Leather-throated lounge dinosaur Tom Jones is 67 now, which means his famous chest beard is at least 50, possibly 55. Cosmetically, it still resembles a pec thatch of, say, 30, but 55 is 55, and thus, when the U.K. tabloid The Daily Mirror recently reported that the hirsute troubadour had taken out a $7 million insurance policy from Lloyd’s of London, it seemed plausible enough. After all, what if Jones’ chest beard suffered a stroke, or needed a hip replacement, or fell prey to some other malady? Without insurance, it could end up bankrupt, homeless, begging for quarters and cigarettes on the dirty streets of Bel Air.
Talk about a story too good to fact-check! Or, from a publicist’s perspective, too good to deny. After all, it’s not as if the bellowing, Kennedy-era hipster is a gossip-page fixture these days, and with a new album in the works, a playful reminder that Jones is still extant, still furry enough to qualify for PETA protection and still bringing the man-cake by the pound while simultaneously sending it up with a roguish wink couldn’t hurt, right?
Alas, when other newspapers picked up the tale, Jones’ chest-beard people quickly issued a denial. “No such insurance policy exists or has ever been considered. We assume this is just the Mirror having a bit of fun and hope no one takes this kind of ‘reporting’ seriously,” an announcement on his official website declared. Lloyd’s of London confirmed the policy’s nonexistence. Apparently the whole thing was just wishful thinking on the part of some nostalgic reporter longing for the days when publicity stunts involved more than a drunk-driving arrest, or a month-long bout of detox at Promises, or a painstakingly advertent flash of celebutante nether-flaps.
In the good old days, when the Internet didn’t exist, stars and would-be stars had to do more than simply shed their clothes for an unauthorized sex tape to get our attention. So they hired press agents, and the press agents dreamed up crazy ploys and stories to amplify their clients’ profiles. Rita Hayworth, for example, was a mostly uncredited bit player until the “Fashion Couturiers of America,” an organization that existed only in the imagination of her press agent, Henry Rogers, named her Hollywood’s best-dressed actress. When Rogers fibbed to an editor at Look magazine that Hayworth spent all her earnings on clothes, the magazine scheduled a photo shoot—and a new star was literally fabricated out of the fancy wardrobe Rogers scrounged up for the occasion.
Instead of making up delightful fictions, today’s publicists spend most of their time denying sad truths. Like corporate defense attorneys and Pentagon officials, they speak a language of audacious euphemism. Celebrities are never drug addicts. They’re suffering from “exhaustion.” Celebrities never O.D. on painkillers and sleeping pills. They’re suffering from, uh, “permanent exhaustion.” But despite such verbal smoke-screening, the steady I.V. drip of celebrity misery continues, and it’s getting a little wearisome, isn’t it?
In Los Angeles, a city councilman has proposed a “personal safety zone” law designed to protect celebrities by functioning as a pre-emptive blanket restraining order against the paparazzi. And First Amendment be damned, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea. We monitor celebrities more aggressively than we monitor suspected terrorists, and all we’ve really learned is that they’re just like the ordinary, messed-up wackos who appear on The Jerry Springer Show, except that they have better abs and more teeth. Let’s bring back the mystery, the distance, the fabulous ballyhoo and outrageous lies.
And let’s start with Tom Jones. In a better universe, the woolly baritone would absolutely have chest-beard insurance. And not some paltry $3 or $4 million policy either, like some lightly downed metrosexual like, say, Alec Baldwin might have. Jones would have at least $7 million worth, just as the Daily Mirror reported. And we would all be so intrigued by what sorts of awful afflictions cause permanent chest baldness, and how much per strand a $7 million payout delivers, and whether or not Jones was considering a similar policy for his back hair too that our national addiction to celebrity-rehab bingo might quietly disappear for a while, like Kirsten Dunst slipping into Lindsay Lohan’s favorite Utah treatment resort for a few placid weeks of centering pony rides and therapeutic toilet-scrubbing.