Product Description

"If you think I'm going to lift the lid on what it is like to be paid to misbehave with celebrities, travel the world and get legless with rock stars; if you hope I'll reveal how gossip columns really operate behind the scenes; if you think I'm going to tell you what Jude Law, Guy Ritchie and Jordan are really like - well, you're right. " When the 3AM column first appeared in the Daily Mirror, it changed the rules. The message behind the column was clear: celebrities were to watch out, because any drunken moves and misdemeanors on their part would be reported and made known to the world the very next day by the all-seeing Jessica and her co-writers Polly and Eva. Gossipy, funny and fabulously indiscreet, Wicked Whispers is Jessica Callan's inside account of what life as a 3AM girl was like: the debauched parties, the drunken celebs, the lecherous paparazzi, and the tabloid tricks. But it wasn’t all fun all the time. Jessica recounts the sometimes harsh and pressured reality of the job, from getting dumped by boyfriends who couldn't handle her crazy lifestyle to finding herself at the heart of a scandal of her own making...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139631 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
This book is sizzling, sexy, outrageous, revelatory and disgraceful. I loved it (Piers Morgan )

Piers Morgan
'This book is sizzling, sexy, outrageous, revelatory and disgraceful. I loved it'

Grazia
'Gloriously salacious'

Customer Reviews

Fabulous, indiscreet gossip.
Jessica Callan was one of the first "3am girls" aka female gossip writers paid to infiltrate and report on celebrity shenanigans. This book is her write up of this era. No stone is left unturned and celebrities really are exposed as being polite and decent (Elton John, David Furnish, Pierce Brosnan) or rude and stuck up (Jude Law, Bruce Willis). There is a fascinating chapter about a lost weekend spent with Jordan who was then dating Dwight Yorke. Yorke emerges as an unpleasant character whilst Jordan, surprisingly, comes across as needy and insecure (a far cry from today's businesswoman persona). Callan takes no prisoners and the book itself is both scintillating and in places, laugh out loud hilarious (let's just say Teddy Sheringham's appearance really made me laugh).

Its also interesting to be on the journalist's side of the fence. Tabloid jouranlists get a very bad press but Jessica comes across as human and likeable with a conscience and integrity that are sometimes incompatible with the job of basically, stitching celebrities up in a national newspaper.

This book could be criticised for being "old news" since much of it ocurred in 2000- 2003, but its still really juicy to read about A-listers when they were starting out (when Posh Spice was just a Spice Girl and Jordan just a little known glamour model.

Personally, the only reason I didn't give this five stars was that the dialogue sounds really clunky and staged. For example, instead of just writing that Elton John books into hotels using a false name (which would be self explanatory) she tells her colleague "I'm sure he's booked in under some ridiculous pseudonym...like celebs do when they stay at hotels and don't want to be tracked down". I'm sure the reader can figure that one without the explanation! On another occasion, instead of saying it was hard to find a replacement on the team she says to Eva "We've had so many letters and emails and nobody's up to the job at all. If we don't hurry up I hate to think who Piers will pick". It may be just me but it sounded a bit Acorn Antiques to me. Its just a small niggle in an otherwise very enjoyable book. I couldn't put it down! Highly recommended.

The real Gossip Girl!
A lot of people will probably pick up this book looking for the extra juicy bits behind the stories that appeared in the paper. Owing to the law of libel they're not going to find an awful lot of that. However, what you do get is an interesting insight into the way the showbusiness desk of a tabloid newspaper works.

This is made all the more fascinating as it also covers the pre- and post-9/11 period when The Mirror began riding high and then subsequently alienated massive swathes of its traditionally Labour-voting readership by its relentless Blair-bashing, ending with Piers Morgan's spectacular fall from grace and decimated sales figures. There could have been a little bit more of this though to put it into context although you can read Morgan's own book The Insider which will fill in some of the gaps.

Callan is a clear writer, as you'd expect, and knows how to tell a story although she tends to overwrite a little bit as a lot of tabloid writers do when they break free of the restraints a newspaper's style book; for example there are some crucifying bits of re-created dialogue between her and colleagues. I'll be interested to see what she does next

These are minor criticisms. This is a surprisingly solid book about the hard-bitten and grubby world of the supposedly fluffiest area of journalism.

Great stuff
Ignore the review below. I'm not sure why anyone would bother to pick up a book so obviously aimed at the Heat market if they look down their nose at that sort of thing. Unless, of course, they haven't actually read the book they are reviewing.

If you are one of the many completely 'normal' human beings who enjoy flicking through Heat on your lunch break, then you will love this book, whether you live in Essex or not. Lots of fun.