IF you ask a young person what they want to be when they grow up, more than half will say they’d like to be famous, according to a recent survey.
I can see why. It’s a world of glamour and excitement. You are invited to awards shows where you mingle with other celebrities, you get the best tables in restaurants and you spend half your life on the beach in Dubai, becoming even more orange.
Others celebrities to have become pariahs in recent times include Gino D’AcampoRex
BBCWynne Evans is set to take BBC to tribunal over his ‘sex joke’ sacking from the Strictly tour[/caption]
All of which is better than working at Morrisons.
Or is it?
The latest fame-seeker to crash and burn is an Apprentice candidate who this week was accused of using the wrong word to describe someone.
So that’s him done for.
One word out of place and it’s over and out for the poor chap.
Others to have become pariahs in recent times are Gino D’Acampo, that man from the Go Compare adverts, Philip Schofield and Gregg Wallace.
It’s getting to the point where, soon, only Monty Don will be left.
And we are not talking here about kiddy-fiddlers or international terrorists.
None of them is accused of doing something illegal.
They just said something or did something which someone found offensive. And that’s that. It doesn’t even have to be a current misdemeanour.
It could be a tweet you sent when you were 17. Or something you said to your brother when you were four.
And think about it. Can you say, hand on heart, that you have never said or done anything which might be deemed, in the court of social media, to be out of order?
There might be a few people, I guess, whose crimes are limited to running through a field of wheat.
But this sort of person rarely wants to be famous anyway.
People who crave fame tend to be extroverts. Show-offs. The life and soul of the party.
They are people who’ll do pretty much anything to get a laugh.
Fun people.
The exact sort of people who occasionally say something “wrong”.
So what happens when they make it?
Olivia WestAllegations over Gregg Wallace’s ‘inappropriate’ behaviour first emerged in November last year[/caption]
The money’s rolling in. They’re best friends with Marcus Rashford. They have a speedboat and personal plates on their car, and then, bang — a lip-reader is brought in, studies some social media footage taken at a party in 2005, and they’re done.
There’s no trial. No chance to mount a defence. They’re just out.
On the scrapheap.
That’s bad enough when you get fired from a job stacking shelves, but when you have a household face and you are catapulted into oblivion it’s a very different kettle of fish.
Because if you go to the shops or to the pub or even the park, you know people are going to stare at you and maybe even say something unpleasant.
So you are forced to stay indoors, in the mock Tudor mansion you bought with your earnings and which you can no longer afford.
In other words, you have your five minutes of fame and then. because we live in a world where everyone is offended by everything, it’ll be followed by 50 years of being a hermit.
Probably best, then, to forget the celebrity lark and strive instead to become a fireman.
PIZZA CAKE
SIR STEPHEN FRY came into my phone this week saying that the nation’s water companies should be owned and run by the Government.
And there are many who say that the railways should be put into the public sector as well.
Really? I only ask because this week we read about a bunch of lads on a stag night.
They were on a train going from Glasgow to Aberdeen and decided that when they pulled into the station at Montrose, they should get some pizzas delivered.
This would be quite an operation because the train would only be stationary for 90 seconds.
And guess what. The pizza delivery company pulled it off.
Can you imagine any government-run operation doing that?
No. Neither can I.
Oh, the joy of sixties, Liz and Trinny
InstagramLiz and Trinny in 1994[/caption]
InstagramLiz may only be 59 but Trinny is past the big six-zero now[/caption]
I USED to think that people in their sixties were old.
When my mum reached 60, she looked ancient and had ancient thoughts, mostly about Jimmy Young. At 61, my dad was so old he was dead.
When I reached 60, I started to think about those gardening trousers you see in the back of the Daily Telegraph’s colour supplement, and whether I should spend my retirement building a train set or learning how to do watercolour paintings.
But then I saw that picture of Liz Hurley and Trinny Woodall in bikinis.
And it’s snapped me back to attention.
Liz may only be 59 but Trinny is past the big six-zero now. And I can’t see her in a pair of action trousers heading down to the bingo hall under a blanket with rheumatism and arthritis.
As a result, I’m going to take up off-piste skiing and being a playboy.
Sixty? It’s the new 16.
KEIR’S HUNGER GAMES
AFTER he was forced to flee some dismal field in Milton Keynes this week, because no one could hear what his adenoids were saying over the din of 50 tractor horns, Sir Starmer went to a TV studio and said, with a condescending chuckle, that getting NHS waiting lists down was more important than a tax break for farmers.
That’s debatable, actually.
Those tax breaks are in place to ensure the poorest in society can afford to eat.
And in my book, eating is more important than giving a free boob job to some wannabe OnlyFans model.
It’s always the argument, though, when the Labourites raise taxes: “We need the cash for the NHS.”
True, you do. But you also need it to house illegal immigrants in luxury hotels and to indulge Ed Sillyband’s stupid quest for Net Zero.
And those things most definitely are NOT as important as being able to afford a loaf of bread.
BLAST IT… I MISSED
I’M not sure today’s London gangs are quite as efficient as they were back in the days of Ron, Reggie and The Long Good Friday.
We read this week about an almighty to-do in which some baddies broke into the house of a cagefighter and armed robber called Paul Allen and allegedly tried to kill him with a Glock pistol.
It didn’t go well. Six shots were fired but even though they were all standing in a kitchen – not a field – only two hit the target. And neither was fatal.
This is the trouble with handguns.
Hollywood tells us that they have phenomenal accuracy, but I once fired a Glock and after emptying the entire magazine, it turned out
I’d missed not just the target but the wall on which it was mounted.
Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
