Certain people simply dominate the inky paper of daily tabloids. You sell the paper all by yourself. One story (even a glimpse of a story in a headline – mostly libellous) about the possibility of plastic surgery (including one photograph presenting you to the nation in unwashed hair, hastily taken from behind a bush, next to another photograph from the red carpet of a film premiere - with more photoshop work than an image from www.nudethequeen.com), is enough to shift hundreds of thousands of additional papers. If you are someone who’s life is of this much interest to Joe Commoner-Public, they even have a name for you. Celebrity.

Your life is so special. That people you don’t know, people you have never met, and have no idea even exist will ‘celebrate’ your life as if you were their long lost [rich] offspring. But what do you think about this. I can’t help getting the feeling living in this country, that the overall goal is to either become a celebrity, or even worse, for one’s relative to become one, so they can experience fame and wealth without having the burden. I’m sure this is true in other country’s cultures too, however most of the factors presenting the idea are nationwide (like media – national newspapers, TV channels/programmes, musical charts, sports leagues). The idea is the same of course. The United States have similar media, TV, Music, and sports type institutions, and I’m sure they in some part, experience the same phenomenon. But when you talk about ‘The American Dream’ it’s likely to include riches in its purest dreamlike form. It may include fame. But you get the feeling that’s mainly a bi-product of whatever it is that got you the money.

Traditionally, to make it, in the promised land, the new world (as they still call it), was to start off with nothing. To arrive with nothing but the clothes on your back. If you have the work and the will inside you, if you’re willing to put in the effort to make it happen, then maybe it won’t. but it can. That’s the Dream right? It doesn’t matter how poor your family is, about what country you’re from, about the good looks or natural talent you were born with. If you want something bad enough, you can get it. It’s a nice idea, one which I’ve always admired. Especially with it being taught to children. Keeps them out of trouble.

But this new… British Dream, is to become famous. Even if it’s only to appear on Jeremy Kyle. Take the case of Karen Mathews. We all know the case. She told the police (and subsequently the press) that her daughter was missing and believed kidnapped, originally (or so was believed) to gain money, and charitable gifts. But what do you think she thought of the media coverage given to her then, and the ongoing attention given to her in prison. She can’t (under law) profit from any crime she committed, so she won’t make any money from it. But does she enjoy being infamous?

Is infamy, just as good/bad as fame?

A case study of sports stars might agree, if not suggest the theory goes all but far enough. I first started thinking about writing this article as soon as Tiger Woods was revealed to be a ‘Love-Rat’. As the idea was rattling around my head, John Terry and Ashley Cole both became superstars of their own respective media shitstorms as well. These are people who the common public hold in the highest regard. They are thought to have everything. Money, talent, and beautiful women. For many of this generation, the celebrity status is a kiss of death. Give enough cash to, and throw enough loose women with low self-esteem at an immature male, and he can’t help himself. But these are three men with loving wives and families!

As more and more media hype is generated in news programmes, and across newspapers around people with celebrity status, they develop a larger, ill-fitting sense of self-importance. They are inherently young people (as most are either skilful sportsmen and women, or professionally attractive (and youthfulness is the most attractive trait of all)). They are given more money than they know what to do with at their modest years, conventional romance is made both irresistibly easy, and implicitily impossible at the same time. With so little experience and maturity on their shoulders, they spiral into a ‘Michael Jackson Syndrome’ situation. But then how can we blame them? We… (everyone else as one), the ones who gave them the money, who told them they were more important than any ‘normal’ human. We have made them this way, and now we are the ones complaining when they don’t live up to our uncommonly angelic ideals we have hypocritically steered them towards.

What is the role of a celebrity? To be a celebrity, to be a person capable of creating stories for newspapers and gossipists to gossip. There are thousands if not millions of people who’d do exactly the same given half the chance, so why shouldn’t they? But let’s not treat them like Role Models eh?

Members of the public have recently scorned Chelsea F.C. fans for supporting their hero John Terry after his recent fall from grace. Why? They supported him in the first place because he’s a good footballer. Until he stops being a good footballer, why should they stop supporting him? He’s still all he ever has been to them. A hero (on the football pitch). Seeing as he’s done nothing wrong (on the football pitch), why should they bat an eyelid.

Whilst I disagree that Terry, Cole, and Woods should be burnt at any stakes for their mistakes, I of course recognise and accept that what they have done (which the sad fact of the world is we can’t get away from) was poor form to say the least, I must wonder what makes these people do such things. Is it simply true that everyone is doing this kind of thing? Is it just that the celebrities have journalists sieving their takeaway cartons searching for sex tapes, and photographers chasing them around parks in Range Rovers to get red, puffy-‘You’ve been chasing me around in a car for the past 18 hours and I’m knackered’-faced shots. And it’s just easier for us to hear about it. Or is it a deep routed need to be talked about. Have they got so used to their names dancing around on people’s lips, that when Ashley Cole gets injured, he won’t be playing football, and won’t get into the papers for a bit, so he admits to one of his many affairs he has stockpiled in some sort of archived ‘Affairs Cupboard’?

Anything’s possible.

The Role of Celebrity - Brought to you by James Wormald -