Hoarders: Tony Curtis and Tutankhamun. Photograph: CompositeTony Curtis was buried on Monday with many of his earthly possessions, according to the Las Vegas Sun. But how does he compare with that other famous tomb hoarder? Tony Curtis His Stetson hat. Seven packets of Splenda. An iPhone. A travelling bag packed full of favourite photos and letters. A model of his 25th-anniversary Trans Am. Driving gloves. Cash. A pair of his grandson Nicholas's baby shoes. Two watches. Stones he had collected. Tutankhamun 139 ebony, ivory, silver and gold walking sticks. Musical instruments. Lamps. Six chariots. Two thrones. Ritual beds and headrests. Gilded statues. Chests. Clothing, including tunics, kilts, gloves, scarves and headdresses. Ebony gaming board. 30 jars of wine.
Gamu Nhengu was eliminated from The X Factor on Sunday night. Photograph: Ken McKayDeath threats, Robert Mugabe, comments from the foreign secretary, calls for a judicial review – ladies and gentleman, it's popular light entertainment show The X Factor! A few decades ago, ITV's early evening slot was occupied by AJP Taylor, who garnered ratings in their millions for delivering straight-to-camera lectures on subjects such as the great war and the Russian Revolution. (TEXT 50741 if you think Lenin invented the Iron Curtain, or 50742 if you think it was essentially constructed against him by the capitalist European powers.) But as you'll be more than aware, Toto, we're not in Kansas any more, and the presiding genius of today's schedules is a man whom any regular readers of this column have come to know as the Karaoke Sauron. He is, of course, Simon Cowell, and he's currently beaming his subliminally hypnotic masterplan into your home twice-weekly. Taylor's programmes were widely regarded by fellow academics as frightfully vulgar, so one can only speculate about what the professors and proletariat of yesteryear would have made of the endless cavalcade of snot and tears that now constitutes primetime entertainment, or indeed of the Facebook group "Cheryl Cole to die a painful death", or the viral BlackBerry message informing the Chezza that "Every1 has a bullet for you". But first, a recap. On Sunday night's edition of The X Factor, nation's sweetheart Cheryl Cole opted against putting the sweetly talented young Zimbabwean Gamu Nhengu through to the live studio rounds of the competition. Instead, she preferred to advance two ladies who had . . . well, I believe the technical term is "lost their shiz" during their auditions, one of whom presumably reminds Cheryl of a particularly damaged version of herself. Alas, Gamu has since suffered what tabloid journalists traditionally refer to as a "double blow", in which two disproportionate setbacks are yoked together to imply some kind of parity, when none exists. A classic "double blow" would be Jordan failing to land some knicker contract in the same week as discovering her child was blind and afflicted by a growth defect. And so with Gamu. Not only has she missed the chance to lose out on a quarter-finals place to 1 Direction's version of You Raise Me Up, but she is likely to be deported back to Zimbabwe, after her mother's visa expired in August and the application to extend it was turned down. It seems that not only did Mrs Ngazana make an administrative error, resulting in the application being judged "out of time", but she has reportedly claimed benefits to which she was not entitled. Well. I need hardly tell you that the Sun, Mail and Daily Star have finally found the sort of benefit-dependent immigrant family they can get behind, and their ability to hold two contradictory positions at once has rarely been more grimly hilarious. Thus it was that Cheryl woke to bleeding heart Mail headlines about Gamu's "visa woes", with wickedly disingenuous reports larding on the accusations that she'd sparked a "race row". So Cheryl's security has been stepped up after imbecilic threats on her safety, while the roads arounds Gamu's Clackmannanshire home were closed after crowds gathered bearing banners protesting her X Factor elimination. Encouragingly, the matter has already reached the offices of state, with foreign secretary William Hague accosted about it at the Tory conference, only to declare: "We mustn't do things differently just because people are in the news." It's not a view shared by Scotland's external affairs minister Fiona Hyslop, who has written to the home secretary and the immigration minister asking them to reconsider on the basis that: "Gamu has demonstrated that she is a hugely talented singer and a great asset to Scotland and the country's music scene." Meanwhile, the family's lawyer seeks a judicial review, while Gamu's MP Gordon Banks has written to the Scottish secretary. "What we've got to hope," Gordon tells Lost in Showbiz, "is that the media doesn't just focus on this one case, but looks at the whole issue of the way out-of-time cases are handled." Good luck with that . . . If only Chezza Cole could be involved in them all. "Yes," sighs Gordon wistfully. "I feel sorry for the others." And yet, even among such stiff competition, arguably the most absurd aspect of the whole business is the suggestion that Cowell has made a misstep in excluding Gamu. To get some perspective on his "howler", let's consider a previous observation of reality TV ubermensch Mike Darnell, president of alternative programming for America's Fox network and a man we might reasonably decribe as post-moral. Mike was once asked if he rued anything about Who's Your Daddy?, in which an adopted woman was invited to guess which of a group of men was her father. His only regret? That the inevitable controversy the show generated was "outside the programme – so it doesn't translate into ratings". It seems reasonable to suspect Cowell holds a similar worldview. So if the Gamu saga results in significant numbers of viewers switching off their sets in disgust, then we can start talking about missteps. But if, come Saturday night, The X Factor's ratings only increase, then I think we may chalk up another victory for Sauron, and salute him once again for creating a system so devilishly shockproof that the house always wins.
Jeremy Kyle: public intellectual? Photograph: Ken McKay / Rex FeaturesIt was barely a month ago that this column speculated that Jeremy Kyle was attempting to rebrand himself as a public intellectual, so imagine its delight to note him sharing a platform with George Osborne at this week's Tory conference. Jeremy was chairing a fringe meeting entitled Getting Britain Back To Work, during which he said clever things such as: "Here is a lady who wants to work and says she can't afford to. That ain't right, is it?" Despite such invaluable contributions, a potentially tragic pattern seems to be forming. Last month Jeremy had dinner with Peaches Geldof; this month he's palling round with George Osborne. There are less provocative ways to goad someone into ending it all for you, Kyle, and if next month finds you taking tea with that woman who put the cat in the bin, we pray you'll seek the help you so desperately need.
Know the rules and when to break them. Photographs: Corbis; Gallery Stock; Getty Images. Digital retouching by Philip Partridge for Guardian Imaging As tiny, pretty mega-talent Cher Lloyd stepped on to the X Factor stage last month in shimmer foundation, squashed-spider eyelashes and over-pruned brows, only for Louis Walsh to trill, "You're 16? Wow! You look much older!" my heart sank. Poor Cher, she'd truly Turned Her Swag On, but the world of beauty is befuddling. We're bombarded with wild expert advice every single day, when what we really need is a list of rules average women can live by. Thankfully, I've written some:
Your routine
Wash your face. Clean, mud-and-dried-ketchup-free skin is the cornerstone of being more bonkable. This sounds obvious, but it doesn't stop lab coat-clad fembots leaping out at you in department stores, haranguing you on "your routine". Always say: "I cleanse, tone and moisturise twice daily!" Never say: "I fall into bed spangled drunk twice a week, leaving a perfect Turin Shroud of me on the pillow." For pure amusement, try questioning one of the lab coats intricately on what toner actually does. Like Yakult, Kerry Katona and your appendix, nobody actually knows.
Eyebrows
Carefully plucked eyebrows transform a face. It's also like safe-cracking in its precision. During my "beauty journey", I've had Ming The Merciless peaks of evil, a bald patch like Vanilla Ice and a period drawing the whole lot back on in pencil stripes. The latter gave me a scary claymation Medusa effect, which wasn't entirely what I'd hoped for. Do: let an expert pluck them and then maintain yourself. Don't: tattoo your eyebrows in, unless you own a white tiger and are part of a magic troupe working out of Vegas. And remember, you can always stop plucking altogether and let nature run amok, if you don't mind looking like a monobrowed Cro-Magnon woman lurking in a pit awaiting the invention of Superdrug.
Facial hair
General rule of thumb: ladies, try to be less hirsute if you're in the market for straight men. Never shave facial hair unless you want to look like Brian Blessed. Under-25s, take advantage now of easily manageable facial hair, because post-35 it will take a venomous turn and begin growing spikily from the lip region downwards, complementing your ever-accentuating neck wattle. Enjoy. X Factor contestants about to expose themselves to high definition TV, learn from my mistakes: start bleaching/waxing now before an avalanche of cheery, helpful emails arrives saying, "OMG – You iz well hairy like Snuffleupagus off Sesame Street, innit."
Foundation
A good base foundation should be virtually undetectable, mirroring the precise shade of one's skin, chosen with time, love and care. Or, in reality, chosen on the hoof, in a lunch hour, with one eye on handbag thieves, under harsh strip lighting, on a patch of wrist skin three shades different from your face. Choosing foundation sucks. Women's dressing tables are littered with too-light "Nosferatu" foundations (suitable for use only on the two days leading up to a planned sickie) and tubes of far-too-dark gloop viable only after a holiday circumnavigating the sun. Important: YSL Touche Eclat is a concealer to be used sparingly, not a lifestyle choice to counteract a daily bottle of sancerre.
Lipstick
Full, pouting lips are crucial to any look, so it's important for women to find their perfect lip shade. Do this by wasting money every two weeks on at least one expensive rouge lipstick that, once you have left the shop, turns out to be too berry, too Royal Mail-box red, too silt puddle brown or too zany raspberry for your skin pallor. Eventually, by sheer chance, you will find the lip shade of your dreams; one that complements your skin, makes your eyes "pop", a mere sweep of which makes you feel sensuous and infallible like red-carpet Angelina Jolie. It will run out, whereupon you'll visit the department store beauty androids, who'll tell you it's now discontinued. Thoroughly beaten, you'll return to an old unsuitable dark purple lipstick, secretly aware your friends call you "Beetlejuice".
Neutral lips
At least twice a year you will be informed by beauty sections that "neutral make-up" is "a big story". This will be accompanied by a photo of otherworldly creatures such as Rose Huntington-Whiteley or Giovanna Battaglia wearing lip colours called things like "Nude", "Now't There" and "Jack Shit". You will obediently scamper off to buy a sheer lipstick that makes no impact on your face whatsoever and serves only to remind you that you're a mere mortal who, sans make-up, terrifies the recycling man.
Eye make-up
Women don't use their wedding-day photo as their Facebook/Twitter avatar out of deep respect for the institution of marriage. No, it's because it was the only day a professional did their eye make-up and showed them the extent of the woman they could be, if they only had someone with 15 years' experience, on £200 an hour, following them around each day, titivating their eye sockets with 10 different brushes. Doing your own eye make-up is fiendishly impossible; try one of the "simple smokey-eye" tutorials on YouTube, which will be a woman sat on her bed screaming, "Blend the grey into the black, then take the brown over the socket and blend to the grey!" which you do, making your face look like a child's painting of a blizzard. Other general rules of eye make-up include: Purples, teals and navys worn together will always make you look like Angie Watts off EastEnders circa 1985. Never wear false eyelashes during the day, unless you want to look like a day-shift lapdancer popping out for a pasty. Glitter: ask yourself, "Am I one of the Scissor Sisters?" No. Will the people in the Nuneaton branch enjoy my news of the voluntary redundancy package more, just because my eyes say, "Party!"? Liquid eyeliner curls and flourishes: if you must, but you're supposed to look like Betty Boop, not someone out of the Piecrust Players' version of Wicked. Most important: make the choice. Big eye make-up or strong lipstick. Never the two together, unless you're appearing in La Cage Aux Folles.
Fake tan
If you can't face daily make-up, at least be bronzed! There's no shame in it! Many intelligent, independent women today are in utter denial as to their true skin tone, wasting oodles of their life stood in paper knickers in a portable tent being sprayed Walnut. "You might want to put some old sheets down to sit on for the first 24 hours till it's set!" my woman often says, milking me of cash and leaving me the colour of Lidl chicken tikka. Warning: fake tanning is highly addictive. In fact my own husband had no real idea of my true ethnicity until several years after we married when he pulled back the duvet one morning, between appointments, to find my real-life bottom shade is akin to Farrow & Ball Borrowed Light. "I thought I saw you peeling once, and we'd not been on holiday," he muttered sadly. My ancestors didn't traverse over the Egyptian deserts on camels, they traversed down Botchergate, Carlisle, in a Vauxhall Rascal. I'm not sure what part of Northern Ireland Christine Bleakley's family comes from, but it was clearly the Latin Quarter.
Russell Brand can't count Michael Parkinson as one of his fans. Photograph: Steve Mack/FilmMagic Breaking the most welcome of silences this week comes Sir Michael Parkinson CBE, whose attacks on both modern talkshows and Russell Brand are immensely significant. They signify he's got a new book to promote – and according to Michael's own website, "Parky's People is witty, always perceptive, often wise and never less than compelling reading." How we've got through two full sentences without observing that Parky came from humble mining stock I do not know – Sir Michael himself would never dream of covering such a syntactic distance without foregrounding the heritage that equipped him to burrow up the backsides of a thousand celebrities, armed with only a Davy lamp and the hardhitting inquiry: "May I say you're looking beautiful?" As indicated, this week Parky took it upon himself to lament the "foolish ambition" of celebrities who think they can be chatshow hosts, as well as going on Five Live to call Russell Brand pointless, artless, unfunny and creatively dull. "I would say he has been a very lucky man," expanded Parky, so adept these days at keeping the bitterness out of his public pronouncements. "I mean, Rin Tin Tin had a very big career in Hollywood and he was a dog." Well. Lost in Showbiz admits it only saw the trailer for Russell's most recent movie Get Him to the Greek, and spent much of the ensuing main feature staggered at his apparent inability to deliver a line – for an accomplished standup to fall short of even a one-note performance would appear quite a feat. But I doubt Brand could give two hoots. He is apparently entirely untrammeled by self-doubt, affianced to a gorgeous popstar, and milking a period in which misguided folk keep giving him lucrative movie roles. Indeed, were anything to make one reflexively warm to the old chancer, it is surely his having incurred the disapproval of Britain's pre-eminent paradigm of professional Yorkshire-dullard smugness. As for Parky's wholly unwarranted slight on Rin Tin Tin, one can only conclude that having spent so long entombed in those celebrity colons, he lacks the perspective required to appreciate what F Scott Fitzgerald called "the whole equation" of motion pictures. Rin Tin Tin could open a movie, and did so time and again. For years, he was Warner Bros's most bankable star, and it was his pictures that saved the studio from bankruptcy. He was only retired after the advent of talkies, at which point his natural limitations were exposed, but until that time he could take direction and emote as well as, if not better than, most of Hollywood's humanoid silent stars. The German shepherd certainly possessed better timing than Parky, whose chief means of reminding us of his existence over the last few years has been to pop up at other people's moments of extreme distress and make some desperately called-for interjection. It was he who judged the days after Jade Goody's death to be the perfect moment to brand her "ignorant" and "puerile" and just another one of those "poor benighted people making arses of themselves". Of course, it would take a staggeringly benighted person not to see that every financially motivated moment of Jade's last days was informed by her desire to bequeath her sons a better life than the grimly abusive childhood she herself had endured. Yet preferring instead to fart out ovine observations on broken Britain, Parky missed this most tragically interesting aspect of the woman, once again proving Craig Brown's brilliantly sparse observation that "he has a complete lack of curiosity about anyone". Unable to turn that laser-like focus on himself, Parky has always failed to realise that part of the reason people embraced reality-TV contestants was because they had come to find the packaged and managed celebrity machine epitomised by his show utterly dull. A significant portion of viewers grew so fed up of watching the likes of Parky lube up celebrities for another confected anecdote that they actually preferred to watch talentless no-marks argue about blinking, if only for a bit of authenticity. Still, with his website informing us he is "now an international celebrity himself", do consider Sir Parky the last word in self-effacement. To this end, we shall play out with Lost in Showbiz's favourite passage from his autobiography, which finds him recalling his days as a club cricketer for Barnsley. Though Parky's ambition to play for England was "thwarted" – in fact he was laughed out of trials for Yorkshire – one who did make county was his Barnsley teammate Geoff Boycott, of whom Parky scrupulously observes: "He wasn't the most greatly gifted player on our team." Well of course he wasn't. Poor old Boycs, though – he only had his second-string cricket skills to make the best of, whereas you sense the real talent on that Barnsley side could have had his pick of opening for England, becoming an international celebrity, and quite possibly leading the free world, if he hadn't felt so very, very privileged just being little old him on the telly for more than 40 years and for more money than you could dream of. 'Appen there's nowt so radged as pikelets, and so on.
Joan Collins: 'I'm not into Botox.' Photograph: Erik Pendzich/Rex/Rex Features Time for a proper celebrity, as darling Joan Collins invites Hello! readers into the gracious home she shares with her husband Percy, a mere 32 years her junior. A preposterous urban myth has Joanie coming off stage somewhere and announcing: "I'm desperate for a fag – and I don't mean my husband", but Lost in Showbiz has always regarded the couple as entirely devoted to each other, and so they seem during an adorable interview in which Percy explains that he doesn't want to spend any time away from her, especially when "at any time, this gift of life could be taken away from you". As Joan once joked: "If he dies, he dies." (A line nicked off Anna Nicole Smith's old man, J Howard Marshall, but we forgive her.) But it is the erstwhile Dynasty star's lament for the dearth of modern glamour that has made the headlines this week, with various newspapers taking ludicrous offence at her suggestion that she "can't think of any really beautiful actresses" other than Angelina Jolie, pointing out that Jennifer Aniston is "cute" but could hardly hold her own with the likes of Lana Turner or Ava Gardner. "Wrong," honked the Daily Mirror, who proceeded to suggest that Katherine Heigl was a dead ringer for Ingrid Bergman. Oh, Daily Mirror! No, no, no . . . Really, no. Anyway, all that remains is for Joan, 77, to once more refute those tired rumours of plastic surgery, when as she has repeatedly explained, she does it all with Vaseline and makeup. "I'm not into Botox or 'lifting'," she declares. "Believe me – I've seen such sights, it's put me off totally." What can you say? Other than: Joanie, promise never to be a stranger.
Cheryl Cole sings – but not in her own words. Photograph: Daniel Gilfeather/Rex Features This week's most overspun showbiz story is Cheryl Cole's "revenge" on Ashley, in which we are encouraged to believe that a track on The X Factor judge's new album is a vicious attack on her former husband – even though it was written by someone else entirely. "Cheryl didn't write the song herself," the Sun explains breathlessly, "but she approved the lyrics." Don't you love that "approved the lyrics"? Clearly, the styling signifies a progression from the "Because we're worth it" catchphrase Cheryl has already made her own – in fact, it smacks of nothing so much as a US political campaign ad. This column simply will not be happy until every one of madam's public utterances – from individual X Factor judgments to unchallenging R&B videos – ends with her facing the camera and dimpling: "Ahm Cheryl Kerl, and ah approve this messudge."
