Hi. I'm in the Internet. Whoa! However else you may feel about the information's super
highway, there's certainly no denying its popularity. When you consider that at any
given hour of the day or night over a hundred people are using the Internet, it can be quite
frightening. It's certainly an incredibly powerful means of self-promotion and many
things that are now household names have come from it. It's easy to forget that Vernon
Kay began his career doing online aerobics videos or that High Street coffee house giant
Starbucks started life as a website about how to cheat at darts. But while Internet
phenomena come and go like the clients of a busy prostitute, one name has risen above
the fray, Steve Redgrave, not their own champion. In this special edition of Frankly, we'll
look at how one humble can of condensed soup captured the hearts of the world and how it
nearly destroyed him in the process. In 2007, Steve Redgrave was just another unknown face.
Born in Glasgow to a large family of disenfranchised shipbuilders, he'd long been acquainted
with desperation and much of his early adulthood suffered from a lack of direction. Over the
years he occupied a number of retail and catering positions but with no dream to chase, he grew
increasingly isolated and loneliness began to set in. Eventually, alone and going nowhere,
he turned to the Internet for salvation. Online dating had not yet achieved widespread
acceptance but at 37, Redgrave knew his options were running out. So with some trepidation
he recorded a short video of himself and sent it to a dating service. Response was slow
at first but eventually he received a reply from 30 year old travel agent Jane Mace. The
two fell in love instantly and seemingly against all odds they were married within a month.
But against an equally massive and some would say more mean spirited to calculate set of
odds, Jane was mowed down by a 1962 Austin Cambridge and died in agony. Once again, Redgrave
found himself in a position of deep despair and his behaviour began to get increasingly
self-destructive. Suicide attempts became as frequent as television appearances by
James Corden and the two often coincided but it was just as things began to look their
blackest that Steve Redgrave felt better and just went back to normal. Now happy again,
he decided to make another film but this time it was not to be intended merely for the subscribers
of desperatelylonely.com, this time he wanted to speak to the world. For so many people,
posting an inspirational tale of self-discovery on the internet is like pissing into a swimming
pool that's already overflowing with the piss of a billion other neurotic losers. But once
in a while, a film comes along that seems to capture the spirit of the people. That film
was Pedskajimba. Concise, tragic yet ultimately hopeful, Pedskajimba became an online sensation
garnering fans from all over the globe. But Redgrave's real springboard to stardom came
when he found himself unexpectedly stuck in a lift with Martin Scorsese, Stephen King
and Linda Robson from Birds of a Feather. Trapped between floors of a budget hotel with
no food and what they believed to be a limited supply of oxygen, the famous triumvirate became
convinced that they were going to die. By an amazing coincidence all three of them had
seen Redgrave's film that afternoon and all agreed it was quite good. After several hours
of hunger and disorientation, they agreed to all work together should they ever emerge
alive. Within five more minutes, the fire brigade had arrived and let them out. Redgrave
was now firmly in the fold and was able to use his new contacts to secure a number of
self-promotion opportunities. He climbed Mount Everest, took part in a celebrity boxing
match with Helen Mirren and set a new world record for jogging. He attended Chobis parties
and was able to maintain a glamorous celebrity lifestyle thanks to a lucrative sponsorship
deal with Baxter's. In 2012, it was announced that Redgrave was to play the lead in a controversial
film entitled The First Swallow of Summer, but problems arose during the recording of
Redgrave's love scene with then 14-year-old Chloe Grace Moretz. Rumours around the set
suggested that Redgrave didn't feel comfortable simulating sex with a minor, but Redgrave
himself always insisted that he simply didn't find her attractive enough to kiss. In the
end, it was decided that a young body double named Luke Masters should be used for the
intimate scenes and filming was resumed, but the seeds of doubt about being in the public
eye had already been sown in Redgrave's mind. These doubts were further cultivated
over the following months as the pressures of fame began to take their toll. For one
thing, he was now no stranger to female attention and had broken up with his girlfriend as soon
as this particular pressure became apparent, but this newfound romantic success was to
be accompanied by a level of media intrusiveness which would ultimately prove to be Redgrave's
undoing. In autumn of that year, Redgrave brought a young woman back to his penthouse
apartment in Los Angeles. This was not in itself unusual, but unbeknownst to Redgrave,
this particular woman had brought with her a night vision scope and camera on which she
was to record a shocking exposure of one of his most intimate moments. This footage filmed
without his knowledge and dubbed the soup tapes depicted a straining Redgrave taking
a dump at three in the morning. Within hours, it was the most watched video on the internet
and by the following week, it was estimated that everybody in the world had seen it and
that is including people in third world countries. Paparazzi now followed him everywhere, determined
to snap the latest revealing shots of his private life and by mid-November, he had
run out of places to hide. On Christmas Day 2012, Steve Redgrave announced
his retirement from the world of show business and went back to Scotland to live in anonymity.
Little has been seen of him since, but occasional reports from friends and family suggest he
may be in poor health. Whether this is merely a defence tactic to protect him from further
harassment, no one can say, but rumours persist that he may be working on something in private,
perhaps a final farewell to all his loyal fans. Whatever the real reasons for his seclusion,
one thing is very clear, he doesn't want to be disturbed.
