Gazing forlornly from the front page of a red-top newspaper this week, Sarah Harding was a veritable poster girl for the perils of life in the showbusiness goldfish bowl.
Displaying a livid bruise on her forearm, the pop starlet cut a miserable figure. But it was the dull-eyed stare that truly hinted at the depths to which she has sunk.
As a member of Girls Aloud, the most successful girl band in British pop history, she has 20 successive top ten singles to her name, including four Number Ones.
Since shooting to fame a decade ago in Popstars: The Rivals — the fore-runner to The X Factor — she has been nominated for five Brit awards, with one taking pride of place in her sprawling country home.
With a burgeoning career as an actress (she was a star turn in the St Trinian’s movie franchise) she has achieved more in her 30 years than most could dream of, and has a new film, romantic comedy Run For Your Wife, out this spring.
But it wasn’t to promote this latest project that she posed for pictures this week. Quite the contrary.
For if a movie were to be made of her life, it would be a brutal drama, characterised by addiction, faded glory and the kind of domestic violence that can be aired only after the watershed.
‘He Got Me By The Throat’ was the headline of the story, in which Sarah catalogued the depths to which her once-gilded life has sunk.
The next day she was on the front page again, beneath the screaming banner ‘My Secret Addiction To Pills’, even comparing her plight to that of the late Amy Winehouse, saying: ‘Poor Amy . . . I’ve been through something similar. I’ve been to hell and back.’
The catalyst for this unedifying tale was this week’s announcement by Austrian police that Sarah is to face charges following a vicious fight with her former boyfriend, a Dutchman by the name of Theo De Vries.
The couple, who met in a rehabilitation clinic last year, are to be charged with assaulting each other in their hotel room in Innsbruck in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
De Vries, 35, a sunglasses salesman and recovering crack cocaine addict, was bitten on the inner thigh during the incident, requiring hospital treatment.
He also has a black eye, the result, he claims, of an ashtray being smashed into his face by a drunken Sarah.
We know this because he took his side of the story to the same downmarket tabloid, so the entire tawdry mess is being played out in its pages.
‘I have a black eye and bruising,’ a sobbing Sarah told The Sun.
‘He had me by the neck, on the floor, and I kicked him to get him off me.
‘He grabbed me by the hair — throwing my head on the floor. While he had me by the hair, he was pulling me across the floor.
‘He was smacking my head on the floor. He bit my ear. I’ve got bruises on my bum, bruises on my legs.
‘The damage done to my arm is probably the worst. This is where they bandaged me in hospital as they thought I might have fractured it.’
Theo gives a very different account of what unfolded during their skiing holiday.
According to him, Sarah was injured while he tried to suppress her violent, drunken rage.
‘I did restrain her, but nothing more,’ he said.
‘I held her down by her wrists to try to stop her attacking me. The bandage she had must be to do with that.’
There is one consistent element in their accounts, however, which is as depressing as it is predictable.
Both recently emerged from rehab where they were being treated for alcoholism and drug addiction (in Sarah’s case the sleeping pill Zopiclone).
While Sarah’s publicist initially claimed she was the sober victim of an unprovoked assault, it has since emerged that the couple were drinking prior to the incident.
‘I’m not going to lie, I had a gin and tonic at the airport, but I was sober at this point,’ Sarah insisted.
Theo laid the blame at her door, claiming she drank wine, cocktails and schnapps during their stay.
Sarah’s response?
‘Reading what he said, I thought: “Oh my God.” I never threw an ashtray at him. I threw a mug at him, because he was goading me.’
Whatever the truth — and, given the shambolic state of those involved, one wonders if even they know what happened — the decision by two alcoholics to treat themselves to a few holiday drinks was catastrophically ill-advised.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2083315/Sarah-Harding-Ruined-fame-craved.html
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