How WhatsApp became the hot destination for celebrity gossip

Then, after getting kicked out of the group for sharing a cardboard cut-out of the former England manager Gareth Southgate (which was against the rules), Lydia, 28, started her own group, Celeb Spot London Official (146 members and counting). “We have had some great spots — Harry Styles in Hampstead, Princess Anne at Paddington station, all of Boyzone at Exmouth Market,” she says.

These WhatsApp group chats point to a new-found appetite for celebrity gossip, fuelled by clandestine fans — and it’s infectious. Out this Thursday, You Didn’t Hear This from Me, a book from the Normal Gossip podcaster Kelsey McKinney, explores why we find tittle-tattle so titillating.

On her podcast McKinney and her guests dissect the lives of strangers using amusing reader-submitted pieces of gossip. And that’s the point — gossip today is a gentler sport. Once it came via camera-lens snouts poked through the bushes. Now, smartphones are shot from the hip in hip-restaurant smoking areas. Kept private, these groups satisfy the appetites of a new generation of gossip girls and guys for all things celebrity.

It’s a far cry from the heady days of celeb goss in the late Nineties and early Noughties. In 1999 Popbitch launched its infamous Scurrilous Gossip newsletter, offering salacious stories about celebrities in the wild, sent piping hot to email inboxes.

That same year Heat magazine hit the shelves. Its Spotted column encouraged readers to submit their own snaps for £250 a pop. At its peak in 2006 it sold more than 700,000 copies a week.

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“I think there was a perfect confluence of digital media offering huge amounts of space for content, cheaper distribution, the beginnings of today’s world of 24/7 photo-taking opportunities — and celebrities welcoming the chance for coverage, visibility and fame without yet knowing the potential horror of losing their privacy,” says Camilla Wright, the co-founder of Popbitch.

By the mid-Noughties print had waned and the internet was leading the charge. In America sites such as Perez Hilton and TMZ brought the tabloid to our browser tabs to such an extent that, these days, a lot of pap shots are seen as phoney or PR stunts. “These are often approved shoots and faux-illicit photos set up by the celebs and their teams,” Wright says.

But it doesn’t necessarily bring us any closer to the celebs than, say, the Nineties gossip magazine Closer did. “It looks like we have more contact and knowledge of the lives and thoughts of celebrities than we ever have before,” Wright says, “but it’s just an illusion — almost none of it is real.”

That’s why during lockdown, which was barren of such gossip, a new wave of online hotspots for celeb spotting emerged. Deuxmoi, started in 2020, has grown to two million followers on Instagram, through the posting of a mixture of photos from the agency Backgrid and user-submitted titbits promising authenticity. “Deuxmoi is for the people, by the people. It’s not for celebrities like traditional news media,” its anonymous co-founder tells me via email.

And now these WhatsApp groups are bringing celebrity gossip back to its grassroots, delighting in the fact that — as one of the WhatsApp groups’ taglines goes — “no spot is too Z-list”.

In our Warholian world of 15-minute fame for all, it’s the lesser names that get more interest. “I think sometimes a more niche celeb gets a good response. I remember someone spotted one of the contestants from Race Across the World series two in Victoria Park,” says Ben, 28, a member of both groups.

Notably absent is the toxic, heavily critical exposure of the past. “This celeb spotting is innocent fun instead of portraying someone in a negative way,” he says.

More than anything, though, it’s a reminder that celebs live like us. Well, sort of. “I think the thrill of it is seeing a celeb in your manor,” Ben says. “Alexa Chung was spotted in my local pub and wine bar, and I thought that was class.”