“Following Jordan around Monaco was pretty grim,” says former Daily Mirror gossip columnist Jessica Callan. “Luckily it turned out to be a great story in the end but at the time it just felt like a filthy experience – especially when she went to the toilet and I had to zip her back into her skintight catsuit. I was pretending to be her best friend and it was awful. People imagine Monaco would be amazing but it’s really not glamorous.”
The story in question involved exposing Jordan’s then boyfriend Dwight Yorke as a love rat, after he invited Jessica to join in a threesome on his yacht. She turned him down but her editors loved the story and it made front page of the tabloid.
Such escapades were part of day-to-day life for Callan and her colleagues Eva Simpson and Polly Graham. The three had been hand-picked by Richard Wallace, the Mirror showbiz editor, and the infamous Piers Morgan, to form the 3am Girls – the first all-female gossip column in the British press.
“Piers and Richard wanted to shake things up,” she tells me, “after Matthew Wright, the previous gossip columnist, had decided to call it a day. There had never been anything like 3am so it was really exciting and after we started, lots of other papers began to copy us.”
The 3am column launched in July 2000 and it wasn’t long before Callan and her colleagues were chasing Hollywood A-listers. The only problem was that before they could speak to the likes of Tom Cruise they had to blag their way into the VIP areas at parties and premieres. Luckily Jessica already had some handy experience:
“I went to boarding school for two years so I guess that’s where I learned how to sneak around. I’d been at day school in London before that and I’d been used to having a lot of freedom. So when you’re sixteen and all of a sudden you’re pretty much locked up – and I mean physically locked up; you couldn’t open the windows more than about 5 inches in your bedroom, which was quite ridiculous – you learn how to get yourself out late at night and run around the grounds. When you can’t just walk out your front door, escaping is much more fun because it feels so much naughtier.”
So what advice would she give to someone looking to get into a party they’re not invited to? This is clearly her area of expertise and she responds with a hearty laugh.
“It depends what kind of party you’re going into. There are some that it’s easy to blag your way into if you don’t actually need a physical invite. If you do need the invite itself, the worst thing to do is beg on the door because that destroys any chance of you getting in. If the event you want to go to is black tie, you really need to go for it and glam up massively. People on the door - especially male door staff - are much more likely to let in a glamorous girl than someone who looks like they’ve made a half hearted effort.
Website: Chris Watt. All articles remain copyright of individual contributors. Views expressed are not necessarily those of the editors or anyone at the University of Glasgow
“A good trick I used to use a lot was to walk in behind a big group of people who had invites. I’d weave my way in to the middle of them and just start chatting to someone. If you say something banal like ‘oh my god I love your shoes!’ people will be taken aback by the compliment. English people will always answer back if you say something nice to them and if you look like you’re with your friends and they all have invites it’s usually quite easy to get in.
“Another scam that works if you’re trying to go to a party that you definitely know is going to be awash with alcohol, is bringing a champagne glass and a little bottle of cava in your handbag. Pour yourself a glass of champagne before walking in confidently and act like you’ve just been having a cigarette. The glass will almost always confuse them so it’s a trick that rarely fails.”
After leaving university, Jessica freelanced for various gossip columns on the London papers before winning a place on the Mirror trainee scheme. She got her first big splash when she was on placement at the Scottish Mirror in Glasgow and spotted a celebrity getting up to no good on a night out.
“I offered to do my placement in Scotland because my best friend was studying at Glasgow University. The night before I started we went out to the Art School and we spotted the comedian Phil Kay being bundled into a police van. I phoned up the police the next day and they told me that he had been arrested for drunk and disorderly. It was a big story at the time because he was the face of White and Mackay whisky. It was my first front page which was a great feeling.
By Lucy Smith
