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Why are they famous? Martine McCutcheon

Sunday 15 February 1998 01:02 GMT
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MAIN CLAIM: Temptress Tiff, the EastEnders bar maid. Now the nubile Cockney lovely has been seen stepping out with a crumbly sexoholic, namely, the human turtle Mr Michael Douglas, 53-year-old Hollywood star and "ladykiller". He of the basic instincts so manifest he sports a probing, trembling and frequently wet lower lip, took our Tiff to the Bluebird in Chelsea, where they enjoyed, in tabloid parlance, a "slap-up meal" in the "posh" restaurant while "stunned revellers" looked on. Martine's version of events: "We had a fun night out."

APPEARANCE: Posh Spice's country cousin meets Dawn French playing Hollywood starlet.

STAR RATING: Martine, 21, plays Tiffany, she of the unwise love choices and extremely unwisely-named baby. Cries of, "Don't do it, Tiff!" echo through the nation's shag pile lounges and Zoffany- enhanced sitting rooms alike as Tiff falls for yet another staring-eyed Mitchell porky in the soap insiders dub They Never Learn. Martine is a superior member of the new Easties generation, those media- hungry upstarts with tragic dress sense and a willingness to tell cheap magazines all about their love lives - see Daniella Westbrook and Patsy Palmer. This is quite unlike the days of Sharon and Michelle, fine girls with stage-school training and a no-nonsense approach to thespian graft.

RAGS TO RICHES: Martine was born in Dalston, a rough part of London, sports the requisite broad Cockney accent, and was engaged as a teenager to DJ Darren Cooke. Martine can, in fact, sing. She warbled in a band called Milan, worked in a shop and featured in children's TV before becoming the celebrated Tiffany in '95. "I'm equally happy going to a posh restaurant or the Wimpy," explains the people's star.

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S: Since the DJ fellow, Martine has been linked with the usual round of minor actors and pop stars. The girls whose name sounds like a mixture between a crutch, a crotch and a lesbian tennis player was expecting to be introduced to Jack Nicholson when the film star who acts like a sex god but looks like an old man with indigestion rolled up instead. Really, really don't do it, Tiff.

FAME PROSPECTS: Martine has a good few years of droning, "Leave it out, Grant." One then predicts a brief pop career. Could always come over all thespy, rat red hair, and play a tortured Irish nun after a contract bust- up in 2005. 0

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