Culture of celebrity is becoming absurd (From Worcester News)

Culture of celebrity is becoming absurd

1:20pm Monday 23rd November 2009

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YET another television programme presented by someone who has spent their entire life doing something totally different.

This time it’s John Prescott, best known for throwing a punch at a disgruntled voter but arguably not quite so familiar to the masses as a broadcaster.

His recent tele-visual feast of an offering was a Jag trip up the M6 to examine the north-south divide. Wow, really original… If you’re a celebrity these days, it seems there’s now no task too difficult, or requiring expertise, that can’t be accomplished.

Experience, the knowledge gleaned from years of doing a job? Pah, forget it. Just busk it guys, and insist on close-up camera work whenever you feel an intelligent comment coming on.

Meanwhile, former pop musicians can produce cheese as tasty as anything produced by the professionals, as Colin Anstey, the Worcestershire master cheesemaker probably wouldn’t say.

So there you go, then, it’s easy. Alex James is your man and perhaps not the aforementioned Mr Anstey because he didn’t play bass for a band called Blur which everyone has now forgotten about.

Want to make a wildlife programme? Never mind David Attenborough, let’s ask Stephen Fry if he’s free. As everyone knows, he’s been at the forefront of nature exploration for years.

Or how about doing a series on Spain and the impact of the civil war on that country? Michael Portillo’s the chap for the job, folks. He once wanted to be a prime minister but became a journalist when the other career nose-dived.

Then there’s politician Anne Widdecombe, who changed herself from being a frightful lumpy frump into the peroxide commentator on the human condition who now regularly graces the pages of a certain red-top newspaper.

This is celebrity culture at its most blatant. For there is absolutely no difference between a teenage girl pop wannabe with next-to-no musical talent and the more mature Jacks and Jills of all trades now flooding the media and entertainment worlds.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Britain really was a meritocracy… rather than one huge milking shed for the privileged, as it was years ago?

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