Celebrity PAs

You may admire the sultry sophistication of Rebecca Loos, whose affair with David Beckham has hit the headlines world-wide or you may despise her. But hand on heart, if you had the chance, wouldn't you prefer a fling with Becks to more filing in the office? Yes, there's a touch of guilt involved when you see pix of Posh but, well, there's the £150,000 Sky Television fee for your story to cover that. So how easy it is to get a slice of the action as a celebrity PA?

Someone who knows is Chad Rogers, who spent three and a half years as PA to Paul O'Grady - better known as his alter-ego, Lily Savage and for his work as stand-in presenter for Des O'Connor on day-time television's Today with Des and Mel. How did he get the job?

"It was absolutely unbelievable. One evening I was working another shift in a Soho bar, when I got talking to Paul and his manager. The subject of my past cropped up and I let slip that I'd worked in the police force back in my home country, which is Canada. The evening went on and Paul mentioned that he had a vacancy for a PA. The two sides of the jig-saw matched and before I knew it I had the job and I'd started on a great new life of brilliant parties, constant travel, staying at the best hotels and mixing with the rich and famous.

"I moved on after a few years but it has been to work with another celebrity - Malcolm Gerrie, the chief executive of a television production company. Paul created this new life-style for me and I look on him as a father figure now. I'll always be grateful to him for giving me my first big break into the world of the celebrity PA."

Remuneration packages for celebrity PAs vary enormously. Jessica Freeman, the celebrity client manager at Career Moves recruitment agency says, "Some PAs are prepared to do the job as a form of work experience - a way of networking with celebs - and they are paid as little as £300 a week. But it's more usual for PAs to middle-ranking celebs to be paid between £30,000 and £50,000 a year. That's not including accommodation and all expenses found. Those at the very top of the tree, working for major A-list Hollywood stars will be on £80,000 a year. And at this level you also receive occasional gifts, meaning a Porsche or a piece of Tiffany jewellery."

Unfortunately, there's also a down-side to the high life. Freeman says, "You'll probably be on call 24/7, giving you no time for your own social life at all. You're meant to share your employer's leisure time but that's not exactly relaxing because that's when you have to be most on your guard. You may be enjoying a chat and a drink in a bar one minute but if other celebs turn up you'll probably have to very quickly fade into the background. That's a skill you have to perfect.

"And many celebs can be demanding. Some of our placements get on wonderfully well with their employers but others leave after six months, wanting to kill them."

Louise Farrell is one celebrity PA who still has nightmares about working for a certain movie star who cannot be named due to a confidentiality clause in her contract. "She was the most temperamental, lazy, thoughtless, egotistical individual imaginable. I actually believe she's mentally ill and when I think of all the millions of people who look up to her and respect her because they associate her with the movie roles she has played I feel like screaming.

"My life involved constantly lying for this woman. I lied to explain her not turning up for press launches, meetings, interviews - anything she just couldn't be bothered to attend.

"And she was incredibly, maddeningly manipulative. One of her favourite games was to phone up someone she had dealings with - a florist, an agent, a journalist...anyone - and pretend to be me. She'd then abuse them, using the most foul language and making terrible threats to them and put the phone down. Of course, later that person would phone back and I'd be left trying to clear up the damage. I couldn't say it was my employer on the phone because they just wouldn't have believed it. So I just had to apologise and half the time, I didn't know what I was apologising for. It drove me half crazy.

"But her behaviour on aeroplanes was the last straw. She'd be outrageously rude to the stewards. 'Hi, gay-boy', she's say, 'Do you have Aids yet?' Never so loudly that others could hear - that would have played right into the hands of the press. But she was vile, crude and a bully to these people.

"She was simply too embarrassing to associate with so I left. Curiously, I have since found male celebrities to be far more professional. They don't seem to take themselves so seriously."

Once a PA has made the break into celebrity circles moving on to another employer is relatively easy. But you can also be flipped out of the celebrity loop if your employer dislikes you and decides to share her views with her friends. In April the Hollywood actress Samantha Morton, who co-starred with Tom Cruise in Minority Report, was criticised by an employment tribunal for colluding with her London-based show-biz friends to freeze her former nanny, Danielle Potterton, out of her circle and stop her finding work. The tribunal found that Morton had orchestrated a smear campaign and undermined her future job prospects.

How do you make that initial break into the celebrity jungle? Jessica Freeman says, "For a lucky few it's a question of being at the right place at the right time. Others may have worked for the celebrity before he hit the big time - those are the kind of relationships which often work best.

"But for most PAs looking for work with celebs it's a hard uphill slog. The best advice is to find a job in the kind of environment where you're likely to meet the stars. If, say, you are working back stage in a theatre you have the chance to form a relationship. Or if you're a PA in the promotions department of a record company, you'll have to accompany the star to interviews and other gigs. If you get along and you appear competent you stand a good chance of getting a PA job with the star when one becomes available."

What makes a successful celebrity PA? "Security is the main issue," says Freeman. "Keeping phone numbers and diary plans a secret is incredibly important because if they are leaked they can cause mayhem. All paper work must be shredded. Somebody working for the girl band All Saints once overlooked this and as a result news of the band's split was leaked to the press. It completely spoilt a carefully orchestrated PR campaign.

"You have to be sensitive to the amount of direction your employer requires. Some like to be told they have to be an engagement at such and such a time, others hate being bossed around and you have to guide them gently through their commitments.

"You have to be mature and emotionally self-sufficient. It's not as easy as it seems. You quite likely won't have an office, you certainly won't have a clear work/social life time split - instead you'll probably live in close proximity to your boss, sharing a house and hotels. This lack of personal space can be uncomfortable.

"Your relationship should be friendly, so you should keep up to date with your employer's field of work by reading the specialist magazines and following the news. But keep something of yourself back in reserve. Remember that however close you become, the boss is the star - you're the PA."