Is it time for the celebrity era to die? No.

 Celebrity.

We are all familiar with the concept. Someone who is widely known for something/nothing and attracts an unprecedented amount of interest into the inane details of their private lives. 

Gossip websites, magazines, television and the internet have created an entire industry dedicated to giving the public unprecedented access to what goes on behind closed doors of these public figures. Or what goes on in the supermarket. Or at the hairdressers. Or in the park walking a dog.

Tanya Gold’s column in the 20^th July issue of Stylist states “it is time for the era of celebrity to die”.

She reckons there have been “too many headlines about sex lives, and too many ruined lives.”

She rightly states that if you don’t want to be famous, you don’t have to be. If you never talk to the press they will never have anything to print. Even if at first you are hounded eventually they will get bored and focus their attention on the next ‘big thing’ who is so hungry for a headline they purposefully go without underwear, creating the perfect shot of an ‘accidental flash while wearing a short skirt and clambering out of a taxi’. 

Wonder why Madonna is rarely photographed in London? She wears very uninteresting outfits.

Heard of Steve Coogan? Yes you have. Because he talks to the press, sleeps with famous women with famous reputations for entertaining the public with details of her sex life.

But Beyonce and Jay-Z are rarely in the ‘are they on/off?’ pages of gossip magazines because they never talk publicly about their relationship. 

These superficial aspects of our culture I believe provide us with much needed light-hearted entertainment.

As human beings we are nosy. We gossip and we bitch. The celebrity industry is exactly this. The only difference is that instead of gossiping about the next door neighbour over a cup of tea, we gossip about people everybody in the entire country knows and this gossip is then published. 

The ruined lives Tanya Gold touches upon is strange. I suspect she has confused ‘celebrity’ with ‘members of the public subject to criminal acts of tabloid newspapers’.

Fame is a never ending circle that the celebrities being hounded and bored members of the public regularly complain about. Yet we still carry on consuming it and they still carry on giving interviews and creating photo opportunities.

The era of celebrity is not over.                       

I for one will carry on buying heat magazine on a weekly basis, scouring perezhilton.com for stateside gossip and camping outside chez cole for a glimpse of that cheating bastard.

Ding dong..

Finally the assumed inevitable has happened. 

Rebekah Brooks has taken the hint and handed in her resignation. 

Due to the wealth of information that is circulating the web re. phone hacking scandal here are what I believe to be the most important points on the matter from Chris Bryant in TheGuardian...

“It is "inconceivable" that she didn't know what was going on in her paper. Large sums of money were being paid to the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. What did she think they were getting in return? And how did she think the scoops she was running had been sourced? Many of them were potentially actionable. Surely she checked? If she did know, she's been lying all this time – and if she didn't she's been culpably negligent.” (Please see previous blog entry...great minds think alike).

“It is also "inconceivable" that she had no inkling of the payment of police officers. In 2003 she actually admitted that the newspaper had paid them for information, which is straightforward bribery. This April, though, she wrote to the home affairs committee that she had never meant to suggest she actually knew of any specific examples. And yet now we learn she has handed over information to Operation Weeting that suggests another senior executive did indeed know about such payments. Frankly, I think she briefly told the truth in 2003.” (Please see previous blog entry..I am a genius).

To round it all off..

“The people working in the boiler room, many of them thoroughly decent journalists, carried the can for those at the helm. But still protecting Brooks remained Rupert's sole "priority".”

This is clearly a case of skewed morals when faced with exclusive scoops and boosting sales. This is also a woman who hours after the 9/11 attacks sat in a newspaper office and made it a priority to ask the papers official Harry Potter correspondent (actually required to change his name via Deed Poll to Harry Potter for the job) to dress up as the wizard for a news conference the following day.

A course in morality and a house in the country for the Witch of Wapping please.

Wham, bam...thank you glam.

You know something’s wrong when your only reliable source is George Michael. 

A short film was shown on BBC news where Rebekah Brooks told MPs in 2003: "We have paid the police for information in the past."

Only to backtrack and state her comment as a ‘general assumption’ that was not directed at any particular event and actually..isn’t remotely true at all.

The more likely situation would be ‘turning a blind eye’. 

Thanks to George Michael our suspicions have been confirmed as he tweeted..

‘Rebekah Brooks sat two feet from me in my own home and told me that it was never the public that came to them with information on celebrities, and that the Police always got there first. I think that’s enough to be going on with. (Don't ask me how she got there)..Believe me I didn’t invite her.’

There is some reason why she has not been sacked. Or why she is not in the slightest bit of trouble. Regardless of her actual personal involvement in the entire scandal, as editor of the paper at the time surely it was part of her job description to ensure the staff were behaving? Does anyone think she never asked questions about where the journalists were getting their strangely insightful stories and information from? Piers Morgan was sacked following the fake photos in Iraq, I'd say this is a more serious event if not at least on par. 

#brooksismurdochssecretchild?

#rebekahknowsmurdochbigsecret?

#plantojoinforcestotakeovertheworldstartingwithBSkyB?

The opportunities are endless. I’m sure The Sun will have a lot of fun with it over the next few weeks. Oh..wait..maybe not.

 There’s a brilliant business idea right there. Jilted employees of NoW? That would be one way of getting your own back.

Cher Lloyd.

Swagger Jagger? I'd rather grab'er and jab'er. Cunt.

 

When e.g. opened his massive mouth and quipped 'Cher Lloyd's single has been leaked. The biggest crime since she got a record deal.' I think he counted himself and his audience as her target market.

I feel all you haters have missed the point of Cher Lloyd.

Let me set the scene for you.

 

How did you feel about Bieber Fever? 

"Bieber brings all the girls to the yard, they're like can you even get hard"

and

"Don't Worry, If We All Die In 2012, Justin Bieber Goes With Us."

My thirteen year old sister went to sleep with a Bieber poster above her bed for a very very long time. When I was the same age me and my friend took turns in kissing an Aaron Carter poster on my wall. We had a fight over who he would ask out and we never spoke again.

Now with all this in mind, please imagine yourself as an eleven year old child, you’ve just discovered converse, make-up and boys. Watch this.

Isn’t she the most rock and roll person ever?

Yes.

Whoever made the video is a genius and they have well and truly hit the nail on the head.

I will be thoroughly disappointed if there is not a Cher Lloyd stationary set in WHSmith very very soon.