Media trickies: Brown, Shepherd face twisting in the wind of appearances

Rarely do politicians look natural on television, but Gordon Brown’s appearance on American Idol was a sight to behold. His head catapulted from side to side, his mouth beamingly claiming how wonderful everyone was, before someone flipped the serious switch on the magic word: ‘Africa’. Before long, Brown was pledging £100 million in mosquito nets (the smile surfaced again occasionally) before signing off to an ecstatic Ryan Seacrest in the studio. This came barely a day after the British premier was seen chatting with George Clooney, a meeting about helicopters in Darfur with which the actor seemed most pleased. Unlike many stars, Clooney has credibility when it comes to Darfur, having made a documentary on it with his father – and few people dislike watching Hollywood’s last true star doing anything.

On Idol, the spectre of Brown rolling his head and smiling was inflicted on 17.6 million Americans – one has to wonder, is this not a greater cruelty? Could not the premier have maintained a dignified silence, simply donating £100 million in the name of Mr G Brown, Westminster? But surely the eagle-eyed Seacrest would have twigged – and we would have been subjected to a reluctant admission of amazing generosity from the Prime Minister, a scene worthy of the loathsome Richard Curtis’s Love, Actually. What use is generosity if no-one knows about it, runs the publicist’s adage? (But there are subtler means, as recalled in this episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.) It faintly recalls the heady early days of New Labour and Cool Britannia, when deluded pop musicians quaffed bitter and champagne at No 10, cracking open a new future with merry abandon to the fate of either parties’ credibility.

It is the manner, not the results, which is the problem. Media relations are fraught with difficulty, of course; the star sees a mirror clapping back and slips into a parallel world, where they are right and never wrong, as long as the money keeps coming. Soap star Jack P Shepherd, occasionally seen without the P*, is doing the media rounds as his character on Coronation Street reaches a head. Having previously compared himself to Robert De Niro, and sung with Ocean Colour Scene after clambering onstage, the actor recently remarked that David’s entire trajectory was down to a single calculated look he gave on set, turning the writers on their heels and forcing them to look at the character anew. (It may be true but don’t say it, one imagines soap veterans thinking.) He was on loquacious form on This Morning, impishly implying that his character had a homosexual future and ‘plenty of shower scenes’ while sharing a jail cell with a man named Bubba, forcing soap bosses to issue a retraction. Should this fever escalate, one can only fear for a moody departure, a la David Caruso or Jack Ryder – apparently for great success but actually for points unknown, bridges burning in the breeze behind them. Fingers crossed that, if he says Hollywood beckons, it actually is.

*One should note that this is probably down to mischievous sub-editing – he is Jack P Shepherd to differentiate him from Jack Shepherd, familiar to millions as Cornish detective Wycliffe.