It all began with Made In Chelsea’s Binky Felstead’s audacious attempts to get a free birthday cake from an independent baker in return for a social media post.
Her request, revealed by London-based Anges de Sucre bakery, was orchestrated by Binky’s assistant who asked for a ‘yellow train cake’ for ten people.
It was the beginning of an uncomfortable few days for Binky, who I later discovered has renovated her entire new home in Barnes, south-west London, for free in exchange for posts on her Instagram account to her 1.4million followers.
The story was lapped up by readers who were angered by the mother-of-three’s propensity for refusing to pay for anything. This, I learned, included her entire bathroom, her garden pond, holidays and even the removal firm which transferred her belongings three miles from her old home to her new one.
But it also revealed a worrying shift in how celebrities are using dark, audacious and frankly unacceptable tactics to scare journalists against reporting the truth.
Three days after the extent of Binky’s swag was unveiled, my colleague discovered that she was also selling old, even stained clothes on the second-hand clothing app Vinted. So, out of courtesy she called Binky’s management to see if his client wished to comment in advance of publication.
His response was jaw-dropping. In a furious outburst where he swore relentlessly, he told my colleague – a trainee journalist – that he would ‘encourage’ Binky to post about her on her Instagram to shame her, reminding her that the influencer has more than a million fans on Instagram.
This, of course, would have prompted trolling and hate towards a young reporter who was simply doing her job by exposing the truth about a celebrity who puts her life in the public domain on a daily basis in return for freebies.
Binky Felstead has renovated her entire new home in Barnes, south-west London, for free in exchange for posts on her Instagram account to her 1.4million followers
As if this wasn’t bad enough, the manager – still shouting – told my colleague that it’s stories like this that are indicative of why TV presenter Caroline Flack killed herself.
This was an appalling slur and one that the PR should be ashamed of. My young colleague was in her first year at university when Caroline tragically took her life in February 2020. But regardless of my colleague’s age, Caroline’s situation was completely different. She was terrified of the bodycam footage of herself after she hit her boyfriend Lewis Burton being made public in her court trial.
Binky’s manager didn’t stop to think about the complexities of Caroline’s death, he just used it was a weapon to get positive coverage about his client.
Just two weeks later, Binky told her side of the story in a magazine interview where she spoke of her own fragility at the truth about her freebie-grabbing ways being exposed.
She said: ‘Honestly, it’s been a lot. I’ve never experienced anything on this scale before.
‘It’s been genuinely frightening at times. I’ve seen a very dark side of social media and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
‘What’s been hardest is the level of personal abuse. Death threats in my DMs, people calling me a bad mum, tagging brands I work with and asking for me to be dropped, it’s been relentless.
‘I think what’s really shaken me is seeing just how quickly things can spiral. Five days of that level of noise and it really takes its toll.
‘It’s been genuinely frightening at times. I’ve seen a very dark side of social media and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,’ Binky said of the backlash to her freebie-grabbing ways
‘There were moments where I felt completely overwhelmed by it all, struggling to switch off, not sleeping and just feeling a constant sense of anxiety sitting in my chest.’
There was, of course, no mention of her manager’s abhorrent behaviour towards my colleague, just the so-called mea culpa where it is everyone else’s fault but her own.
Binky isn’t alone. Her fellow Made In Chelsea participants Ollie and Gareth Locke also tried to shut down a story about how, despite being evicted from their Chelsea home after failing to pay £45,000 of rent, the former had attempted to reinvent himself as a nightclub guru.
Despite Ollie boasting about his project at a party, his manager – the same individual who represents Binky, incidentally – flew into a rage when he heard the Daily Mail wanted to run the story.
I have been working as a showbusiness journalist for two decades and during that time I have been given the hairdryer treatment by countless celebrity PRs. I was once banned from the X Factor studio for several years because Simon Cowell’s publicist didn’t like a story I’d written. On another occasion and while on the Cowell naughty step, I was disinvited from his summer party for another true tale I’d penned.
But it wasn’t aggressive, harmful nor was it using the devastating death of a celebrity to ensure the PRs got their own way.
In recent years too, celebrities have played the mental health card to try to stop stories they dislike from running. One BBC presenter, amid claims that he cheated on his partner, instructed his lawyers to email me: ‘Every time Katie Hind writes about our client it affects his mental health.’
When Strictly dancer Graziano Di Prima was sacked for kicking his partner Zara McDermott during rehearsals, his dinosaur-esque PR barked at me to stop writing about it because he was having problems with his mental health.
Ollie and Gareth Locke, left, tried to shut down a story about how, despite being evicted from their Chelsea home after failing to pay £45,000 of rent, the former had attempted to reinvent himself as a nightclub guru
I revealed how Olivia Attwood and her team orchestrated a PR campaign to tell the story that her divorce had nothing to do with her flirtations with her Kiss FM co-star Pete Wicks
Huw Edwards and Phillip Schofield – both dreadful individuals – have also droned on about their fragile health to stop the Press writing stories about them.
But this common tactic has now gone to other extremes. In February, after my rivals were briefed with a sanitised version of Olivia Attwood’s split from footballer husband Bradley Dack, I revealed how Olivia and her team secretly orchestrated a PR campaign to tell the story that their divorce had nothing to do with her flirtations with her Kiss FM co-star Pete Wicks.
Neither Olivia – or her out-of-depth PR – liked that I had exposed their games so he penned a letter to this newspaper to complain that my stories were taking their toll on Olivia and that she was upset. I was also accused of maliciously bullying Olivia.
I was reminded that I had a duty of care towards Olivia. Meanwhile, the same PR was leaking stories to my rivals about Olivia’s personal life.
The trouble is that with today’s ‘celebrities’ or indeed influencers as they now like to see themselves, is that they’re only happy to share a certain amount with the world – and nobody dare criticise them or reveal the truth beyond that.
It needs to stop.
