Slip me some celebrity skin
Where would this column be without the Virgin Money press team? The PR legends that brought you the earth-shattering news that 73 per cent of British people are happy has certainly not rested on its laurels. Now comes its latest missive about women who spend their hard-earned cash to look like celebrities. Virgin Money – shallow? Never.
I am a big fan of the Living TV show The Swan. If you’ve never seen this quality entertainment, the show goes something like this. The research team find a down-trodden American woman who can’t bare to look at herself in the mirror and she agrees to be ‘made-over’ by a team of Dr.Frankenstein-esque cosmetic surgeons.
Over a two-month period, the aforementioned woman is nipped, tucked and essentially turned inside out by the team, plus she’s not allowed to look in a mirror. When the ‘work’ is complete she is then forced into an evening gown and is shown for the first time her ‘new’ face and body.
This is usually the cue for gratuitous sobbing and constant asking of the question: ‘Is that really me?’ Then all the surgeons move in and tell her how beautiful she looks after thousands of dollars worth of plastic surgery. I should point out the end result has been consistently the same – the women end up looking like Joan Rivers. Oh, and at the end of the series, those who have taken part all compete in a pageant to choose the winner. Genius.
So, if you’re prepared to do this to yourself, I’m not really surprised that Virgin Money reveals that £3.5 billion is spent on credit cards by women copying the looks of their favourite celebrities or that nine in ten women copy celebrity style from magazine features. Three-quarters of women admit to spending on their credit cards to copy celebrity chic – and we wonder why we’ve got record levels of debt in this country?
Statistics from the research reveal that 82 per cent of women would rather have a celebrity body than be famous. So for instance they would rather have Rick Waller’s or John McCririck’s body? After all they’re famous, aren’t they?
My favourite part of Virgin’s ‘research’ though looks at the celebrities women ‘idolise’. If I were a woman I would have chosen Scott Mowbray (pictured above), head of public relations at Virgin Money. The Mowb-meister says: “Our statistics show women still feel pressured to emulate celebrity style…”
Well, here’s some advice, don’t read the gossip and style mags and there won’t be any pressure.
But the women questioned haven’t gone for Scott; they’ve gone, inexplicably, for Davina McCall.
Virgin Money? I’m coming to get you.
Hero to zero
Each issue we ask an industry expert to pick out the good and the bad in the industry. The ugly know who they are. This week Matthew Grayson of BM Solutions dishes out the brickbats and bouquets
Hero
This week’s heroes are those businesses that have come out and said they won’t outsource their mortgage processing abroad. To offer a five-star service you have to keep your customers close to the core of your business. It’s physically not possible to do that from the other side of the world. Outsourcers will quote cost benefits that can be passed to the consumer.
However, if a lender has invested enough in online and telephone technology then it should see the rewards in upturned customer satisfaction and efficiency. Maybe the problem is a lack of investment by many businesses in online and customer service technology?
Zero
It has to be our friends at GMAC-RFC. For a lender to refer to 70 per cent of brokers as ‘saddos’ for wanting to submit online mortgage applications after 10pm is below the belt.
If GMAC think that it’s sad to work late so that you can spend time with your family the next day then I’m proud to be called sad. I’d suggest that it looks at what constitutes a broker-friendly and flexible online service. Last but not least of the zeros are Property Investment Clubs. These businesses are giving buy-to-let a bad name.
We’ve just got over (fingers-crossed) the latest ‘buy-to-let bubble is going to burst’ craze and then this bad publicity comes along. We’ve gone on record as saying that buy-to-let should be regulated. The quality end of the market needs to distance itself as far as possible from these unscrupulous players.
A winner loses his marbles
A couple of weeks back we brought you news of the most ridiculous competition ever. It involved Ipswich Building Society and a cardboard cut-out of SGR FM’s much-ridiculed ‘Morning Crew’. To win your mortgage being paid for a year, some escapee from the asylum had to live with the aforementioned cut-out for three weeks.
Well we can now bring you pictures from the winner – prospective member of the care in the community scheme Rob Stevenson. Rob can be seen here wake-boarding and horse racing with his ‘friends’ the Morning Crew and, if you’re so inclined, can be viewed microlite flying, ten-pin bowling and chatting with Elvis and Darth Vader at www.thestevensons.co.uk/extras.htm.
You will notice as you scroll down that Rob begins his ‘adventure’ with a number of family members but by the end of the whole ordeal he’s on his own, his nearest and dearest having upped and left him. Oh well, at least he got his mortgage paid for a year.
