PicoBlog

Welcome to my first proper newsletter, and thank you for subscribing! In my launch post, I teased a celebrity connection - how do you connect Kimberly Noel Kardashian and Elvis Aaron Presley? The Queen of Self-Promotion wasn’t even born when the King met his maker! But this is La La Land, Hollywood, Tinseltown, the lifestyles of the rich and the famous, the other half and how they live. And it’s so insanely connected, it makes Ireland look like a nation of strangers.

Half of the reason I named this newsletter Vickipedia is that I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of celebrity culture. The other half is, I can’t resist a good pun. I don’t know why my brain retains such largely useless knowledge the way it does, yet can’t tell me my left from my right without squinting (long story). But I have come to see this odd skill as a true talent. I’m great at parties. I’m BRILLIANT with the “who?!” brigade. And it’s been very useful in my career as a journalist and magazine editor.

So back to my initial question - what connects Kim and The King? Some people messaged me and got it right, and I salute them. But the vast majority were scratching their heads. Let’s work it out.

Elvis Presley’s most famous relationship was with his wife Priscilla, who was a teenager when they got married (eek). But he did have other women in his life, and one such woman was a beauty queen named Linda Thompson. He dated her for four years after his marriage fell apart, and she lived with him in Graceland and attended every one of his Vegas residency shows while they were together. She has since said that she saved his life several times during his descent in to addiction, and was *quite perturbed* not to feature in Baz Luhrmann’s movie last year.

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They broke up and Elvis eventually passed in 1977, but our Linda wasn’t going to go back to dating normies. Next she took up with an Olympic gold medallist, another American hero. Yep, in 1981 she married none other than Caitlyn Jenner.

Thompson and Jenner were married for five years, until 1986, and in that time had sons Brody and Brandon. Thompson has said that their marriage ended because Caitlyn came out as trans, before rescinding the admission. So there’s a connection there already, of course. Jenner would go on to marry Kris, nee Houghton, then Kardashian, become step-parent to her elder brood and father the infamous Kendall and Kylie. Thus Elvis to Kim in three easy steps. So if you knew all that, fair play! You have a weird brain like me. And if you don’t follow Linda on Insta, you should. GAS.

But, it gets weirder. In 1991, Linda married record producing superstar David Foster. He’s the man who discovered fellow Canadian icons Michael Bublé and Celine Dion, and has worked with everyone from Whitney Houston to Andrea Boccelli. Foster became Brandon and Brody’s stepfather, and even appeared in 2005 reality show Princes of Malibu (which also featured one Spencer Pratt). This was before anyone outside LA knew who Kim Kardashian was, mind, and before Brody showed up on The Hills in 2007.

Once both Brody and the K sisters became insanely famous, everybody LOVED the fact that they were step-siblings. But oddly, the Kardashians also grew close to David’s children from his previous (second) marriage, Sara and Erin Foster. It makes sense, because they’re all Hollywood Nepo Babies, and Sara and Kim are the same age - they probably went to high school together, and they definitely know one another through the Hiltons. But they’re no real relation to one another apart from sharing former step-brothers. Sara and Erin have dabbled in reality TV, but it never quite stuck for them.

By the time Kim was filing for divorce from Kris Humphries after 72 days, Foster had moved on to his next marriage - and this is brilliant - to none other than Yolanda Hadid, mother of supermodels Bella and Gigi and former Real Housewife of Beverly Hills. So David Foster was now stepfather to not only Brody and Brandon (he remained in their lives because the lads didn’t get on so great with Caitlyn back then) but also the teenage Hadid young ones.

So did you know that current supermodels and apparent friends Kendall and Bella had such a deep connection? Not just being reality TV kiddos, but both have fathers (or at least father figures, in B’s case) that were once married to the same woman, a woman who was also Elvis’ girlfriend?

Eagle-eyed celeb watchers will have spotted Linda Thompson herself pop up on reality shows. She’s been on The Hills and Princes of Malibu, but she was also always popping up on RHOBH as a friend of Taylor Armstrong. In fact, she was there in Malibu the night THE cat meme episode was recorded.

See, there she is, calming poor Taylor down like a good pal.

Thompson is now single and fabulous, living her best seaside life. She’s rich as hell because she co-wrote Whitney’s I Have Nothing (!) with Foster and is an Oscar-nominated lyricist; her 2016 memoir is absolutely worth a read. Foster is married to 38-year-old American Idol and Smash alum Katharine McPhee (he’s 73) and they had a baby, his sixth, in 2021. I could keep going with these connections, but that’s quite enough for one newsletter.

And there you have it. An insight in to the things I just know, without googling. But like I said, Hollywood is truly a small town. It’s like Dublin media, only a smidge more glamorous.

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