So Ronan Keating says he intends to make acting his full time career. I wonder what has led him to this decision. Could it be the string of BAFTAs, Oliviers and Academy Awards he has already attracted for his searing and heartfelt performances in a string of cutting edge dramas? No, frankly.
I can only imagine that, faced with a shrinking solo career and a limit on the number of Boyzone reunion tours he can stomach, he just figured acting would be a half decent substitute. An insult to genuinely talented but struggling thespians to be sure – but also indicative of a malaise that strikes the successful entertainer all too often. Let’s call it ‘overreach’.
All the confidence and self-regard that accompanies achievement in a public arena has the tendency to mutate into ill-founded ambitions to enter other fields and anticipate similar rewards. Perhaps the internal argument goes something like this:
“I am a half reasonable vocalist whose band got lucky releasing a string of singles at a time our kind of stuff was popular and now I am rich and recognisable. QED, when my agent persuades some poor sap to cast me in their motion picture / TV show / play, there is no doubt my proficiency will shine like venus on a clear night.”
The phenomenon has undoubtedly flourished in these sleb-fixated times, but it is actually nothing new. True, we guffaw and ridicule when we hear that Ashley Cole fancies embarking on a music career (rightly so), however we shouldn’t forget that Messers Jagger, Bowie and Sumner have also ventured outside their specialties and fallen flat on their pretty faces. And, almost unbelievably, former Prime Minister Harold Wilson took on a talk show in the 1970s. The results were predictably hideous as he sat in silence, listening, every time his earpiece became active.
Of course, a TV chat show is the natural home for the overreacher. After all, it looks so easy. Once you’ve peaked as an anchor, reality show mainstay or stand up comedian, it can’t be too hard to sit and natter to mates with books to plug, can it? To do it impressively, of course, is terribly hard – but that hasn’t stopped a queue of media types pulling up a leather chair and pointing it at a sofa. Admittedly, some have suceeded (Frank Skinner, Graham Norton), nevertheless Davina, Anthony Cotton, Johnny Vaughan and Fern Britton have all stumbled on this deceptively rocky road. Each of these people has proven, specific abilities but ‘overreach’ urged them to a format in which they were under-experienced and ultimately underwhelming.
The affliction also taints those we’d expect to know better. The Ten O Clock Show was an ambitious project for Channel Four. An hour of live, satirical and topical humour once a week and scheduled against Question Time. It might have worked if it had been fronted by proven satirists and/or hardened journalists, but it crumbled when it was actually helmed by comics Jimmy Carr and David Mitchell, and DJ Lauren Laverne. The only intelligent pick was pithy, pissed off writer Charlie Brooker and it showed. Presumably Carr and Mitchell felt a ‘little bit of politics’ wasn’t beyond their comedy abilities and Laverne guessed it wasn’t such a tough brief – after all, she’d done The Culture Show. But common sense should have dictated that a razor sharp dissection of the week’s news is tough enough for those who know what they’re doing. 60 minutes on live telly, with no track record and it’s going to be an uphill slog. Nevertheless, once again, ‘overreach’ took over and the outcome was, at best, very, very patchy.
And so it continues. Big Brother contestants crash and burn fronting projects they could never hope to grasp, panel programme also-rans host lengthy award ceremonies with piss poor scripts and far too little charisma. Models write novels, singers design dresses and actors open restaurants. Again and again these ventures garner nothing other than tears and embarrassment. Overreaching does that with surprising efficiency.
Happily, it is a syndrome easily avoided. Simply discover what you’re good at, do that well, concentrate on doing it better, try to become exceptional BUT never, under any circumstances, begin to believe your flair in one field suggests you will be anything other than dismal in another.
I can only imagine that, faced with a shrinking solo career and a limit on the number of Boyzone reunion tours he can stomach, he just figured acting would be a half decent substitute. An insult to genuinely talented but struggling thespians to be sure – but also indicative of a malaise that strikes the successful entertainer all too often. Let’s call it ‘overreach’.
All the confidence and self-regard that accompanies achievement in a public arena has the tendency to mutate into ill-founded ambitions to enter other fields and anticipate similar rewards. Perhaps the internal argument goes something like this:
“I am a half reasonable vocalist whose band got lucky releasing a string of singles at a time our kind of stuff was popular and now I am rich and recognisable. QED, when my agent persuades some poor sap to cast me in their motion picture / TV show / play, there is no doubt my proficiency will shine like venus on a clear night.”
The phenomenon has undoubtedly flourished in these sleb-fixated times, but it is actually nothing new. True, we guffaw and ridicule when we hear that Ashley Cole fancies embarking on a music career (rightly so), however we shouldn’t forget that Messers Jagger, Bowie and Sumner have also ventured outside their specialties and fallen flat on their pretty faces. And, almost unbelievably, former Prime Minister Harold Wilson took on a talk show in the 1970s. The results were predictably hideous as he sat in silence, listening, every time his earpiece became active.
Of course, a TV chat show is the natural home for the overreacher. After all, it looks so easy. Once you’ve peaked as an anchor, reality show mainstay or stand up comedian, it can’t be too hard to sit and natter to mates with books to plug, can it? To do it impressively, of course, is terribly hard – but that hasn’t stopped a queue of media types pulling up a leather chair and pointing it at a sofa. Admittedly, some have suceeded (Frank Skinner, Graham Norton), nevertheless Davina, Anthony Cotton, Johnny Vaughan and Fern Britton have all stumbled on this deceptively rocky road. Each of these people has proven, specific abilities but ‘overreach’ urged them to a format in which they were under-experienced and ultimately underwhelming.
The affliction also taints those we’d expect to know better. The Ten O Clock Show was an ambitious project for Channel Four. An hour of live, satirical and topical humour once a week and scheduled against Question Time. It might have worked if it had been fronted by proven satirists and/or hardened journalists, but it crumbled when it was actually helmed by comics Jimmy Carr and David Mitchell, and DJ Lauren Laverne. The only intelligent pick was pithy, pissed off writer Charlie Brooker and it showed. Presumably Carr and Mitchell felt a ‘little bit of politics’ wasn’t beyond their comedy abilities and Laverne guessed it wasn’t such a tough brief – after all, she’d done The Culture Show. But common sense should have dictated that a razor sharp dissection of the week’s news is tough enough for those who know what they’re doing. 60 minutes on live telly, with no track record and it’s going to be an uphill slog. Nevertheless, once again, ‘overreach’ took over and the outcome was, at best, very, very patchy.
And so it continues. Big Brother contestants crash and burn fronting projects they could never hope to grasp, panel programme also-rans host lengthy award ceremonies with piss poor scripts and far too little charisma. Models write novels, singers design dresses and actors open restaurants. Again and again these ventures garner nothing other than tears and embarrassment. Overreaching does that with surprising efficiency.
Happily, it is a syndrome easily avoided. Simply discover what you’re good at, do that well, concentrate on doing it better, try to become exceptional BUT never, under any circumstances, begin to believe your flair in one field suggests you will be anything other than dismal in another.
