utting-edge style magazine Sleaze set fire to an image of Victoria Beckham for the cover of its latest issue to illustrate the end of the celebrity boom.
The controversial move appears in the first relaunched issue of the magazine, previously called Sleazenation, under new editor Neil Boorman.
The picture of Posh with her head on fire is accompanied by the words “Celebrity Burnout” and, according to Boorman, reflected Sleaze’s stand against “vacuous” celebrity culture.
Boorman claimed the style market had been “hijacked” by celebrities to the detriment of magazines.
“The culture of celebrity is eating itself up in celebrity-obsessed titles such as Heat with celebs looking rough. From our point of view, it is time to draw a line in the sand,” he told Press Gazette.
“We are not going to bemoan the prevalence of vacuous celebrities in our culture. We’re not going to talk about it any more. We are just not going to entertain it. Therefore, we have a picture of Posh burning on the front cover.”
The magazine approached the singer to do a photo shoot and give her side of the story, but she refused.
Boorman said Sleaze would continue to feature new bands, up-andcoming film-makers, artists and fashion designers, but predicted: “The pure cult of celebrity as far as we are concerned is drawing to a close. There is only so much celebrity drivel you can read and ultimately what else are you going to get from it? “We’d never be so obnoxious as to say we are going to kick-start this whole new revolution, but we are taking a stand. We think that in the next couple of years it is going to reach the point of saturation where people are just going to say enough is enough and actually start talking about ourselves rather than living our life through people in magazines.”
The cover image ties in with the “book burning” session organised by Sleaze on Wednesday night, where partygoers were encouraged to dispose of celebrity autobiographies and celebrity culture once and for all.
By Ruth Addicott
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