How to spin a celebrity split

When famous couples break up, public curiosity can add to their woes, which is why most splitting celebs are united in bringing in publicists, writes FIONA McCANN

‘TO WHOM it concerns.” Thus began the statement released this week by the TV presenter Gráinne Seoige and her husband, Stephen Cullinane, announcing their separation. If the media frenzy that followed is anything to go by, it turned out to concern a whole lot of journalists, not to mention the members of the public they write for.

Celebrity splits are as old as the couples that spawn them, yet our appetite for information – and speculation – about the private rifts between public figures appears to have grown in recent years.

And there has been plenty to feed it, with Yvonne and Ronan Keating announcing their separation two weeks before Seoige and Cullinane’s news broke. This week also brought the news that the former US vice-president Al Gore and his wife of 40 years, Tipper, are splitting up, and the confirmation that the singer Charlotte Church is to separate from her fiance, the rugby player Gavin Henson.

So how can such high-profile couples keep their personal woes from spilling into the public domain, and is there a way to spin a split and still come out not only single but smiling?

Enter the publicist, a figure increasingly called upon to navigate the stormy waters of celebrity break-ups. And what would such a figure advise when a marriage is over and the public feeding frenzy is about to begin? According to the UK publicist Max Clifford, each requires its own counsel.

“Every situation is different. It depends on the person, it depends on the circumstances, so you can’t give a general guideline,” he says. “What is right for one situation is wrong for another. You’ve got to know the circumstances.”

The circumstances in some cases can be what compel a couple to nudge their private problems into the public domain: in other words, if it looks as if your marriage difficulties are moving from conjecture to column inches, it may be time to take control of your story before it makes it off the press.

Whatever the reasons for going public, most couples opt to do so with the kind of formal statement produced by Seoige and Cullinane: simple and concise, and usually ending with a public plea for privacy.

How to ensure this request for privacy is respected is more complicated. Couples who have courted the media in happier times – when the Keatings held a celebratory bash at Powerscourt after their 1998 nuptials, they sold exclusive photographic rights to Hello!magazine – can have difficulties avoiding similar splashes when things go wrong.

Yet, as Seoige’s agent, Noel Kelly, points out, the end of a relationship is a highly personal experience, no matter how public your profile. “A lot of press are just obsessed with celebrity, but unfortunately with relationships or somebody passing, obviously it’s very personal and very upsetting for the people involved,” he says. “And just because you had a TV show or you’re a supermodel, every part of your life doesn’t have to be up for discussion.”

Kelly, whose other high-profile clients include Ryan Tubridy, Glenda Gilson, Craig Doyle and Twink, says the first step after a couple in the public eye decide to part ways is to release a statement. “The only thing to be is honest, and to put it out as a formal statement, so at least there’s no grey areas, because it’s better coming from the people involved than speculation and innuendo.” Kelly says such statements “should be as honest and concise as possible”.

Clifford, on the other hand, says he has often advised clients to say nothing, although he adds that “honest and candid” can be the best approach when a relationship is definitely over, particularly when a related scandal is about to make its way into the public domain. He cites the recent story of Tiger Woods’s multiple infidelities as an example of where keeping silent or denying it all would have been a mistake. “In that case it’s better to say, ‘Look, I’ve done things I shouldn’t have done.’ If you know it’s coming out, face it full-on.”

Often, side-taking and side-swiping ensue if the split has been acrimonious, with celebrity couples hiring separate spin doctors to ensure they come out on top in the battle for public sympathy. Yet Kelly says his ideal scenario when dealing with the separation of a high-profile couple is to work “with both parts of the couple, because it’s obviously very delicate, and you have to make sure that they’re both treated with the same respect”.

For Kelly, when children are in the picture, the priorities shift towards protecting them. “It’s about making sure the kids know they are loved and wanted.” Often the pleas for privacy refer to children and family.

Clifford says that privacy can be a lot easier to enforce if offspring are in the mix, “because you can say it’s upsetting them”, adding that, with “expensive lawyers and a PR that has a good relationship with the people that matter in the media”, a high-profile couple can keep their personal woes out of the public domain.

That may not always be what every party to a split has in mind, however, and for every couple who negotiate the end of a personal relationship with dignity and without damage to either party, there’s another who instead spread their romantic messes over as many column inches as possible.

As Clifford acknowledges, “some people thrive on controversy.” For others, the end of a marriage is traumatic enough without the added pressure of public intrusion. And while the public gets fat on the gossip and guesswork over the end of an affair, the individuals involved have to “get on with their lives, move house and pay the bills like everybody else”.