Green with envy? Not over this trashy pair
THERE was a time – and oh, what a happy time it was – when I lived in blissful ignorance of the existence of Chloe Green. I imagine you did too, until she started snuffling her way onto reality TV and modelling shoots bolstered by little more than a huge bank account, a wardrobe worth more than the GDP of Gabon and the sort of vacant-eyed stare that can deaden a room at 20 paces.
Such is the life of an heiress whose daddy is disgraced BHS owner Philip Green. Now, though, she has taken up with Jeremy ‘hot felon’ Meeks, a man we learnt this week she is apparently pregnant by, and slid effortlessly into ludicrous gossip cliché.
Meeks and Green, it would be fair to say, are from different worlds. He has been to prison twice, once in 2002 when convicted of robbery and assault, and again in 2015 for illegal possession of a handgun. He is married, has a son, and attained dubious celebrity because his mugshot went viral earning him the nickname ‘the hot felon’ and a modelling contract upon his release from jail.
He also sports a tattoo with the word ‘Crips’ on his arm, the name of a notorious gang, and has a tattoo of a teardrop below his left eye, said to symbolise the death of a gang member. Which is nice.
So, Mr Meeks. What first attracted you to billionaire’s daughter Chloe Green? Because she doesn’t seem to have much else going for her. Indeed, quite what the 27-year-old’s done with her life so far is unclear. No university education, no discernible job, just endless holidays and parties and an ill-fated shoe line at Daddy’s Topshop chain, the great wheeze of which was that their soles were green. Yes Chloe, we see what you did there.
In some ways, the pair are singularly well suited. Both post endless, fawning photos on Instagram of each other, both regularly turn up to the openings of envelopes in ridiculous outfits staring blank-eyed into the camera, and both are clearly desperate for fame.
Which is fine as far as it goes. It’s not my bank balance they’re burning through. But these two also represent the very worst of modern-day celebrity.
Meeks is famous for being awful. He is a convicted criminal who abandoned his wife and child for another woman. His only redeeming feature is his good looks, and as is par for the course in a society that has become so utterly entranced by image, he is now being rewarded for them.
She, on the other hand, is famous for having a rich parent. That’s it. Hardly role models for today’s youth. Hardly the sort of people you want your children idolising, never mind turning into.
I have no idea what Philip Green thinks about the union, or the birth of his impending grandchild, but I can’t imagine he is best pleased at the thought of a convicted criminal potentially getting his mitts on a sizeable chunk of his fortune.
I wish I could summon up some pity. Instead, I’ll reserve it for the unborn child who, if its parents are anything to go by, will live a life of vacuous luxury, with a depressingly shaky moral code.