“It’s the tennis exchange of the century,” screamed Blesk on Thursday, introducing a “sensational love story”. And for once they weren’t exaggerating.
Archive for Czech Celebrities
Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital Therapist Moonlights as Porn Star (NSFW)
The Czech presidential election was fun but PraguePig.com’s favourite tabloid story of the past few weeks involved a therapist at the Bohnice psychiatric hospital who makes porn movies in her spare time.
The Gábina Partyšová-Josef Kokta-Daniel Zahrádka ‘Love Triangle’
Up to 120,000 people demonstrated against the government in Prague on Saturday but that wasn’t enough to keep Gábina Partyšová off the front pages of both Blesk’s and Aha!’s Sunday editions.
Meet the New Česká Miss: Tereza Chlebovská
Tereza Chlebovská (centre) was named Česká Miss (Czech Miss) on Saturday night by a jury chaired by Italian actress Claudia Cardinale and will represent the Czech Republic at the upcoming Miss World, Miss Earth and Miss Universe beauty pageants.
(Wikipedia describes Miss Earth as “an annual international beauty pageant promoting environmental awareness”. So now you know.)
The 21-year-old describes herself as “an ordinary girl with a sense of humor, sometimes irritable, who goes after her dreams”, and her motto, loosely translated, is “Whoever wants something finds a way; whoever doesn’t want something finds a reason”.
Born in the unpronounceable west Bohemian village of Třemešné, she grew up in Krnov, an industrial town in Silesia, way over on the unfashionable side of the Czech Republic, and currently studies music and health education at the University of Ostrava (Ostravská univerzita).
Her interests are dance, sport (mainly volleyball), modelling, cookery, travel, LARPing and spending time with family and friends.
Blesk.cz, a Česká Miss media partner, invited Tereza to its offices this morning, where, in the slightly creepy tone Czech tabloids reserve for beauty queens, they describe how she “bewitched” Andre Regli, the Swiss ambassador to the Czech Republic, who, somewhat randomly, happened to be passing through.
(Not really backing up its claim, Blesk breathlessly describes how “the ambassador spent a long time shaking hands with Česká Miss 2012” and how they “exchanged several sentences”.)
Saturday’s pageant also saw Linda Bartošová (pictured left) named “Česká Miss World” and Tereza Fajksová (right) “Česká Miss Earth”, which sounds impressive but is really just a fancy way of saying LOSER.
And yes: I did make up the bit about LARPing.
Know Your Czech Celebrity: Karel Gott
In this new feature, I’ll be introducing the celebs who are the mainstays of the Czech tabloids. And where better to start than with legendary crooner and septuagenarian sex symbol Karel Gott?
Here, then, are 10 things you should know about the “Golden Voice of Prague”/”Sinatra of the East”/”Bringer of Good News”:
1. Gott’s big break was becoming one of the resident singers at Divadlo Semafor in 1963. The Prague theatre was at the forefront of the Czech pop scene in the early ’60s, launching the careers of several singers.
2. His breakthrough hit, released in 1963, was Oči sněhem zaváté (“Eyes Covered by Snow”).
3. He’s won the Zlatý slavík/Český slavík (Golden Nightingale/Czech Nightingale) “best male singer” award a record 37 times. He first won the prize, the winner of which is decided by a nationwide poll, in 1963. This year’s (2011’s) triumph was his 13th consecutive win since 1999.
4. He’s huge in the German-speaking world, where he has a lifetime contract with Polydor. His big breakthrough came in 1965 when he was “discovered” by Austrian producer Ossi Drechsler at the Bratislavská lýra (“Bratislava Lyre”) festival.
5. He had a six-month-long engagement at Las Vegas’s Frontier Hotel in 1967.
6. He represented Austria at the 1968 Eurovision Song Contest. The song, Tausend Fenster (“A Thousand Windows”), finished joint 13th with two points.
7. Gott signed the Communist regime’s notorious Anticharta in 1977, publicly opposing Charta 77 (“Charter 77”), a document drawn up by Václav Havel and other dissidents demanding that the Czechoslovak government respect basic human rights.
8. Gott, who turns 73 in July (2012), is married to 36-year-old Ivana Macháčková-Gottová
9. Gott became a father for the fourth time in 2008, at the age of 68, when Ivana gave birth to Nelly, his third daughter. Gott has one other daughter (Charlotte) with Ivana, and a son and a daughter (Dominika and Lucie) from two previous relationships.
10. In 2010, he ventured into hip-hop, collaborating with German rapper Bushido on Für immer jung, a single based on the Alphaville track Forever Young.
