The Princess diaries

The Princess diaries

Two years ago Trevor Ashley’s multimedia variety show Pop Princess was the sleeper hit of the Mardi Gras Festival, a tongue-in-cheek biography of a psychotic pop star jam-packed with song, dance and video skits.

This year Ashley is staging a sequel in which the hero has to cope with fame in the more egalitarian world of reality TV, and that means making his own reality shows, Trevor-style.

He’s a bit despondent with the fact that anybody seems to be able to become a pop star, they haven’t had to do it the old fashioned way any more and get on a soap, Ashley says, consistently referring to his alter ego in the third person.

So he has gone along with the whole reality television vein and started to produce his own television shows about his life.

And so, Ashley found himself on a farm last week milking a cow and riding a horse for a parody of The Simple Life. Then he was lambasted in front of a pair of vicious TV talent show judges -“ played by Todd McKenney and Shauna Jensen.

Everything this time around is bigger and better, Ashley says. He’s directing and producing the show himself, is staging the piece upstairs at the Midnight Shift (which is being transformed into The Princess Room) and has roped in 22 celebrities, such as Simon Burke, Angela Bishop and Bob Downe, to star in video interludes.

This version of the show is really what I always wanted Pop Princess to be, which was to get celebrities to really make it believable that Trevor is a big pop star, Ashley says.

It’s really been a hoot and they’ve all been such good sports, not to mention that I got to pash Craig McLachlan. He’s a very good sport.

Pop Princess 2: Australian Idle is playing at The Princess Room at the Midnight Shift, 85 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst, from 8 February to 3 March. Phone 1300 306 776 or visit www.mca-tix.com for bookings.

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