We are lucky in this Benefice to have two magazines and two editors who are in touch with the aspirations and lives of the parishioners. It’s not an easy job being an editor as readers may remember, when I related how my editorship of an underground magazine for National Servicemen almost got me put on a charge. I was fortunate in that my CO liked what I had written but, because he thought his superiors saw my articles as a challenge to the status quo, he ordered me to write instead for the official RAF magazine. I complied but the muse had gone and I was never quite the same. This episode meant that for a couple of days, I was a minor celebrity in Southern Arabia but fortunately celebrity did not go to my head, and so my two years service to her Majesty ended with a medal and a clean record.
The status of celebrity is as old as the hills, and today’s budding aspirants have Twitter, Facebook and TV Reality shows to promote themselves. However, unlike Oscar Wilde who, according to WS Gilbert, walked round Piccadilly Circus with a lily in his hand, today’s crowd will do anything to get noticed.
Although generally ignoring Celeb’s, I was jolted into action the other day whilst on a Tractor spare parts web-site. Whilst looking at a 1962 Fordson Super Dexta, up popped a message inviting me to discover “The best kept secrets of Jennifer Aniston”. My finger hovered over the button but before I could act, Jennifer was replaced by a promised revelation about someone called Kim Kardashian. This was too much, and off I went to Google. To my astonishment I discovered not one, but a whole family of Kardashians! A few minutes later I realised that this family and I had nothing in common and so I left them to it, but not before obtaining a few insights into their world. Alas I realised that they are oblivious to my world.
It was this thought that led me to muse on the nature of Celebrity itself. Here we are in a world in which celebrities are eager to fill our lives with stories about themselves, or, to be more accurate, they want to fill our lives with their own self-images. They don’t want us to have the doubtful bits; only the bits that they cherish about themselves. Am I alone in wondering why these rich and influential people want ordinary folk to ‘follow them?’ Is it just money or is there more?
I guess we all want others to see us as we see ourselves; – at least Robbie Burns the Poet thought so, – but modern celeb’s take things further. For example, these are the folks who set up the organisation Hacked-Off. This is funded by Max Moseley and others who have also set up a body to try and legally control, and thus, censor the Press.
My spell as a celebrity was very brief, but for the modern celeb’s it has become a career-choice. TV and the media are full of celebrities telling us how we can be like them, if we buy this product or use this diet. In fact so ubiquitous have their appearances become and so tainted with self interest, that I ignore everything they say and make a point of not buying or supporting any product or any charity they promote. Such is the nature of my perversity that I object to their trying to manipulate my emotions. When I buy a product or give to a charity, I want to make that decision myself and not because a multi-millionaire has acted out his piety in front of a camera.
How different Celebrities are from Characters! Characters are less interested in projecting their own self-image onto others, but more interested in being themselves and so leaving others to make of it what they will.
I can think of quite a few who have influenced me and some may even be reading this. Unlike celebs’ these characters have not tried to shape my view of themselves but of life itself. At the same time they have not been selfish about the time they have put into me. They have done this as teachers, mentors, tutors, colleagues, clients, friends, neighbours even business competitors. In short, these characters did not demand that I see them on their own terms, but gave me their time whilst leaving me decide what value I placed on them and their advice.
Talking about characters, reminds me of the tale told by the late Aristocrat and Eton educated Humphrey Lyttelton. Jazz trumpeter, and for many years, chairman of the radio comedy show “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.” He was once approached by a man who mistook him for a popular Ornithologist. “Are you the bird watcher’ he asked.
Humph replied, “No. Not really, I’m more of a Word Botcher.”
View from the Pew 