Bette Midler on Ariana Grande

If there’s anyone in the showbiz industry that all hopefuls should pay heed to, it’s Bette Midler. With a career spanning over five decades of unrivalled success, Bette’s mantlepiece is surely adorned with countless awards (including the Grammys), her CV punctuated by two well-earned Oscar nominations. At 68, she’s paid her dues and learned a thing or two along the way.

When asked by The Telegraph about the highly sexualised young’uns coming up in the business, such as the diva-esque Ariana Grande, Midler has no qualms in sharing her view that talent should supersede all else and that young women, such as Grande, shouldn’t have to rely on revealing their goods to get ahead.

?It’s terrible! It’s always surprising to see someone like Ariana Grande with that silly high voice, slithering around on a couch, looking so ridiculous. I mean, it’s silly beyond belief and I don’t know who’s telling her to do it. I wish they’d stop.”

?But it’s not my business, I’m not her mother. Or her manager. Maybe they tell them that’s what you’ve got to do. Sex sells. Sex has always sold.?

?Trust your talent. You don’t have to make a w***e out of yourself to get ahead. You really don’t.”

?I mean, don’t ask me. It’s beyond me. I’m too old.?

On where such behaviour will get you when, as Lana Del Ray once sang about, you’re no longer young and beautiful, Midler muses:

?I don’t know what the end game is going to be. I don’t know where you go from all that sex in your twenties. I don’t know how you sustain it.?

Is Bette on the money? Or is she right in saying that the entertainers of the 21st century are now beyond her?

@CarolineForan