They’re All Celebrities, Get Me Out Of Here.
Celebrities. They are literally everywhere, even in places that we didn’t previously know we could find them. It appears recently that in order to become a celebrity, mere proximity to another seems to rub off in some sort of
reality-TV conceived rash observes InSITE reporter Nick Edmonson.
This epidemic could not have been displayed more clearly to the public than the moment of
Chantelle’s celebrity ‘induction’ during the previous series of Celebrity Big Brother. The ditzy wannabe tottered into the diary room and was bequeathed the crown of celebrity. Although no outward changes seemed to take place, she transformed from ‘Chantelle-wannabe’ to ‘Chantelle-celebrity’ in a matter of minutes. When she was born from the diary room womb, she was immediately greeted by her ‘fellow’ celebrities. She had graduated and was now one of them, on the receiving end of advice from a shaky Michael Barrymore of how to best use her new celebrity ‘responsibilities’, like a T.V Obi Wan telling her only to use the force for good. It was actually a bit creepy and I found myself searching for some sort of celebrity Wicker Man just off screen that she was about to be sacrificed to.
Never before has the simplicity of a celebrity-transformation been so clearly played out before our eyes. After leaving the programme she was indeed a celebrity. The look-alike firm that she previously worked for as a Paris Hilton look-alike now contains multiple Chantelle look-alikes. That’s surely a first, a look-alike of a look-alike? Celebrities are being packaged and produced from some sort of television sausage factory.
It is the ever moving boundaries of ‘celebrity’ that truly fascinate me, shown even more vividly in the transformation of ‘Celebrity Love Island’ to just ‘Love Island’…but still containing celebrities. Albeit now one can be a celebrity merely by virtue of a family attachment and not even one of blood, as Paul Gascoigne’s step-daughter’s island frolics revealed. Once people become famous, THEN they are able to make more tv/music/workout videos. An X-factor contestant becomes famous and this is why they sell thousands of records. Is it just me…or didn’t that use to be the other way around?
‘Celebrity’ is becoming ever easier to obtain, so why bother trying to get another job? At this rate, we will all get to ride the celebrity train. This may sound like an exaggeration, but wait 'till the next season of Love Island, where I expect to see “the mulleted farmer that John Prescott thumped” serenading “that tax-dodger from Wife-Swap”. Rather that than any more Paul Danan!
