Thursday 6th October

Andy Warhol predicted that in the future everyone would experience 15 minutes of fame.  Well, it hasn’t happened quite yet – not quite.  But how short fame is now becoming.  Owen Smith, contender for Labour leadership, three months.  Sam Allardyce, England Football Manager, sixty-seven days (at least he had a 100% record, hahaha…), Diane James, UKIP’s new leader – an incredible 18 days of fame.

But now we have so-called Reality Television, Celebrities no-one had ever heard of in the jungle for a handful of weeks before Christmas, only to sink once again into Obscurity.  The eager candidates to  be Sir (and how he loves to be called Sir) Alan Sugar’s Apprentice fall one by one by the wayside, greedy boys and girls scratching each other’s eyes out on their way to their brief flash of fame.  And Big Brother itself, (does anyone still watch it) where ‘contestants’ will do almost anything to win, but for most being on TV is the fame they crave.  All the hopefuls, thousands at the auditions, who strive for fame on X-factor who are often in tears if they aren’t accepted; their whole young lives apparently fixated on being famous, if only for not even fifteen minutes as they try to sing for their supper.  And even for the successful ones, how many have even the semblance of a career a year after winning?

But maybe worse still (if that is possible) are the poor people who go on the Jeremy Kyle show and fight for their fifteen minutes of fame by exposing their sad lives for all of us to be amused and amazed by; husbands unfaithful with best friends, girlfriends sleeping with brothers – the pathetic list goes on.  Or the people on Embarrassing Bodies who are quite happy to have their somewhat faulty or unsightly genitals filmed for our delectation; what a thing to be famous for.  Leonard Cohen in a song called The Future said ‘the rich have their channels in the bedrooms of the poor’.  As the World spins on the only chance of a different life for many is to grab, grasp or beg for their fifteen minutes of fame.