Celebrating celebrity Ð or how to be famous for doing nothing

Date Published: {J}

There was a colleague once – not at this paper – who wasn’t known for hiding his light under a bushel and who regularly referred to himself as a controversial columnist.....until it was pointed out to him for the millionth time that, if you had to tell people, then you weren’t really that controversial after all.

And so it is with ‘celebrity’ – if you have to tell people you are one or you have to explain what it is that you do, then you’re not really famous enough to be a celebrity in the first place.

Real celebrities used to influence style and fashion; they were role models, and when they endorsed a product, it had some value and therefore you might not have felt ripped off when you bought it. 

Or at least that’s how it used to be before celebrity moved from being an adjective to an occupation.

When, for example, did chefs make the transition from mere chefs, who occasionally appeared on television or gave the odd demonstration, to ‘celebrity’ chefs? And surely if you were trying to boost business, you’d be better off with a quiet but brilliant chef and an outgoing front-of-house manager?

It’s not that a chef shouldn’t make the most of their reputation, but if the primary aim is to sell food then hours spent talking nonsense of television or being photographed at the opening of a new nightclub (unless you own it) has to be counter-productive.

And yet this world of celebrity sucks in the most level-headed of people, who step onto the treadmill and inevitably end up falling off in the full glare of the waiting paparazzi.

We have celebrity fitness gurus; celebrity economists; celebrities who want to get into the jungle so they can spend at least eight weeks trying to get out of it; celebrities who want to learn how to dance or sing or answer quiz questions; we have had celebrity paparazzi who are famous only because they photograph other celebrities – and then we have the sub-species of hangers on who just want to be celebrities on the back of no clear talent at all.

You can become a celebrity by virtue of being the husband, wife, girlfriend/boyfriend, mistress or toy boy of another celebrity – and then there’s the whole sub-culture of WAGS, the wives and girlfriends who marry cheating footballers and then do a degree course in shopping.In fairness, some WAGS do have a profession to fall back on, but being a glamour model will only last as long as they steer clear of the dreaded furniture disease – when your chest drops into your drawers. 

But it is the celebrity celebrities who take the biscuit – largely grown off the pond life that inhabits the Big Brother house – who are famous for simply being famous.

The late Jade Goody built on entire career on being a celebrity, whose only claim to fame was that she was prepared to show how stupid she was when she was on the telly. But she wasn’t really that thick at all because she made a small fortune at it.

Kerry Katona was once a minor singer in an equally inconsequential band, but she was never as famous for her singing talent as she was for marrying badly and falling down in the street. And she remains a mainstay of the tabloids to this very day as they follow her from fitness regime through forty fags to falling down and picking herself up all over again.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.