So there was me, on seeing this picture, thinking “woah hang on: I didn’t even think Axl Rose even had any friends. Yet here he is hanging out with David Bowie! [and seeing as David Bowie quite possibly made physical contact with Jennifer Connelly in her prime, that makes him pretty god-like. (Oh and he did music too right? Hehe)] And Bowie appears to be happy about it too?! So maybe Axl is all right? And all my years of assumed douche-iness were misplaced? My whole life needs reevaluating and I should write a long and grovelling apology for ever having mind-dissed poor, lovely, popular Axl?”
Well no. Because when I googled this little setup, it turns out Axl went on to punch Bowie for flirting with Erin Everly. Meaning that, when he had the chance to be buds with a genuine Connelly-toucher, he blew it in 100% douche style. So yes, he’s a dick.
Point is, this little Internet revelation just totally (nearly) changed my whole world view. So what else might the Internet and rolling news coverage and the like, that now reveals the world in all its brutal splendour, have taught us if we’d had it back in the 80s and 90s? Or specifically, would we still think all douchewads of the time were still douchewads, and awesome folks was awesome?
Let’s put it to the test with these fun examples:
Dominik Diamond, striding colossus of prime time-conquering and therefore pioneering gaming show, GamesMaster? Gaming legend or loser?
Dana Carvey who, without the benefit of IMDb, I never would have known was in anything except Wayne’s World and therefore was an almost perfect physical specimen? Could he really have been so ace?
Jeremy Beadle, whose tiny rat face and even tinier rat hand, made us convinced he was some kind of kiddy-fiddling half-dwarf. And at the least was continually upsetting folks by driving their vans into ponds and not saying sorry. Was he secretly a charitable do-gooder with a string of hot ladies that he willingly shared with friends and neighbours?
Answers on a [comments board] postcard please. And of course your nominations for who’d have been busted by the all-seeing eye of the Internet.