Hilarie Stelfox: Footballers’ Wives is not a work of fiction
Sep 11 2010 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner
THE only surprising thing about the revelation that Wayne and ‘Waynetta’ Rooney are having, shall we say, marital difficulties, is that it’s taken so long to happen.
Theirs, it almost goes without saying, was a relationship doomed from the start, as seems to be the case with most celebrity liaisons.
Cynics might venture that it’s difficult to understand why superstars bother at all with lavish weddings and gushing interviews in Hello! and OK magazines (except as a nice little earner, of course) because we all know what the outcome will be. Such marriages have about as much chance of survival as an ice cream sundae on a hot afternoon in Dubai.
There’s something intoxicatingly heady about the mix of wealth, fame and power that clearly makes people like our Wayne, John Terry, Beckham and Ashley Cole - to name but a few – feel invincible and invulnerable. They are the modern-day gods of Olympus, or that’s probably how they come to view themselves. Throw Katie Price into that mix and you’ve got the start of a pantheon.
Publicist Max Clifford has said that no matter what Rooney does he will remain a hero to his millions of fans. He’s one of the lads and, god help us, a role model. Even if he never intended to be or wanted to be.
Yes, this week, I’ve come over all stuffy and old-fashioned.
I am tut-tutting because our Wayne is not just a husband and action hero, he is also a father. A man with responsibilities.
If it was just a matter of he and Coleen, poor girl, battling it out in the divorce courts – which they will eventually – then I’d say, draw up a seat and enjoy the show. It’s one that will run and run, with a changing cast of characters. A living soap opera for our delectation. You thought Footballers’ Wives was made up? You couldn’t make it up.
But there’s son-of-Rooney, baby Kai, to consider. Like all babies he deserves a stable family background and a father he can look up to.
This is something more important than the ability of his parents to buy Burberry booties or homes with swimming pools. There’s no doubt he’ll be a rich kid because as well as Rooney’s millions Coleen has profited from her role as footballer’s wife.
Even this week there has been the sound of more lucre hitting the bottom of her piggy bank.
With either spectacularly bad timing – or ‘no-publicity-is-bad-publicity’ good timing – Littlewoods announced that Coleen, ‘fashion icon’, will feature in a new television advertising campaign. They’re calling it Nice Boots Camp and Coleen is to be seen putting recruits through their fashion paces, offering style advice because she’s clearly so stylishly stylish she’s got style to spare.
Perhaps she’ll also be sending Wayne to a boots camp so that he can focus on his football and forget about £1,200-a-session kiss-and-tell slagettes.
But really, there is no hope of a happy ending in all this, for either the Rooneys or society as a whole.
Rooney could well have been a talentless nobody on the dole, with Coleen knocked-up at home in their council flat, had he not displayed what I’m told is a magical gift for football. But he’s rich beyond the wildest dreams of most people on this planet and too young and ill-educated to deal with it. If, indeed, anyone can deal with it. Look around and tales of miserable, dysfunctional billionaire families are legion.
Just the other day there was a report, based on a survey of 1,000 people, by an American University, that suggested the happiest people are not those who earn vast amounts of money. In fact, an annual household income of £50,000 – what Rooney probably earns in a few days – is the optimum for contentment.
And yet it remains the ambition of so many in these days of instant celebrity to ride the rollercoaster of fame and fortune, be it through Big Brother, the X Factor, football or soap operadom, despite all the evidence that this rarely reaps the happiness they think it will.
No doubt, even as I write this, there are scores of wannabe WAGs lining up to take Coleen’s place.
And the saddest thing of all is that this was a rags to riches/teenage sweethearts love story all rolled into one that could have been so inspiring. Now it’s just a sordid mess.
