And the winner is…….

“I’d like to thank the Academy. I’d like to thank my agent, obviously. I’d like to thank the director, the producer, the girl who made the tea and her lovely assistant who made the really great bacon sandwiches which I ate with lashings of Acme Tomato Ketchup. I’d also like to thank the PR guy who wrote this speech and added that bit about the ketchup because Acme said they’d pay me ten big ones to mention them.

“Oh and I’d like to apologise to my long-term girlfriend who thinks I’m vegetarian and assure her that, really, I’d never eat bacon and certainly not with ketchup, that stuff’s really gross. Er, did I go off script here guys?”

Well, no actor is going to make a speech like that. But the trouble with being a superstar is there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do the little things that have to be done and you need some assistance – such as with the articles in your name that have to be ghosted for lifestyle magazines everywhere plugging products you’ve been loaned, given or sponsored.

The best ghost writers can make you sound authentic. Hell, more than that, they can even make Wayne Rooney sound coherent. But sometimes it just doesn’t quite work out as you intended and they can make you sound a bit, um, off key.

That’s how this interview with the great Canadian kayaker and London 2012 1,000m silver medalist Adam Van Koeverden comes across.

Adam’s a top guy and we’re huge fans. But this article – how can we put it? It sucks!

Asked for the top ten things he can’t live without, Van Koeverden naturally rattles off a list of some of his top sponsors’ products. Fair enough. But then the ghost writer goes off piste. By having Adam talk about his ‘oars’:

“My oars are custom designed and handcrafted in Smiths Falls, Ontario, by Peter Patasi, a kayaker who represented Canada at the Montreal Olympics in 1976.”

My oars? Mwahahahahaha! Or “LOL”, as my kids would say. Wrong sport old chap! It’s paddles. Blades. Spoons. Wings. Frankly a whole bunch of things. But not, ever, ever, ever oars.

So glad I got that off my chest. Now, where did I put that bacon sandwich?