Kate Middleton may be mortified by her uncle, but no family is without its characters, says Hugo Rifkind
It’s an age-old tradition. Gary Goldsmith, the spliff-puffing, coke-sniffing, head-shaving, belly-overhanging uncle of Kate Middleton who was turned over by the tabloids this weekend, is nothing new. Every celebrity has an embarrassing relative.
Actually, Goldsmith’s offences are relatively minor. Carole Middleton may be mortified that her brother takes drugs and looks like the kind of bloke who’d tow your car, but in the great canon of embarrassing celebrity relatives, these offences are actually fairly minor. Goldsmith (GG to his friends) is probably just what you might call an Anchor: somebody who reminds you of where you came from irrespective of your fierce ambition to be headed to somewhere else.
Footballers nearly all have relatives of this ilk — see the various Rooneys and McLoughlins who flashed their backsides and had a photogenic punch-up at Coleen’s 21st birthday party. In other fields, see also Elton John’s brother Geoff Dwight (unaccountably Welsh, used to live in a shed), Kevin Spacey’s brother Randy Fowler (grocery clerk, occasionally works as a Rod Stewart impersonator), or virtually everybody who is related to Sarah Palin. There’s no particular shame in being related to such people. You just don’t particularly want to be seen with them, and might generally wish that they didn’t exist.
This is crucially different from, albeit similar to, our next genre, the Familial Waster. The Familial Waster betrays no secrets about your background, but has merely fallen off the rails. Consider Al Gore’s son (Al Gore III), busted for drugs, or the persistent underage drinking of the Bush girls. Consider Mark Thatcher. Consider, I suppose, Prince Harry. The Middletons would probably like to pretend that Goldsmith is one of these, too.
It could be worse. He could look a bit like Kate Middleton, but also be really, really ugly. This happens. The Beautiful Person’s Notably Less Beautiful Sibling is a cruel phenomenon. Brad Pitt’s brother is like Brad Pitt with the magic taken away. Kiefer Sutherland has a twin sister who looks like him in a wig, and Patricia Bündchen is a pleasant-looking, plain-faced Brazilian, who just happens (so cruel) to have a non-identical twin called Gisele. These people tell you what celebrities would look like if they weren’t buffed to celebrity perfection — ie, normal. Like the rest of us. They must hate that.
It is also important to remember that Goldsmith didn’t sell his story, or go public willingly. Think of Lauren Booth, the journalist half-sister of Cherie, with no qualms about writing about the in-laws, or Nancy Aniston, mother of Jennifer, who wrote about her own daughter. As a multimillionaire property dealer, GG probably won’t be tempted. So that’s a worry less.
Plus, at least they saw him coming. Few things can be more alarming than the embarrassing relative who suddenly appears out of nowhere. Think of James McAvoy, whose estranged father suddenly reared up when he got famous, keen to spill all for a cheque. Think of George Obama, half-brother of Barack, unearthed pre-election in a Nairobi slum, allegedly living on $1 a month. Until then, Barack probably thought he was in the clear.
Silly man. The whole thing about celebrities’ embarrassing relatives is that they remind us that celebrities weren’t always celebrities. Because, actually, every family has an embarrassing relative, whether it contains a celebrity or not. What’s that? You can’t think of one? Oh dear. That probably means it’s you.
