mariah carey on flies and death

You'll never guess what has just happened to me. I received the following email from Connie Filippello Publicity, 49 Portland Road, London W11 4LJ T: +44 20 7229 5400 F: +44 20 7229 4804 fax 

"In 1996 a quote was posted on a number of websites claiming that Mariah had said the following: ‘…I’d love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff.’ Please remove the quote from your website immediately as it is untrue and Mariah Carey’s legal team are currently working on finding the source. An incorrect citing can do a great deal of damage and we ask that you take this into consideration with such a false accusatory article. Sadly national newspapers have picked up on this recently so it is imperative that it is removed from your website to prevent further inaccuracies."

I thought it was a joke, so I called the telephone number for the company, and it turns out that they're Mariah Carey's publicists in London. They're for real! A quick search of the internet has them linked to George Michael and others. Anyway, I spoke with a charming young woman, who tried hard not to laugh as she told me how personally damaging comments like this are to songbird Mariah, IQ42, and she pointed out that The Times was preparing to retract their report of the comments. She asked me if I was prepared to take the quote off our site. I told her that given what I know about Mariah, which is nothing, I wouldn't be surprised if she had said it, and it didn't matter to me if it was true because it was funny. The charming young woman then told me that their legal department was about to become involved in the matter. I've never been threatened in such a nice way before.

I only had one burning question, and that was how the hell had she got my email address. She tried to pretend that she had done a search of the internet herself and found the comments. But she sounded a little unsure of herself. I suspect that this company has been paying f**king spammers to send out these ridiculous emails.

We concluded our telephone conversation with another gentle threat from her. All in all I had a very enjoyable few minutes.

I now have a dilemma. Should I remove the comments now that I know that Mariah is so upset about them that she has actually employed someone to have them removed from the internet? Or, should I wait to hear what happens next? I think I will leave the quote where it is, just because Mariah Carey is too stupid for words, has more money than sense, and paid f**king spammers so that they can continue to clog up the arteries of the internet. Don't get me wrong, I do feel sorry for Mariah. She hasn't had a hit record for ages and the plastic surgery really hasn't worked out as well as she had hoped. I just wish I liked her music because then I could get my own back by downloading a few albums from one of those free sites.

You too can be part of this fun. You don't have to feel ignored by Mariah. Feel free to post the quote, or, better still, phone the publicists, and tell them you received the email anyway. If we can keep their phone lines clogged for a few days, then maybe they would think twice about using f**king spammers again.

I'll end with my favourite quote from Mariah: "My friends call me mermaid because I like to swim."