Seedy world of child pageants are cruel – and they’re a gift to paedophiles
The Sun columnist says the tacky pageants, which are increasingly becoming popular in the UK, should stop
THE images of a tiny child caked in make-up and wearing clothing a hooker would reject as too tacky makes the blood run cold.
This particular little girl — JonBenét Ramsey — ended up bludgeoned and strangled in the basement of her own home. She was just six years old.
Her 1996 killing in the US shocked the world, put her parents and older brother under suspicion and revealed the dark underbelly of children’s pageants.
JonBenét was primped, preened and pushed into these bizarre beauty contests where deranged mothers spend a fortune on garish make-up, peroxide back-combed hairdos and the most appallingly inappropriate outfits for kids, some of whom are too young for nursery school.
These little ones should be out playing with their friends, not being thrust into prickly outfits and itchy wigs, then made to wiggle and jiggle like lap dancers.
This was the life poor JonBenét, below left, led until it was snuffed out.
Her parents, John and Patsy, called the police after they found a ransom note demanding the rather odd figure of $118,000 (£89,000).
Officers searched their house in Boulder, Colorado, and found nothing. Then, a few hours after they left, JonBenét’s father discovered her body.
The little mite had been covered by a white blanket. Her skull was cracked, her mouth covered with duct tape and she had a nylon cord around her neck. There were signs she had been sexually assaulted.
The couple were convicted in the court of public opinion and savaged by the press — but ten years later were cleared of any involvement in the murder, by which time Patsy had died.
The real killer has never been found.
Later this month, her brother Burke, who was just nine when JonBenét was killed, will appear on US TV to give his first and only interview about his sister. I can’t imagine what it has been like for Burke, to grow up under such an enormous shadow and not know the truth about what happened.
I also wonder what he thinks about his sister being part of the seedy world of child pageants and whether he reckons that had something to do with her murder.
There was a theory at the time that a pervert obsessed with JonBenét could have been the killer, but it came to nothing.
These competitions are like Christmas, New Year and birthdays rolled into one for the paedophiles and child abusers who lurk in the shadows.
Sadly, pageants are more popular today than ever, with 250,000 pushy mums thrusting their daughters on to stages across mostly middle America.
Pageants have inevitably reared their ugly heads over here — and I think they are downright cruel.
Some of the “contestants” howl in distress and cry in pain and I would go so far as to say it amounts to a form of child abuse.
No one knows whether little JonBenét paid the ultimate price for her mother’s ambition for her to be a beauty queen.
But you have to ask yourself whether the tragedy would have happened if she had been allowed to live like a normal kid, instead of being exposed to potential danger.
I’M back on air on Monday after the summer break. Many thanks to Gaby Roslin, Fiona Phillips and Lisa Snowdon for holding the fort while I was away. See you at 8.30am on ITV.
Berry nice, Halle
HALLE BERRY looks like she is hand polished by angels before she steps out the door.
She has just turned 50 and is a mum of two but I don’t think she has ever looked better – and I reckon she knows it too.
The beach shots she posted this week are seriously sizzling and will have movie bosses clamouring for her to star as a sexy leading lady, when 50-plus actresses are usually offered dowdy, mummy roles.
Which was probably the idea in the first place.
ALL of a sudden, one of my favourite foods has become “trendy”.
Posh chefs are cooking with it, supermodels are slathering their skin and hair in it and actresses are slurping bottles of it in a bid to look young. This wonderful natural product is the humble coconut.
I’m rather out of step with the fitness fashionistas, as I prefer my dose in the form of a sinful Bounty bar.
I have a secret stash behind the cushion of my armchair on the set of my TV show and woe betide anyone daring enough to try to nick one.
I keep telling myself wolfing down a Bounty (I can easily finish a whole one in a couple of gulps, like a wee dog) is a superfood and one of my five a day.
THOSE of you paying attention will have noticed that last week I made a heartfelt plea for the James Bond producers to stop fannying about and give the gig to Idris Elba.
Well, I am heartened to learn bold Idris is on the shortlist and must now be the firm favourite to be the next 007.
And by the way, Daniel Craig has surely once and for all tendered his resignation as Bond with a shockingly uncool peroxide hairdo that makes him look like Jean Paul Gaultier’s older brother.
Gene a gentle genius
I WAS fortunate enough to interview the late, great Gene Wilder shortly after the publication of his brutally honest and riveting autobiography.
Gene, who died this week aged 83, was a remarkable man with the kindest eyes and refreshingly free of ego, entourage and bulls**t.
He told me his story with candour and gentleness. When he was a little boy, a somewhat sadistic doctor told him never to upset his mother, who suffered from a heart condition, or he would kill her.
He was bullied and beaten up at school, while his wife Gilda Radner died of ovarian cancer in her early forties. Life was anything but easy for him.
After appearing in some of cinema’s most enduring comedies – including The Producers, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, which still make us belly laugh to this day – he quietly left Hollywood, saying he enjoyed the “show” but not the “business”.
The best way to remember Gene is to download his classic films, pour yourself a glass of wine and prepare to be enchanted, charmed – and to laugh until you cry.
I’M not a huge tattoo fan but am happy to make an exception in the case of great-grandmother Linda Bright.
She had a pretty lace bra tattooed over her mastectomy scars and it looks gorgeous.
Linda, 68, of Felixstowe in Suffolk, had her left breast removed three years ago. She was so upset about how her body looked, she wouldn’t let her husband see her naked.
Now cancer-free, Linda says her self-esteem is at an all-time high and she feels more like “herself”. I think her bra tattoo is an “uplifting” vision of loveliness. Good on her for sharing it with us.
JEREMY HUNT having the audacity to compare himself to NHS founder Nye Bevan isn’t just arrogant and misguided, it will also have added fuel to the inferno of the ongoing dispute with junior doctors.
Thanks to the Health Secretary’s inflammatory remarks, it’s a firestorm that will soon be completely out of control and everyone will end up losing – especially those vulnerable people who Nye Bevan wanted to protect from cradle to grave.
