On Fame

On Fame

The current proliferation of reality shows and gossip magazines means that just about anybody can claim to be a celebrity these days.

However, with a swarm of humanity's dregs looking for easy fame and the filthy lucre that goes with it have found - sadly - that the bar has been set so much higher than those that have gone before them. With a world shortage of bug-eyed D&G sunglasses to boot, it appears that the needy have to work that much harder to get themselves into the roped-off VIP area.

You could - if you set your standards low enough - throw yourself at a footballer, and sweep into fame as a WAG, the lifestyle of the most vacuous, worthless people in the world, ranking just below Nazi War Criminals in the list of people who should die slowly and painfully. Vacancies for both genders, you will be glad to hear.

It's no longer enough to be photographed drunk-in-charge of Charlotte Church; nor is urinating over a strangely willing Peter Andre whilst the world's press watches in stunned silence. Britney Spears' baldie shenanigans and the fact that Jade Goody even exists at all means that there are now minimum standards of head-turning manky bad behaviour before the red-tops even get out of bed for you.

It's sad, but a typical night in central London - or any other provincial town where you might find a press hack with a camera - sees a whole procession of desperate has-beens and never-will-bes resorting to ever more desperate stunts in order to secure that coveted front page in Chat! magazine, or - the Holy Grail indeed - the GMtv sofa.

At the risk of giving these scum the oxygen of publicity, here are a few of the more tawdry sights that took place over the last weekend alone which found scant coverage in even the local press:

* Keith Chegwin eating his own vomit outside Jamie Oliver's 'Fifteen' restaurant, before squatting in the gutter, telling passers-by he was "planting tomatoes"

* Tara Palmer-Tompkinson (from it-girl to shit-girl in one easy lesson) intervening in a brutal civil war in the Congo before falling over drunk outside The Ivy

* Billie Piper reviving the slave trade after a 200-year break with a shameless press release from her PR organisation "Doctor Who girl fills much-needed gap in public service industry", before falling over drunk outside The Ivy

* TV's Jimmy Carr ripping the wings off budgies and forcing them into the bottoms of disabled children at Great Ormond Street Hospital screaming "IT'S FOR CHARITY! IT'S FOR CHARITY!", whilst an equally desperate Vanessa Feltz demonstrates the art of self-fisting at a Women's Institute luncheon attended by the Duchess of Cornwall

* Several evictees from Big Brother Series 2-4 team up with a couple of Apprentice failures to kidnap a donkey from Blackpool Beach, fellating it in the middle of Leicester Square at the premiere of Eddie Murphy's Norbit, then projecting their tawdry animal lust onto thirty-foot-high screens placed in strategic places around central London. Nobody notices

Sad, isn't it? A dismal look into the world of these desperate, needy people who thrive only on the attention afforded to them by the gossip columns. A dismal look that actually had a little bit of sick rising into my mouth.

With your gift of love, we can help these people. Tell us who you have seen acting up for the cameras, and we can send a SWAT team round pronto to sort them out.

We've got to be cruel to be kind. We've said it before: we've got to see how committed to their fame these people really are. When reality shows talk of life-and-death decisions, they ought to really mean it. Culling useless celebrities is the only way forward.