The Question

Is celebrity dead?

In a word, no. Hopes were stirred this weekend that the marriage of Peter Andre and Jordan - which, with its pink pumpkin coach drawn by six white miniature ponies, made Posh and Becks' nuptials look like a Lenten Quaker meeting - would distil celebrity to its quintessence and thus vaporise the species. Two days on, however, and with the presses of OK! magazine still turning, they must be dashed.

Remember, this is a breed of people fuelled by equal parts greed and a clawing, desperate need to be noticed. They will, literally now, offer themselves as shark bait in return for your attention. They will have enemas - crap through a tube in front of a camera - in order to secure a nugatory portion of public recognition. Not respect, not admiration, not even liking. Just so long as we look.

Having divorced fame utterly from achievement, they are, in historian Daniel Boorstin's unimprovable phrase, "human pseudo-events". They cannot die because they do not truly exist. Jordan is famous for shagging a footballer and allowing a surgeon to slice her tits open and poke bags of silicone in. And that is all. Peter Andre, on the other hand, is so much less. He is famous for having abdominal muscles in the 80s and for redefining the notion of witlessness on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

You can't destroy nothing. You can't kill a vacuum. Maybe you could try filling it with tears?

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