BLOG 79: Cause Celeb

“To be a celebrity in the 21^st Century is to live a life that is the envy of people who have squid for brains” GEOFFREY PALMER, OBE - English actor

There she is… she’s on the red carpet, she’s wearing a dress by Versace, and that bag is defo Lulu Guinness, and are those shoes Manolo Blahnik's … yes yes they are! Oh she looks great. And yes… yes… she has been stopped by the interviewer…she’s gonna say a few words. Oh… wasn’t that sweet what she said. And off she goes. Tomorrow the papers will be full of her. Photos of THAT dress from all angles, and those pearls of wisdom she uttered will be much quoted. Ahhhhhh… she’s fab, isn’t she?

Did you see OK magazine? That spread showing her apartment in Chelsea was to die for …wasn’t it? That view out onto Chelsea Harbour from her living room …wow! And did you see that sofa she was reclining on?... that was a bespoke Christopher Claxton Stevens piece! Ohhh… She’s got fab taste hasn’t she?

Oh… look a reality TV show… she’s on it. Great we get a chance to get to know her better, as the REAL her as the cameras will be on her 24/7. Hey look someone has started a facebook page for her… must join and show my support. She’s fab isn’t she?

Just one question…. WHAT does she do?

Ummmm….. BLANK.

Can’t quite recall… but she’s beautiful. She’s famous. And she’s in every newspaper…and now she’s on my TV.

She’s a Celebrity.

Yes… welcome to Britain 2010. Where being in the right place, in the right clothes, saying the right thing, draping on the right furniture and being followed around by a camera crew is all it takes to be celebrated.

Time was, to be a celebrity you actually had to do something worth rejoicing. You had to be a performer of a recognised art form, or a scholar of the highest order, or an inventor of something exceptional – or at least useful. You had to offer proof that something about you is extraordinary. You actually had to be a cut above the rest.

Those days are now behind us. All you need now is to be audacious.

Once you have that, you’ll be surprised how many red carpets you can walk down and how many designers will lend you their clothes in return for a mention. You’d be surprised how many show-flats at Chelsea Harbour can be made available for a photo-shoot and how many PR people will sell their soul for a piece of your action. Before you know it, you’ll be wandering about the Big Brother house and hoping the other ‘celebrities’ will be so worried about their own profiles to notice you really are famous only for being famous.

And you know what…. You’ll get away with it.

Because no one wants to be seen as so out of touch as to say… “I’m sorry I have absolutely NO IDEA who you are”.

I watched a terrible film the other day. (Curse of the season that has just finished… you eat way too much then you can’t move from in front of the telly and end up watching what ever flickers across the screen). The dreadful film was called “Americanizing Shelly”. (Oh Beau Bridges… I know you have a mortgage to pay but this is a LONG LONG way from the Fabulous Baker Boys). The film’s premise was that anyone could become a celebrity with the right handling – and to prove the point a girl called Shalini Singh from the Himalayas is turned into Shelly Picante by way of a haircut, an outfit and an audacious attitude. Needless to say America is at Shelly Picante’s feet. It was a shockingly bad movie.

However the point is a valid one. The public (and that means you and me folks!) will buy anyone’s story if it is packaged right and presented where we expect to find it.

I have an acquaintance who literally became famous by paying people to scream and run after her (rented) limo. She’d turn up at red carpet events she was not invited to and cause such security problems that they’d usher her in. The press leapt on this regular occurrence, desperate not to be the paper who DIDN’T know who she was. Crazy – huh?!

I have absolutely no grudge against people who wish to be famous… lord knows I have flitted around the bright light cast by the genuinely famous like the proverbial moth. I can totally understand why fame is attractive. HOWEVER…

It just strikes me as wrong that those have not contributed something extraordinary should be able to have it. Fame is an extraordinary status and it only seems fair that only those who have done something extraordinary should have it… otherwise… WHAT is the point?

My point couldn’t be better illustrated than by taking a look at the recent spate of celebrity reality programmes that have littered our winter TV schedule.

Celebrity Big Brother 2010 includes; someone who used to date someone who has their own reality show, someone whose older brother is a big movie star and someone who used to be married to a high profile business man. And let us not think it is just about those who are close to those who are genuinely famous as the service industries to the celebrity world are well represented by; someone who procured prostitutes for celebrities and someone who was a cocktail waitress in a place celebrities went to. As for someone who achieved their own fame it also includes someone who won a newspaper’s modelling contest… and had not been heard of since.

This is not exclusive to just that programme… I did notice that Dancing on Ice 2010 features someone who was married to a famous musician and someone who is currently married to a TV Chef. I also noted that it did (until last night) include someone whose manager is much more famous than she is or ever was.

I could go on but I won’t. I think the point is clear.

I’m totally unsurprised that those with tenuous links to fame use them to gain celebrity status. I am even less surprised that those with no such links reinvent themselves to gain the same coveted status.

Fame burns a phosphorescent light. It is impossible to ignore. For some the knowledge that their talents will never earn that light is just too much to bear. And for those folk, it’s a case of by ANY means possible.

What does surprise me is that we buy it.

We accept the counterfeit with the same glee we do the genuine…. at least 7 million of my country men did last night as they sat glued to the antics of the ‘celebrities’ in the Big Brother house.

We weren’t always like this.

A good few years ago I worked in a store from which the Xmas lights on Regent Street were to be turned on. The person to whom this honour fell was the most famous woman on the planet at that time (apart from Lady Di). She had been a movie star and that she was at that time queen of television. The whole store was very excited... every one was looking at their watch waiting for the appointed hour.

We filled the day going over her accomplishments. We lovingly recalled her early movies [TIP: Go rent “Turn the Key Softly” if you can.] We chattered about the portrait Andy Warhol had just done of her. We talked of the stars she’d worked with… Richard Burton, Bette Davis, Kirk Douglas, Gene Kelly, Bob Hope, James Mason, Robert Mitchum, Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, Sir Laurence Olivier, Edward G Robinson, Sir Ralph Richardson, James Stewart, Sir John Gielgud (to name but a few). I recall one male colleague saying “Few women in the history of the screen have managed to mix being elegant, whilst barely disguising a rumbling emotional volcano, in quite the same way. What a face, what a star. Just divine.” Oh yes, in 1985 even straight men were very camp! We reviewed her status as the queen of TV soaps. No work got done that day. NOTHING.

I could go on… but I know you get the drift we were excited to just be in the same building as her… not just because she was famous… but she was accomplished. She wasn’t the best actress in the world… but she was good enough to earn the title star and she had the longevity to be able to recreate herself and keep that star burning. So we waited by our posts till well after closing time so we could watch the great lady go by.

And that’s the difference between screaming outside the Big Brother house as the ne’er-do wells walk in… and waiting for Joan Collins to hi as she goes out to turn on the Xmas lights. Celebrities used to have to have done something notable to get adoring crowds.

Obviously I am flying against the current trend, as I read that fans of a current reality show are spending a night against the crush barriers just to catch a glimpse of the ‘celebrities’ entering or leaving the house.

I’ll stand in line any day to be in the presence of someone who can do something that most of us can’t. I’ll turn on my TV and be a fascinated voyeur to watch a day in the life of someone who rightly should be celebrated. Because that is what a celebrity should be… someone who has done something worth celebrating.

And for the life of me, I cannot see why a cocktail waitress who slept with a rock star is worth a night in this weather, just to catch a glimpse!

But then… maybe that’s just me!

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