15 minutes of fame

“In the future everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes”

Andy Warhol.

I haven’t been able to write as much as I would have liked to but I was busy being famous.

I couldn’t resist and decided to let you in on what it is really like to be famous for those long, never ending 15 Warhol minutes.

When we were asked by Endemol Productions to take on a role in the Italian hit Reality show Undercover Boss, we discussed the idea and gave in a few weeks later.

Little did we know?

For one week our world turned upside down. Long hours of filming and no contact with the real world I so love. For Fabio it turned out the toughest 15 days of his hairdressing career so far & the ultimate emotional roller coaster.

After the whole episode was filmed we picked up our busy, crazy lives & never looked back until the moment the program was broadcast on television & the phone calls started, followed by the messages & the many flowers, no kidding, flowers.

So we were on TV, 1 hour and 45 minutes. Big deal? Muah! You tell me.

Now let me try and describe to you the craziness that supervened.

10 minutes into the program Fabio had over a 1000 friend requests on Facebook, Alessio around 500 & myself a mere 469, totaling an average of one thousand nine hundred & sixty-nine  new friends, in 10 freaking minutes.

The messages did not stop for days and they are still coming in while we speak.

Fabio received over 2000 phone messages, TWO THOUSAND! The kids and I stopped counting.

First our friends then friends of friends followed by people you haven’t seen or spoken to for years, followed, bizarrely, by people you don’t know, and that’s where it starts getting creepy.

For a couple of days everywhere you go people stare, they can’t place you but there is a sense of recognition, now I am used to the “lookers” because of my unusual hair colours, carefully chosen by Mash Up Haircare & BH Salon but this time around, even though I was pretty orange, (proud to be Dutch!) it wasn’t my hair but my husband…

Fabio is more used to being in the spotlight but even for him this came somehow unexpected. People greeting him on the streets, shaking his hand and complimenting him on his career & his being. It felt like being married to a Rockstar.

Though the responses were all very positive, charming & uplifting the things that go through your mind and how it makes you feel are a different reality.

The kids didn’t want to go to school, I closed myself into the house and didn’t speak to anyone for days & Fabio couldn’t go anywhere without people asking for jobs or having to talk about his life in that 1 hour and 45 minute spotlight.

People get on your case. They get into your head. They all want to know you and they all want something.

Question remains: What do they really want? What are they searching for? or trying to get out of people they don’t know? What makes them want to write letters & be friends with people they have never met? I really don’t get it.

Thank god the madness is fading, the articles have been written, the interviews are over and even though that 15 minute hype made me feel like one of the Beatles, I’d rather be myself, in my own world with my real friends & my real family.

However with all due & enormous respect I salute those who do & somehow manage to  live in the “absolute” limelight of fame.

One million eight hundred eighty-eight thousand viewers.

Joop can be proud.

As for Fabio he got invited by AC Roma to watch the Roma – Juventus match last night in Rome.

I wonder when my new Westwood shoes show up on my doorstep…