Just listening to the radio - apparently 3 out of 5 people are bored of Celebrities, and further one in five are 'celebrity resistant'. This is according to a survey by Mintel, and, I think, specifically relates to celebrity endorsement of products for marketing reasons.
Actually, I think it's more subtle than that. Just randomly looking at people at work, or people in the blogosphere, it's pretty clear to me that a clear, overwhelming majority of 'ordinary people' are interested in 'famous people'. Famous people who excel in a field - arts, entertainment, sport, whatever - that interests.
I suspect that it's a boredom with Celebrity Syndrome. It was interesting that BBC2's documentary on Auschwitz got a bigger audience than Celebrity Big Brother. Yet if you look at the mass circulation downmarket newspapers, or the plethora of glossy celeb mags you would think there was a national obsession with C-list publicity seekers. Heat was quite popular in my office for a while, when it had a bit of attitude, and I'm sure I'm not alone in buying the odd sneaky copy of Okay or Hello. But the air heads in PR make a mistake if they think we take it seriously.
I guess there's probably a whole demographic of women in their early twenties sporting Burberry fake tans living symbolically, if not actually, in the new towns of Essex and Hertfordshire who lap up every move of the various nonenties with hyperactive PR agents. But most of us are not interested in who happens to be in Bizarre/3AM; simply pursuing our interests in our own favourites via the context of their work.
I suspect that most 'readers' of mass-circulation downmarket tabloids get them for sports, or TV listings, or maybe even for news headlines, and generally flick over the celeb stories, unless they are graphic descriptions of illicit sex.
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