Distressing news from Celebrity Land. One of the more entertaining feuds of recent years has come to a peaceful conclusion. Madonna and Elton John have – without, so far as we can tell, any assistance from the United Nations – agreed to a joint decommissioning of arms.
Descending the steps after a return flight from Munich, Ms Ciccone waved a scrap of paper. “We finally buried the hatchet,” she told the crowd. (I made up the Munich stuff, but the quote is genuine.)
Why is this sad? Well, that spitting match between the biggest pop star of the 1970s and the biggest pop star of the 1980s had all the right elements for recreational savour. Crucially, it wasn’t about anything important. No participant had molested any other participant. No participant had hired goons to beat anyone up.
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We can all think of disturbing altercations between celebrities that verge on the criminal. One or two have ended in violent death. Not so Reg v Madge. Their 20 years of sniping seemed no more emotionally rooted than a playground squabble over the last Smartie in the tube.
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No better man than Sir Elton for slinging barbs. He earned a black belt in that martial art more than 50 years ago. It seems the current dispute began in 2002 when he blasted Madonna’s theme for Die Another Day as “the worst Bond tune ever”.
Relations declined further in 2004 when, at that year’s Q Awards, John passed judgment on her nomination. “Madonna, best live act? F**k off,” the knight of the realm growled. “Since when has lip-syncing been live..? Everyone who lip-syncs on stage in public when you pay 75 quid to see them should be shot.”
He was only warming up. Eight years later he attained final-boss status with a rant after Madonna’s halftime show at the Super Bowl. “Her tour is a disaster, and it couldn’t happen to a bigger c***,” he told Australian TV.
To paraphrase John Gielgud in Arthur, one normally has to go to a bowling alley to hear that sort of language.
The mutuality of the feud is hard to assess. Media reports have been short on retaliation from a musician who has rarely been afraid of speaking her mind. Most listed a stream of Eltonian abuse as overture to an emollient Instagram post from Madonna.
She speaks of seeing him on Saturday Night Live and then – brave woman – going back to “confront him”. Luckily for her, Saturday night was not all right for fighting, the bitch was not back, “sorry” did not seem to be the hardest word ...
Okay, I’ll stop now. Apparently, he said “forgive me”, and “within minutes” the two were hugging. “He told me [he] had written a song for me,” the post continued.
Yes, there is something touching about a sexagenarian and a septuagenarian embracing late-career harmony.
Amid all this facetiousness, only someone with a heart of stone could fail to be moved at Madonna, hurt by John’s gibes, telling us how she snuck out as a teenager to see him perform in Detroit. You’d better make that a decent song, Elt, you old grump.
Still, we don’t get too many of these cask-strength feuds any more. There is a bit of that going on between Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Vin Diesel, but the reported animosity between the action heroes is lower-key and the language is less colourful. Did the Rock really suggest that some unnamed collaborators were “candy asses”? Ooo! Feather dusters at dawn.
Hugh Grant throws jibes the way of Colin Firth, but it has always been clear that the supposed falling-out is no more than an elaborate gag. When asked for his idea of perfect happiness, Grant commented: “Drinking a pint of London Pride while munching Twiglets and reading about Colin Firth having a critical and box-office catastrophe.”
Nobody is yet clear what went on between Florence Pugh and Olivia Wilde before the premiere of Don’t Worry Darling, the 2022 thriller. Maybe nothing. Maybe it was all a promotional gambit.
You really need to look back into the dark ages for the properly unhinged superstar conflict. There remains something Shakespearean about the epic tension – stretching over 70 years – between the sisters Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine. To this day, biographers argue over what caused the renowned actors to fall out.
And the teasing between Madonna and Elton wafts into insignificance when set beside the poisonous conflict that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford waged through the middle decades of the last century. That was mythology. This seems like play acting.
We need our divas – male and female – to prove themselves in open conflict. Elt and Mad can now enjoy a bit of peace. But what about the rest of us? We demand blood.
