Riding on the coattails of success?

WHITNEY HOUSTON’S mother Cissy Houston has written a book.

It’s called Remembering Whitney: A Mother’s Story of Life, Loss And The Night The Music Stopped.

There’s a foreword by Whitney’s cousin Dionne Warwick, and a promise to tell the truth about Whitney’s life and death. The acknowledgements go on for seven pages, and include Nelson Mandela, and the discography of Cissy Houston is listed before that of her daughter, despite Whitney being more famous.

The story of anyone dying prematurely from addiction is always sad, and the entertainment industry is particularly riddled with bodies. Whitney Houston, who died last year at 48 after years of drug and alcohol dependency, had been raised in a religious household and began her career as a gospel singer; her public image was so wholesome that it made her private reality as a crack addict seem all the more incongruous. She was never remotely rock’n’roll, yet she died a very rock’n’roll death.

So what can Cissy Houston’s book tell us about Whitney that we didn’t already know? The short answer is very little. Cissy’s background is interesting — she was a backing singer for Elvis in Las Vegas, on David Bowie’s Young Americans and Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland, and for a collection of household names from Dusty Springfield and Aretha Franklin to Whitney and Beyoncé.

But in terms of divulging anything new about her daughter’s life, there is nothing other than (a) her family called Whitney Nippy, and (b) you get the feeling that Cissy was quite bossy, and that Whitney distanced herself. The final line of the book is addressed to Whitney’s daughter Krissi, now 20: “I’m here anytime you want or need me.” According to Bobbi Kristina’s Twitter feed (where she describes herself as a musician, actress, “God fearing young lady” and “jet setta”), Whitney’s daughter was unimpressed with her grandmother’s rather pointless and grandiose book.

Books written by less famous or obscure family members of the rich and famous — or cash-ins and tell-alls, as they’re known — are often the source of controversy. The writer — that is, the family member who is not a writer at all, because these things are almost always ghost written — says they are publishing the book because they need to tell the real truth / set the story straight / give their side of the story. Don’t believe a word of it. Cash-ins are always written for the following reasons: the relative of the famous person needs some money / is a narcissist / has a grudge to settle. Or a combination of all three.

A recent successful example of the genre is Mitch Winehouse’s Amy: My Daughter. You will know Mitch Winehouse is the father of the late Amy because he became slightly famous through his connection to her. Nor is he publicity shy. That is not to say his book is not worth reading, or that his motives for writing it were entirely self-seeking — he certainly seems to have more of a handle on the nature of addiction than Cissy Houston, and was clearly very close to her daughter. But still.

Maybe it’s the fact that the relatives of the famous are generally not writers that makes these books such hard work. This means that although they may have a moderately interesting story to tell — or for the obsessive fan, the offer of a different perspective on their star of choice — what a cash-in generally means is a blandly written book that spends an awful lot of time saying very little. As well as hideously alienating the relative about whom they have spilled not very many beans, but who are still offended at the lack of familial loyalty.

Madonna was not happy when her brother Christopher Ciccone wrote Life With My Sister Madonna. She was furious. Her lawyers filleted it of anything really juicy, so what was left was a mildly bitchy book by a man whose resentments appeared to outweigh his bank balance. When Mariah Carey’s sister Alison tried the same thing in 2000 with Mariah And Me, in which she called her sister a “vain, heartless multimillionaire”, the singer’s legal team had the book killed. There have been no reports of a family reunion since.

Jennifer Aniston stopped communicating with her mother Nancy Dow in 1996, after Dow gave a TV interview Aniston considered disloyal and revealing. Dow thought she’d repair the damage by writing a tell-all book about Aniston in 1999, From Mother And Daughter To Friends (see what she did there?). That didn’t work either, and the pair remained not friends until Dow had a stroke in 2011. Katy Perry’s mother Mary was reportedly keen to do a book two years ago — its selling point was the shame the evangelical Christian Mrs Perry felt at her daughter’s performance style — but Katy freaked out and the book never happened.

Although the trend of the tell-all began with a humdinger written by an adult daughter back in 1978 — Christina Crawford’s compulsively awful Mommie Dearest, about her abusive adopted mother Joan — you get the feeling that money was not Christina’s primary motive; more a desire to tell the world what it was really like living with Joan Crawford.

Not so in the case of other mommies, themselves not the subject of tell-all cash-ins, but the unknown mothers of kids who grew up to be famous. Like Debbie Nelson, who wins the prize for the longest strapline — “My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem: He’s the centre of my world but I have been cast out of his. Now I’m setting the record straight on my life as Eminem’s mother.”

This ‘setting the record straight’ is a popular trope amongst vilified parents; the world is aware of Eminem’s feelings about his mother, because his lyrics contain fantasies about murdering her, hence her desire to present her side of things.

This is the motive listed by both estranged parents of Lindsay Lohan for writing their respective books, but Michael Lohan’s is a special kind of dreadful. “I’m Not Your Daddy Dearest ... If I Can Turn It Around So Can You!” barks the title. Mother Dina Lohan is supposedly writing one as well. No wonder Lindsay is on drugs.

As was Lohan’s former buddy Britney Spears. This gave her mother Lynne Spears — who describes herself on her book’s cover as “Mother of Jamie Lynn, Bryan and Britney”, as though we are interested in the other two — a wonderful opportunity to publish Through The Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family In A Tabloid World.

And if you were wondering why 32-year-old Macaulay Culkin, the former child star of Home Alone, has recently moved into the Paris flat of professional drug addict Pete Doherty, the answer could lie in his dad’s Kit Culkin’s insistence on telling all / cashing in / setting the record straight in a memoir entitled I Don’t Think So. Oh dear. What could possibly go wrong?

This is just a tip of the tell-all iceberg. From the daughter of Martha Stewart to the father of Kate Hudson, from the mothers of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen to the hairdresser’s cousin’s dog of dead reality stars — everyone is doing it. Yet so many shouldn’t bother. Even if you are the mother of Whitney or Britney, unless you can string a decent sentence together, maybe stick to television.

Leave books alone.