Sandra Harris Writes

  WHEN CELEBRITIES GO TO HEAVEN… BY SANDRA HARRIS. © It’s always sad when anyone we know dies, but when celebrities die, even if we’ve never met them in the flesh, it gives us a special kind of shock. It’s usually because they’ve played such a big part in our lives, maybe even in those all-important formative years. We’ve bought their records and listened to their music and pondered over their lyrics during hard times and difficult years. We’ve been to see their movies in the cinema, then watched them again on television and later bought the DVD, which we then watched until it fell apart. When someone mentions a specific year, we’ll often be immediately transported back to that magical period in time when we listened to So-and-So’s album to death, or went to see So-and-So’s movie on that fabulous summer’s night when we lost our virginity down by the lake to the girl with the strawberry blonde hair and the braces on her teeth. I remember being devastated when Christopher L...

LIFE LESSONS FROM LOVE ISLAND, or, THE JOEY ESSEX EFFECT. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Oh God, I love LOVE ISLAND. I love watching it, discussing it with my kids afterwards, thinking about it when I go to bed and then going on Twitter when I wake up to see what the millions of fans thought about the previous night’s episode. It’s not even my guilty pleasure any more; I’m quite open about that the fact that I practically live for it during the months of June and July.  We’ve reached the halfway mark in the show and it’s making me reflect on the morals and ethics (and carnal forebearance?) of some of the contestants. Well, one of the contestants in particular, a tanned, muscular thirty-three-year-old bloke called Joey Essex. Sound familiar? That’s because he is familiar. He’s been a reality television star since 2011, when he appeared on popular television show, THE ONLY WAY IS ESSEX. Since then, he’s been on pretty much every reality television show except THE X FACTOR . He has his o...