Celebrity.
It wasn’t long before I got round to celebrity. I didn’t want to because I’ll be just putting my shoulder against this particular wheel and in terms of momentum the celebrity bandwagon has enough to move a lead zeppelin (don’t you just love a tortured metaphor).
But I’m getting to where I can’t escape it and it is worrying me for all the usual reasons, it detracts from other areas of life. It’s Sunday and with the Observer comes their food monthly ,magazine and like most of the Observer it is kept a float on a lake of celebrity custard. Out of the 89 pages 10 at least contain solely or partly stories about or hung on celebrities. This is impressive in magazine that has 32 pages of recipes about 21 pages of full page adds. Basically most of the editorial not involved in béchamel sauce and “frying off” duck breast is based on celebs. That’s without four pages featuring Oliver Peyton (restaurateur) who now he’s a judge on a TV show is slipping into celebland. Now the chardonnay supping editors will point to the long piece on fair trade but whoopee do, a serious paper writes a serious story do they want a badg? Why do all the other stories have to be about celebs. A pub review is solely about a member of Take That. We have to have random nutritional advice hung on the fact that Christopher Lee likes a ryvita. The celeb shopping basket feature ,I thought at first it was a spoof as an early one had what’s in Shane McGowan’s basket!
We have discussion of celeb bars that only 1% of London let alone the rest of the county will visit. If a deli is good it shouldn’t matter if Meg Mathews is a regular visitor. This whole thing came to mind after I picked up a free sheet on the train, in the food section they had article on London chippies, which was themed about chippes of the stars arrgghh. This meant that the only chippies covered where in the areas celebs hang out so they missed the really good one around the corner from me that Paul McCartney pops into becsue it'in south london.
It won’t stop but it will get worse, it is so bad already that it‘s almost a cliché to rail against it, you appear a prig or snob. But I am truly not interested in most of these people. It’s not news. Take the Oscars times past you’d go to sleep and wake up and they would have happened. Occasionally some Brits would win, mostly not, occasionally Richard Gere would say some daft mostly not. Most people couldn’t tell you what day they were on, pr who won, or who hosted it. Now the BBC even cover live the 5am (LA time) press conference to announce the nominees. TV shows preview the ceremony and tie themselves into the whole show, the event will be raked over afterwards for at least a couple of days particularly in women’s mags as their fashion Tricoteuses click away as this years lovelies face the guillotine of sartorial disapproval. Which other competition voted for by oap’s get so much publicity’s, are there any leek growing competions that could do with more coverage. After all your average show leek takes more time to prepare than your average starlet.
And it goes on, the Today programme reports on the latest celeb break up, every TV show has a celeb angle to it. You know the game will up when David Attenborough in tones over shots of penguins " the emperor penguin is the Posh and Becks of the animal kingdom"!
ps for the photo I typed "celebrity overload" into yahoo and the first picture was of I think Jordan which I thought was appropriate.
2 comments:
Totally agree, and it's going to get worse as lots of young people seem to think the best 'job' there is is to be a celebrity as that's the role they get to see most often after, say, 'Mum', 'Dad', 'Teacher'!
The Guardian weekend mag now has a big article on a celebrity each week, and has come up for some stick by readers. I much prefer the articles which are by real people.
It's endless, when reuters or similar decided not cover paris hilton that became a story it's a post modern nightmare.
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