Last Night A DJ Ruined My Night

KATIE MAIR: “No matter how mediocre the mix, the average ‘celebrity’ seems to manage the ‘shuffle’ function on their ipod with enough proficiency to warrant a cheque equivalent to our tuition fees.”

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What to do when there’s a gaping hole in the diary between that paternity test with Calum Best and an arselick of a tweet to Karl Lagerfeld? That particular hue of mahogany is mastered. The collection of Heat front-pages laminated, catalogued and arranged in date order. Full range of photogenic facial expressions, from Curiously Constipated to Sucking On A Werther’s- yep, down to a TEE. God, celeb life is hard– so little to do, so easy to get someone else to do it for you. What in God’s name haven’t they got down? Apart from maths and cooking and selecting names for their children that don’t sound like the Baby Book got typed into freetranslation.com and then confused with the Ocado order, obviously.

Well, shit the freaking bed, they’ve done it again: donned the Hunters and waded into unknown territory. The skill in question IS – deejaying. Or more specifically, ipod operation. No, really, they can press buttons by themselves now. Such rapid evolutionary development.

To be fair, ‘celebrity’ and ‘DJ’ shouldn’t necessarily be mutually exclusive terms. Some famous deejays  have risen to prominence because they’re good at being DJs, have then carried out fun collaborations with other famous talented people and got a bit more famous. But being good at wearing androgynous clothes, à la Chung and Agyness (perhaps it is significant that my spellcheck automatically corrected the latter to ‘gayness’. Or not. Just sayin’), does not give a celeb real qualification for descending on the mixing desk. Being good at producing offensively shallow documentaries, like Peaches Geldof, does not translate to producing good beats. Interestingly, Peaches’ other hobbies also include Scientology. Think on that.

Alexa Chung twiddles some knobs for effect. Going out with an Arctic Monkey guarantees good music taste, apparently.

And this isn’t just taking place in the Bermuda fashion triangle that finds London-Paris-New York at its points: Cambridge had its very own taste of celebrity DJ-dom last week, when Kate Lawler took to the decks at Fez. We tried to get a quote from a hipster who went, but it seems that only 37 people showed up. Nuff said.
It doesn’t seem to matter how mediocre the mix, the average (in EVERY sense of the word) ‘celebrity’ seems to manage the ‘shuffle’ function on their nano with enough proficiency to warrant a  cheque often more than equivalent to our tuition fees.

You’ve still got to admire their audacity, haven’t you? Granted, it does make you want to ram Daisy Lowe’s fingers into the turntable when she starts using her OLD BOYFRIEND’s leg-ups into the business (that’s Mark Ronson, for all you geeks who spend their money on textbooks rather than Grazia magazine) to get her NEW BOYFRIEND, like, really into Djing in Ibiza and stuff (that man with the big ears off Doctor Who).

Poor old Olivia Palermo from The Hills is trying her best.

But, still, if your job is modelling or socialising or pretending to be a ‘personality’, then faking it is your business, and they’re just making like Sir Alan and branching out a bit. It’s actually quite enterprising, if you think about it.

Matt Willis, of Busted fame, could be yours to hire for just £2500. Nice little fee for a guy whose only discernable talents seem to be an incredible capacity for facial gymnastics and bagging the one with the foxy eyes off MTV.

Basically, if you pay to see Kate Lawler, or Trash Pussies (come on, idiots, the clue is in the name: LITERALLY RUBBISH) and expect world-class musical skillz and a fun crowd in normal clothes- you’re stupid, and you deserve to have a shit night. They’re just not going to be as good as people for whom Djing is a profession.

If, however, you go, with a tongue in a cheek and a hipflask of absinthe- you might be pleasantly surprised by just how slick they’ve got their button-pressing.