Do you remember when celebrity actually meant something? When there was a clear and definable reason why someone was famous… Sure, being talented hasn’t been necessary for a while but generally they had some star quality or made an impact in your humdrum life in some other way. Fame was generally only acquired through some means of being better than everyone else at something that people value. Now, it’s given out like the Big Issue, purchased for the price of your dignity on every street corner where a camera crew lurks.
We live in a time when “celebrity” has become so diluted we are dangerously close to fulfilling pretentious albino Steven Hawking lookalike Andy Warhol’s prediction that everyone in the future would be famous for fifteen minutes. Indeed, some absolute prize cunts have managed to ride it out for much longer than that, like Jeremy Spake or Gillian McKeith… I mean, really? She sifts through other people’s shit on television… Why do I know who she is?
Of course what the crotchety witch-faced scat fetishist has done to make herself famous is an apt metaphor for what it takes to be a celebrity these days. They are so desperate for their fame that they are willing to debase themselves for the public and the television networks are all too happy to take advantage of that. It used to be that appearing on Big Brother was a means to become a celebrity, then celebrities started going into the Big Brother house themselves because it was the one place where they could have their constant attention.
What followed was a nightmarish blur of “celebrity” this and that which saw people who were supposedly already famous doing the sort of things that tramps would do for food. Swapping wives, losing weight, singing terribly out of tune karaoke favourties, trying to ice skate despite never having done it before… All it needed was someone stood in the corner throwing pennies at them while shrieking “dance” like a congenitally inbred millionaire gone rogue. And they do it too, making sure they treat it like one big acting assignment, plenty of tears, plenty of laughs, their own epic journey before they are voted off by text message.
The prime offender has to be “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here” which has one of the most misleading titles in the whole of television. First, the people on it generally stretch the term “celebrity” to breaking point. Even the gormless twats who never take their head out of Heat magazine would struggle to know who they all are and each season the show seems to take great pride in scraping the bottom of a barrel that never seems to run dry.
That’s actually not all that bad though because the secret to the show’s success is the fact that it revels in exposing what these people are willing to do to keep their wretched dreams alive. Sleeping rough in the wilderness for a few weeks? Sure thing. A bath of maggots? No problem. Eating a kangaroo cock? Well, OK… They sit there performing these tasks mouthing “Love Me, Love Me” while they try and hold back the floods of tears. It’s worse than watching a porn actress have a meltdown on set and arguably there’s inherently more pride to be taken in working in that industry than there is in being part of the celebrity machine.
If it continues at the current rate the two will eventually merge anyway. There’ll be a show called “celebrity gloryhole” where people you’ve vaguely heard of, or seen before in other shows you vaguely remember, will have to perform sex acts on members of the public through a hole in a toilet cubicle. Naturally there’s cameras everywhere and it’s up to the public to vote who stays in based on testimonies from the people that they’ve brought off and studying the techniques. This is inter-spliced with challenges such as having to make five guys ejaculate in no more than six minutes, and for light relief purposes the public are sometimes shown that there was a male contestant in the booth all along. They don’t mind though, because now that a camera is filming their reaction, they too have become a celebrity.
Think it couldn’t happen? Well, I’d remind you of ill-conceived reality show “There’s Something About Miriam” where eligible heterosexual bachelors were tricked into pursuing the interests of a transexual without them knowing. What laughs eh? Except none of those guys will ever be celebrities now because they tried to sue the creators. What idiots. The out of court settlement was nothing compared to the world that awaited them if they’d just played ball. They could have been bobbing for used tampons in an alligator-filled swamp RIGHT NOW. Fools.
Still, there’s plenty more coming soon on that conveyer belt. “The Only Way Is Essex” has brought us a group of celebrities that could be outwitted by the average Jeremy Kyle guest, which is a first. And then there’s “Geordie Shore” lurking round the corner like an angry rapist, which will no doubt do for people’s perceptions of the North what Prince Philip did for race relations.
I guess I shouldn’t be angry about it all. In the not too distant future I’ll probably be getting sucked off by Kerry Katona on national television before being invited on to “Celebrity Euthanasia On Ice” where I’ll have to dispatch Dean Gaffney’s grandmother with a lethal injection while she tries to desperately flee me on ice skates before re-enacting Torville and Dean’s Bolero with her dying body. What a future. And at this rate it’s only a matter of time.