IT HAS BEEN eight years since Vogue Williams began her career on Irish television.
We first got to know her on Fade Street, where she seemed to have her finger in every pie. In Fade Street alone, Williams floated around doing nixers as a model for Bavaria (yes, the cheap and barely palatable beer), a DJ and the show eventually followed her as she began to take acting classes too.
In comparison to her co-stars on Fade Street, Vogue was a happy-go-lucky individual who largely avoided Dani and Louise’s drama, as she dipped in and out of the main story-line to remind us that the Celtic Tiger once existed.
As a result, Vogue’s future career prospects were not harmed in the same fashion that many of Ireland’s other reality TV stars have been (although, considering the fact that my prime example would be Tallafornia, you could probably argue that this has a lot to do with classism, but that’s a whole other conversation for another day).
In fact, even outside of reality TV, Vogue has thus far managed to avoid getting involved in any major form of scandal. Although she exercises way more than any typical 32-year-old woman, a lot of Vogue’s appeal lies in the fact that she comes off as a pretty normal person.
Maybe not as normal as you or I (remember, she’s married to Spencer Matthews), but pretty normal. As normal as any person with a parent who worked as a property developer is ever going to be. We may not all have gone to school with a Vogue Williams, but we most certainly encountered one by the time we got to college.
The most powerful evidence I can give you to support my theory that Vogue Williams is extremely normal is the fact that she used to drink in The Goblet in Artane. Nobody who’s up their own hole would dare to do such a thing.
Don’t get me wrong. The Goblet’s a nice spot, but it’s not exactly going out of its way to invite celebrity clientele out to the suburbs of north Dublin. It’s a very typical local, that does a very typical carvery. They’ve got a band on once or twice a week. If you’ve never been to The Goblet, you’ve at least been somewhere similar.
Now take a second, and think about the kind of pub that Louis Theroux would go to. Is he into cocktail bars on the likes of George’s Street that sell €3 worth of alcohol, crushed ice, sugar and mint leaves in a nice crystal jar for €14? It’s kind of hard to envision. Louis Theroux would probably seem out of place in such an establishment. You’d sooner imagine him in The Goblet.
Although, with that in mind, Louis is from a pretty similar background to Vogue. His father was a novelist who could afford to have him privately schooled. This seems to have sheltered him just enough from regular people that he responds to some seemingly ordinary situations with mild fascination.
This is something that both Louis Theroux and Vogue Williams bring to their TV documentaries. It is their stark normality blended with their sincere confusion that makes the people that they interview appear to be completely absurd.
When Vogue and Louis go out to document a situation or a group of people, they do not make it all about themselves. They barely interfere. They stand aside and allow their incredibly bizarre subjects to take centre stage.
Indeed, they might prompt them along with questions, but these are always incredibly earnest and gentle enquiries that don’t disrupt or ridicule the interviewee too much. By doing so, they always manage to draw our attention to just how ridiculous the situation, as a whole, actually is.
So yeah, maybe Vogue Williams is our answer to Louis Theroux.
