Betty's Utility Room

Celebrity deaths often seem to occur in threes. Last week there were 3 unnaturally early deaths. Former Chelsea footballer Peter Osgood set a new precedent for attention-seeking by dying at a funeral. Comedienne Linda Smith died unexpectedly of cancer at the age of 48. Last and receiving the least coverage was Jack Wild, one time star of the musical Oliver. The reason that he received the least attention is that he followed the classic trajectory of the child star: a short-lived fame followed by obscurity and the bog standard drink problem all contributing to his eventual ill-health.

I've just been reading that Macaulay Culkin is considering quitting acting to take up sports management, spends a lot of time alone and can find no acting work whatsoever. He's also gone through a problem with drugs. Virtually all former child stars have lost their marbles, and many have never recovered them, from Judy Garland onwards.

The 1970's were littered with annoying child stars who went through their season in hell.
Lena Zavaroni went from casting a black cloud over early '70's light entertainment to a lifelong battle with anorexia.

Phil Collins appeared as a cherubic child model on knitting patterns, and ended up writing confessional songs about how he split from his last wife to replace her with a younger model, and how awful it was.

Steve Marriott of the Small Faces had started out as a child actor - the Jack Wild of mod, as it were. He ended up dying when his bed was set on fire by a "jazz cigarette" he'd forgotten to extinguish because he was so stoned.

Keith Chegwin seemed during my childhood to be ubiquitous on television, usually appearing in some aimed-at-kiddies' drama where he got to wear a purple corduroy jean jacket. He ended up getting divorced from Maggie Philbin off of Multi Coloured Swap Shop and lived in an alcoholic daze for several years. Unfortunately, after his recuperation he returned to television. As the eminently sensible Blanche off Coronation Street recently observed "you don't want to see Keith Chegwin shouting at you first thing in the morning". How can anyone who is a recovering alcoholic be so relentlessly and annoyingly upbeat?

Little Jimmy Osmond may have claimed to be a Long Haired Lover From Liverpool but who knew that the jowly Mormon was secretly shooting up smack until he was 27? Junior Showtime big cheese Glynn Poole has spent a number of years in jail for extortion, robbery, assault, drug dealing - where do you start? Even at the height of his fame there were signs that the squeaky clean image was just a front for darker forces: the song "Milly" "Molly" "Mandy", "Sweet" As "Sugar" "Candy"" contains more streetwise drug references in the title alone than, say, Happy Mondays' Squirrel And G-Man album.

Perhaps I should stress that, occasionally, child stars do go on to be relatively level headed people and may achieve a lasting fame. Even Michael Jackson managed to have a highly lucrative career for a number of years despite being on some other astral plane, possibly due to being unnaturally talented. His chickens seem to have come home to roost these days, mind. Oh, and Tucker Jenkins off Grange Hill went on to be Mark Fowler off Eastenders, then Mark Fowler in the Bill. I have seen him interviewed on the telly a few times and it has to be said he seems to be the world's least charismatic man, which may have helped him stay sane in the upside down world of celebrity.

These days there don't seem to be child stars - their appeal has faded at the same time that society has dictated that paedophiles are the BOGEYMEN of the modern age. I mean, Lena Zavaroni in those little girl dresses and ankle socks and ringlets on prime time tv these days would be a bit SICK, wouldn't it? Instead, these days pushy parents just bung their sons into a football academy where they come out at the other end stupid, spoilt and sex mad, or their daughters into the Sylvia Young School for a few years where they come out at the other end neurotic, scraggy, blonde, cultivating an eating disorder, ready to be a television presenter and marry a footballer. It's great to live in 2006, isn't it?