 23/03/2003

Space Cadet is on holiday (we think). This week, Space Cadette, his better half, is helping out. All this stuff is hers. (Not the drugs, obviously.)

The three male (and I use the term loosely) members of kiddie-pop crew SClub7 were recently cautioned by police for smoking marijuana in Covent Garden. 24 hours later, when the boys in the band (another term I use loosely) were taking questions on TV, the girlie-looking blonde bloke said that he was not so much embarrassed by the incident as he was upset by it. Why? Because the police confiscated your stash?

This is in the same week that "teen pop idol" Kian Egan from boyband Westlife was punched in the face by one of his old school mates in a fracas outside a Kebab shop. Now that is classy.

It just goes to show that you don't have to be Puff Daddy or Eminem to find yourself on the wrong side of the law. That great British institution Blue Peter seems to breed undesirable characters. I came across one site, at tabloid.net (now gone) which recounts several stories of Blue Peter presenters and their fall from grace.

Recently, Richard Bacon had a famous Saturday night "12-hour bender through the nightclubs of London, guzzling vodka and snorting cocaine until 8:30 in the morning." Tabloid.net tells us that Bacon admitted his mistake in a statement on Sunday and took his punishment without a whimper. Presumably because he didn't regain the power of conscious thought until midday on Tuesday.

There were others. I remember as a small child watching with pant-wetting excitement as Peter Duncan performed death-defying feats in his Blue Peter spin-off Duncan Dares. But it was a very different kind of excitement which ensued when it was revealed in 1980 that Peter Duncan had once acted in a porn film. Tabloid.net (now gone) recalls a list of similar embarrassments for the show:

• In 1985, a video emerged showing former Blue Peter host Michael Sundin dancing in his underwear with a male stripper in a London nightclub.
• According to The Times, one of the show's first presenters, the late Christopher Trace, was forced to quit after his wife filed for divorce, complaining about "a Norwegian girl" that Trace had met while on assignment for Blue Peter.
• In 1958, the show's first producer, John Hunter Blair, boasted he had travelled across Europe using just two phrases - "Please take all your clothes off" and "My friend will pay."
• Yet another presenter was shamed in the press with stories about how he had "invited a pair of lesbians to his hotel room for three-way sex."

It brings a whole new dimension to what one can achieve with sticky-back plastic and a washing-up liquid bottle.

So what can be done to save these personalities when they have fallen so far off the rails? Well, Webathon.ugo.com (the site seems to have disappeared) is raising funds for the troubled star Gary Coleman (the funny little fella from 80's US sit-com Diff'rent Strokes) after he filed for bankruptcy last year.

Before you utter the inevitable "Whatchu talkin' 'bout?," here's the deal: The Gary Coleman Web-a-Thonis designed to raise money for the ex-kid actor, who in August filed for bankruptcy, citing $72,000 debt. (And, yes, credit cards are accepted.)

In the past 18 months, Coleman has been arrested, tried and sentenced for an attack on a reputedly abusive autograph seeker. In July, he was taken into custody for failing to pay the court-ordered $400 fine.

"I'd like to be thought of as not a charity," the 31-year-old former child star says, "but somebody worthy of giving something to. "In hyping the event, Coleman has found that, no, not everybody does want to get behind it. In a guest appearance on a local New York radio show in September, Coleman was accused of being a panhandler by angry callers. The fact that he offered to auction off his own pimp-suit perhaps indicates that the diminutive Mr Coleman is beyond our help.

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