Lost in Showbiz is now so used to reporting the unlikely ways celebrities chose to celebrate events in their lives it has become sadly jaded about the whole topic. It remembers a distant past, when it was slightly taken aback by the news that Hollyoaks' Jamie Lomas had spent his stag weekend handcuffed to a dwarf who had been blacked up and dressed like The A-Team's Mr T – blacking up a dwarf feeling a little like the kind of thing that might have passed for entertainment in a less enlightened era, eg about 1852 – but that was then.
So it was delighted this week to learn of two events that have restored a certain degree of WTF? to the celebrity celebration. First, we must turn to the 43rd birthday of rapper Wyclef Jean. He has, as you may already know, been having a rather testing time of it recently. A continuing New York attorney general's investigation has found financial improprieties at Yéle, the charity he set up in order to benefit Haiti. The forensic audit found that, of $3m of the charity's expenses, $256,580 went in illegitimate benefits to Wyclef and other Yéle board and staff members as well as improper or potentially improper transactions, including $24,000 for Wyclef's chauffeur services and $30,763 for a private jet that took Lindsay Lohan to a benefit gig that raised only $66,000. There was some good news: apparently the audit thought that it was "appropriate" for Wyclef to charge his own charity $100,000 for an appearance at a Monaco fund-raiser because that was his going rate.
Still, it's the kind of thing that might conceivably put a dampener on your birthday celebrations, so LiS was delighted to see that nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, the rapper marked the arrival of his 43rd year with a quiet dignity befitting a gentleman now entering middle age: by posing for a photograph naked, except for a pair of bikini briefs and what appears to be a slick of baby oil, astride a large Ducati motorbike. Of course, the carping voices were soon to be heard, loudly trumpeting the suggestion that tweeting a photo of yourself on your 43rd birthday astride a large motorbike, oiled-up and naked except for a bikini briefs etc etc was an action symptomatic of a man utterly devoid of any sense of taste or decency. To which LiS can only respond: his bikini briefs matched the stars-and-stripes pattern of his motorbike! What greater evidence of great taste – of aesthetic judgment – do you need? It also liked the accompanying message: "U can't keep a good man down! Keep a smile when they want you to frown!" Good for "u", Wyclef! Don't let "them" make you all "sadface" – say, with a load of gloomy stuff about how the Cité Soleil slum that Yéle was supposed to revitalise remains a slum, while employees of the charity managed to spend nearly $500,000 on food and drink and $375,000 on "landscaping" their office in one year alone! Get the baby oil out and celebrate!
But even the news of Wyclef's birthday celebration is cast into the shade by the saga of Jack Osbourne's stag do. This apparently took place in Las Vegas's Palazzo Hotel – so far, so normal. "I was kidnapped," reveals Osbourne. Well, of course you were. Let LiS guess: you ended up tied to a lamppost dressed like Wyclef Jean in his birthday photo? Apparently not. "My friends flew out some guys from counter-terrorism squadrons in the UK. I was tortured and waterboarded." Oh. Right.
Of course, Osbourne is entitled to celebrate the end of his bachelorhood in whatever way he chooses. Nevertheless, LiS respectfully suggests that if you want to spend your stag night being screamed at and brutalised, there's no need to fly in "guys from counter-terrorism". Simply do as some friends of Lost in Showbiz did, and walk through one of Blackpool's lairier streets on a Friday night in fancy dress, become embroiled in an increasingly frank "exchange of views" with some local gentlemen who seem a little the worse for drink, and enjoy the subsequent trip to casualty, concussion etc.
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