Out of the Poo and Onto the Telly
Fellow Scrivener Matt Quartermaine has drawn my attention to the latest person to achieve overnight ‘Internet stardom’, the UK’s Charlotte Taylor aka ‘Poo Girl’. The nineteen-year-old optician’s assistant from Sunderland was attempting to retrieve her handbag from one of the Portaloos at the recent Leeds Festival when she became wedged face-down, bum-up, in the toilet. As she lay there awaiting rescue, her face suspended mere inches from the accumulated faeces of hundreds of concertgoers (many of whom were there to see former Stone Roses singer Ian Brown, a pun opportunity that was, surprisingly, ignored in the many tabloid accounts), I wonder if she foresaw the opportunities opening up before her. That wasn’t a putrescent swirl of indie music fan-shit she was staring at, but a future in show business.
By the time she’d been dislodged and hosed down by the fire department, she’d already been anointed Poo Girl and clocked up over 2000 hits on Facebook. By now you can buy a genuine Poo Girl hoodie, although why you would want to, I cannot imagine; surely the only thing sadder than being Poo Girl herself would be getting around town in an authentic Poo Girl windcheater or, worse, a dodgy knock-off. Poo Girl has now been profiled by Sky News and interviewed by the Sun (‘Meet Girl Who Got Stuck in Lav!’), where, in an acceleration of general show business practice, she has already knocked a year off her age. Poo Girl must have big plans and doesn’t want to seem over the hill too early. There are so few roles for poo-splattered women as it is.
It is perhaps a piece of bad luck for Poo Girl that the Internet got to her first. Had our own Max Markson flown in early enough, he would surely have come up with a less faecal moniker: ‘PortaGal’ or ‘Longdrop Lass’, something they could have forward-promoted on Richard & Judy. That’s what he did with Clare Werbeloff, the already almost forgotten ‘Chk Chk Boom Girl’. I was one of millions who was amused by, and, as it turns out, fooled by, the famous Kings Cross vox-pop of a few months back. And when, a couple of days later, the media started referring to the ‘Chk Chk Boom Girl’, I had no idea who they were talking about. Like most people, I hadn’t even noticed her supposedly iconic finger-gun work. It was the hilarious racism that everyone was talking about. Shouldn’t she really be known as the ‘Fat Wog/Skinny Wog Girl’? You have to admire Markson’s ruthless skill in saying, ‘Well, that’s not going to get her onto Rove – did she say anything else in that clip we can use?’, but I believe it was this disingenuousness, rather than the revelation that the whole thing was a set-up, that quickly turned the public against her. We enjoyed laughing at the ‘wog’ comments. The sudden emphasis on the ‘chk chk boom’ was like being told off for laughing at a dirty joke. The air seems subsequently to have escaped from the Werbeloff balloon. There is no sign of the promised Chk Chk Boom Girl album (one shudders to think what cover versions await Poo Girl. ‘Stuck in the Middle with Poo’? Quickly, think of your own), or reality series, although I’m told that something called Scammers is on the way. Perhaps David Cronenberg will be directing and Werbeloff’s head will explode in the opening scene. But, in a couple of weeks, Movie Extra subscribers will be able to see her professional screen debut in episode four of The Jesters. Werbeloff essays the character of ‘Bather’. She has no dialogue but her breasts remain in the foreground of a single shot for approximately ten seconds, although an almost immediate focus pull renders them blurry for most of it. And, as a final indignity, both ‘Clare’ and ‘Werbeloff’ are misspelt in the end credits.
This, I suppose, is the danger when you’re famous for just one thing. Very rarely is there a second act. Remember the Paxtons? That little scene at the very end of Welcome to Woop Woop and then nothing. ‘Party Boy’ Corey Worthington? His sunglasses ended up getting more gigs than he did. Mark David Chapman? Never did manage to follow up his original hit (Maybe lose this – Ed).
In the pre-Internet days, it was much harder to become an overnight household name. Getting stuck in a Portaloo or making your cat play the piano wasn’t enough. You had to pull off something big, such as faking your own kidnapping. This was the approach taken by Australia’s Fairlie Arrow, although even this didn’t lead to much, apparently. For several months, the ‘In Production’ listings at the back of Cinema Papers promised us something called The Big Smoke with Arrow and Warwick Capper but, sadly, the film was never made (Capper would bounce back two decades later with Yobbos Up the Guts).
Before consigning Fairlie Arrow to the Chk Chk Boom file, I decided to run her name through Google. It turns out she’s kicked on in the States. Now an independent distributor of MonaVie, an antioxidant health drink, her website CV reveals she ‘spent four years recording for Sony Records’, co-hosted the ‘Toughman World Championship Series’ on the Fox Sports Network, co-created the ‘Las Vegas World Invitational Showjumping Extravaganza’, and, as a ‘three times world lightweight kickboxing champion’, has released a bestselling series of kickboxing workout tapes. She also claims she can help you ‘Learn how to create leveraged income’, although there is no mention of her famous attempt to do just that on the Gold Coast in 1991.
Through her inspiring example, Fairlie Arrow proves that pissweak and irrelevant overnight fame can lead to bigger things. And rather that, than having to return to the original well. Which is good news for Poo Girl, in particular.
Tony Martin is the Melbourne-based author of ‘A Nest of Occasionals’ and ‘Lolly Scramble’. Podcasts of his radio show ‘Get This’ are still available for free download at iTunes (type in: ‘Get This: Richard Marsland Lives’). He is currently directing new episodes of ABCTV's ‘The Librarians’.
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