C-List stars the perfect formula for fame

LONDON - Hollywood has its A-list heroes to sate the American appetite for gossip. The British have to make do with soap stars and reality TV losers.

This celebrity-obsessed country has developed an insatiable appetite for people who are famous simply for being famous.

Forget the stars of the silver screen, it's the small screen that counts in Britain.

And that has Dave Read laughing all the way to the bank.

The canny showbiz agent feeds mass market tabloids and gossip magazines with a constant stream of wannabes he signs up for instant stardom.

"I make my money from the C-List," said Read, 38, in his London office, its walls bedecked with framed headlines from tabloids reliving the lurid antics of his clients.

"Of course I wouldn't turn down Brad Pitt or David Beckham but they never turn out on the circuit. I go to the back door with my dustpan and brush and sweep up the soap stars."

With an annual turnover of £1.6 million (NZ$4 million) from the 24 clients on the books of his Neon Management Ltd, Read has no complaints.

"This country is completely obsessed by celebrities," he said.

Take his client Abi Titmuss. Just 18 months ago she was working as a nurse but when her television presenter boyfriend was implicated in a sexual abuse scandal, she hit the headlines by association.

Within months, she had transformed herself into a tabloid glamour favorite and is now a staple of reality TV shows.

The papers cannot get enough of her. One men's magazine ran a Christmas cover proclaiming ..."We wish you an ... Abi Titmuss." Her 2005 calendar was a bestseller.

For Read, who left school at 17 to become a DJ and run a string of nightclubs, the magic moment came with "Neighbors."

When he hired Scott Michaelson from the Australian soap opera to put in a guest appearance at a nightclub in western England, he placed a small advertisement in the local paper.

"The dollar signs first lit up in my eyes then," he said, recalling his P.R. eureka moment 15 years ago.

"There was a queue two miles long and one mile wide," he recalled. "We didn't have enough staff. There was a lot of panicking and rushing around. For a year or two I really milked the Australians over here."

With the soaring popularity of Big Brother-style TV shows in Britain, he now has to monitor every series and be on the lookout for yesterday's nonentities who could be tomorrow's tabloid stars.

Glamour models like Lucy Pinder and Michelle Marsh have also turned into goldmines for Read who is refreshingly up-front about the cozy relationships that make celebrity pay.

"I call it The Triangle," said Read who has a contract with a London nightclub, manages playboy Calum Best - son of soccer legend George Best - and has a contacts book bulging with the numbers of paparazzi and gossip columnists.

The nightclub gives Best VIP treatment and gets publicity. The photographers get tipped off he is there. They get the shots, the papers are full of the pictures.

"It's the perfect triangle. Everyone is happy," said Read, perhaps the most delighted of the lot as he gets commission from all three.

The contrast between Britain and the United States is stark.

The Americans have Hollywood superstars as perfect gossip fodder. The British, with only a sprinkling of A-list film stars, are far more obsessed by their soap stars.

"It is forever dark and raining here. That is why we watch so much TV," said Read. "Soaps attract 16 million viewers a week. Their stars are instant celebrities."

"The Americans really get behind their stars. You are a hero if you are a winner," he said. "In Britain, the newspapers are forever putting them down but could not do without them."

So he takes on new clients with a stark warning: "To achieve success, you have to take the crap. Every skeleton in the cupboard will come out."

- REUTERS