Faustus for Fifteen Minutes
We all know Andy Warhol’s most famous quote and how it has come to be the modern secular equivalent of an eleventh commandment; and it’s tempting to envisage a future date in which the doss-houses of Britain contain more residents who used to be famous than those who didn’t. Somehow, at the back of my mind, I can’t help but think of the ‘Bicycle Repairman’ Python sketch, where every person is dressed as Superman and Michael Palin’s secret identity is that of an ordinary bloke in a flat cap. Before long, every pub bore or pissed-up bus-stop lecturer will be going on about how they were once on telly. Fifteen years of manufacturing instant celebrities as dispensable and disposable cartoon characters to cheer or boo and hiss has already left us littered with a lengthy litany of half-remembered and all-but forgotten faces that plummeted back to the obscurity they were plucked from, their reversal of fortunes as rapid as their rise to stardom.
Your average casual viewer, if asked to list half-a-dozen winners of reality TV shows – including those posing as musical ones – would probably struggle after recalling three or four; chances are Jade Goody’s name would appear, even though she never won ‘Big Brother’, and the guy with Tourette’s who had a habit of saying ‘wankers’ a lot would no doubt crop up, even if his name might be more elusive. He was called Pete Bennett and last week declared he was broke and had been homeless in recent years.
Contrary to my dislike of the plethora of useless celebrities that clutter column inches once reserved for news, I cannot help but feel sorry for Pete Bennett. He fulfilled the freak show remit that ‘Big Brother’ developed when too many Ordinary Joes and Josephine’s had viewers turning off in their droves, but one could say the round-the-clock exposure he received helped normalise a condition to the public that had previously been the province of serious documentaries. Was that condition exploited? Perhaps. Yet, the fact that Pete Bennett won the contest suggests his condition was perceived as a plus rather than a minus, which is no bad thing. What the decline and fall of his post-fame life represents, however, is part of a dispiriting and cynical cycle now so established that it’s a miracle anyone even yearns for their fifteen minutes anymore.
Famous faces have always sold newspapers; The Beatles and Stones were all over the dailies in the 60s; Rod Stewart’s love-life and every move made by The Sex Pistols provided great tabloid fodder in the 70s. But it was in the 80s that celebrity began to colonise the columns, with everyone from Boy George to the ‘People’s Princess’ edging genuine news to one side. Although the Gallagher brothers behaving badly made inroads into the populist end of Fleet Street in the 90s, it was Diana’s death in 1997 that marked the true turning point of journalistic priorities. Within months of events in Paris, Posh and Becks were crowned as Diana’s heirs and in their wake has followed every Jordan, Jade, Hilton and Kardashian since.
Reality television has been the midwife to the vast majority of those we are supposed to be fascinated by, yet such is the transient nature of their fame, far more have vanished off the radar than have remained irritating fixtures on it. Casually glance though the list of No.1 singles from 2000 onwards and well over half sprang to prominence courtesy of a TV show that has led them to currently reside in our ‘Where are they Now?’ file. David Sneddon, anyone? Darius? Michelle McManus? Steve Brookstein? I wonder if these deluded butterflies were made aware of the deal with the Devil they’d entered into; I doubt it. Take a supermarket check-out girl on the minimum wage and tell her she can be famous overnight if she is prepared to endure the humiliation of Simon Cowell comparing her voice to the sound of a buffalo giving birth and chances are she’ll probably acquiesce.
But what happens when the next one comes along? There’s only so much space for half-a-dozen rubbish celebrities at any given time, and the turnover is pretty swift. What does the check-out girl who used to be famous do then? Go back to Poundland? If she became well-known because she couldn’t hold a note, she should never have been afforded any attention in the first place; and this is the kind of contemporary fame that is most puzzling to me, the fame someone who has no evident talent is given, and the fact that the masses are obsessed with these characters. Why? Just existing is enough to justify a front-page photograph, not the ability to act or sing or write or produce one intriguing idea. Paris Hilton took part in a sex tape that ‘went viral’ (as the kids say); Kim Kardashian has a gargantuan arse. And this is judged to be sufficient grounds for inspiring worldwide adoration.
The advertising industry sells unattainable dreams, as does Hollywood; that has been the case for practically a century. Every movie or billboard that interrupts the daily drudgery is supposed to be necessary escapist fantasy, and the mutual agreement between producer and consumer is based upon the knowledge that this dream will remain unattainable. When I was a young teenager and Duran Duran were huge, I used to be irked by footage of them swanning about in exotic locations, but I was aware there was a good five years of thankless slogging around midlands clubs that predated their ascension to the jet-set. I felt like they were rubbing my nose in it by showing-off, yet I acknowledged there was a reason for their fame; they were a group of musicians who wrote catchy pop songs that appealed to millions of adolescent girls. They had, in a sense, earned the right to revel in their gotten gains. I don’t see that so much anymore.
Through their glossy promo videos, Duran Duran, whether intentionally or not, were selling a lifestyle in the same way that the advertising industry and Hollywood always have; and if you liked their music, the lifestyle was part of the package; if you didn’t, the package provoked either anger or resentment. But at least it provoked something. The Kardashians of this world provoke nothing in me other than bemusement as to why anyone else should remotely care what they do. Whenever I exit my inbox, I’m taken straight to the Google ‘headlines’ and every time, there’ll be another celebrity I’ve never heard of (and have no interest in) hogging them. What purpose do these people serve?
It’s possible the more ordinary they are the more within reach and attainable their fame appears to be, giving the impressionable adolescent the belief they too can achieve a similar route out of their moribund existence. Were they blessed with an indisputable talent, such a gift is known to be rationed and therefore cannot be replicated with the same speed as someone who videos themselves being shagged and then posts it online. The awestruck audience that stretched out to make contact with their idol when Ziggy Stardust sang ‘Gimme your hands’ never believed they could be their God; to just be in the same room as him was as good as it got. This doesn’t apply with the famous today; they look like you and talk like you; they could be you; and you could be them.
But Pete Bennett is more representative of the legacy of this poisoned chalice than a fat-arsed chancer who married a millionaire rapper. His decline and fall is the story of our times, the story of a culture that has reduced people to the status of fast-food; and like all food, it goes in one end and comes out the other.
Petunia Winegum
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April 10, 2015 at 9:52 am -
Might it be that our interest in these mayflies is inversely proportional to our age?
That the weariness of age has both increased our discrimination and insulated us from the latest shiny promotion; be it a breakfast cereal or a talentless five second celeb.
Just saying.-
April 10, 2015 at 7:57 pm -
I think there’s truth in that; if I was fascinated by the same people as twelve-year-old girls, that’d be pretty weird; but I think what never ceases to baffle me is the preoccupation with so many people who don’t have an ounce of talent between them. I can’t really remember that ever being the case before this century.
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April 10, 2015 at 11:20 pm -
“…I can’t really remember that ever being the case before this century…”
On the contrary, I always considered ‘Big Brother’ as the modern replacement for the Victorian (and earlier) custom of having a day-trip to Bethlehem Asylum to laugh at ‘the lunatics’.
The lowest common denominator of the masses is constant through time, alas.
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April 10, 2015 at 10:01 am -
Thanks Petunia for inadvertently bringing back a precious memory:
Chatham Central Hall, June 1973,
Me, 15, at my first ever gig, alone.
Ziggy Stardust on stage, shortly before he was retired.
Me thinking: Nothing will be the same again. The transformative power of imagination, wit, performance, communication, community and even love. I can now create myself. My life has at last begun.
Sincerely – thank you.
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April 10, 2015 at 3:22 pm -
Glad I brought it back for you. I just wish I’d been there as well!
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April 10, 2015 at 6:17 pm -
How old would you have been?
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April 10, 2015 at 7:31 pm -
Summer of ’73 – five-going-on six, alas!
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April 10, 2015 at 10:17 am -
Just because Pete Bennette was famous once, does that mean I owe him a living? Society gave him the chance of a lifetime. He fucked it up, not society. Not me. Gimme a break from feeling sorry for the whole fucking world all the time.
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April 10, 2015 at 7:53 pm -
I only feel sympathy in that I feel it for his entire generation. It’s like when ducklings hatch and the first sight their eyes see they perceive to be their mother; they’ll follow mummy wherever she leads them.
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April 10, 2015 at 11:31 pm -
Yeah, right.
“Pete reveals his true feelings about his dad abandoning him when he was six, and his close relationship with his mother, Anne. Pete shares intimate details about his escape into wild sex parties, the horrific death of his best friend, and his thoughts of suicide until Big Brother ‘saved his life’.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pete-My-Story-Bennett/dp/0007250339
From the moment Pete decided to enter Big Brother so his mum wouldn’t have to work in a fast food chain, he had the entire nation glued to their TV screens. But beneath his quirky and hilarious antics, it was Pete’s refreshing innocence and lack of fame-seeking that made him the most popular (and fancied) housemate Big Brother has ever seen.-
April 10, 2015 at 11:48 pm -
That ghastly publication typifies the values of a generation educated not by parents or school, but by the media. Their high-seat is parked in front of the TV set and they reach out their arms crying ‘Mummy’.
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April 11, 2015 at 12:15 am -
Going by a comment, Mummy Dearest might be moot.
“As a close relation to both Pete and his mother Ann, I have recently purchased this book and I have soon realised that this is a complete TRASH. Pete did not write this book. The book was written by his mother Ann, who in order to make the book sellable she tried to make it Clamorous and humorous by inventing non existent Romany/Gypsy roots and DNA and by depicting practically everybody who has been mentioned in this book, friend or relation, as being either a “poofter” gay or a lesbian. I am really surprised that nobody did not take a liable action against them or the publishers for defamation of character. “
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April 10, 2015 at 10:28 am -
I would hazzard a guess that the plethora of “celebrity lifestyle” (for example Hello or OK) magazines are mostly purchased by the female of the species who seem obsessed with news about who’s shagging who and how much did so in so’s wedding cost. Men on the other hand mostly seem interested in news and gossip about sportsmen, mainly footballers, and photographs or videos featuring the latest strumpets from the pages of Nuts or Loaded magazines. In both cases there are the “five minute” wonder types. However, for all those who aim for stardom and fall by the wayside, a very small “lucky” few will have long and sucessful careers. I remember some years ago seeing a TV programme which sought out the members of the Bay City Rollers, and was interested to see what had become of them in later life. For every David Bowie there will be thousands of David Sneddons. It’s that very tantalising chimera of fame and fortune that keeps the droves striving to “make it big”. Do I feel sorry for the likes of Pete Bennett? Not at all. We are, as John Stuart Mill would have it, possessed of “free will”. No one forces these people onto shows like Big Brother or The X Factor, in fact there is fierce competition to appear on them.
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April 10, 2015 at 10:42 am -
“Day of the Locust” was all about a vain, shallow woman who wanted to be a star and be admired. A society in thrall to fame. It was set in the 1930’s. A warning from history perhaps? That’s certainly where the director was coming from I think.
https://youtu.be/gqwoE2u1c88-
April 10, 2015 at 7:53 pm -
April 11, 2015 at 9:42 am -
It was a novel first, by Nathaniel West, who worked in Hollyweird and knew of what he wrote.
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April 10, 2015 at 10:43 am -
Yes men and women think differently , for example girls going to see their favourite boy band, getting virtually uncontrollable ( used to happen in the 60s with the Beatles , 70s David Cassidy as well) whereas men don’t seem to do this to the same extent. I remember back in the 70s going to watch groups like Yes, Black Sabbath, Deep,Purple and enjoying the experience, but not going hysterical . The wife you to love David Cassidy and even rushed the stage in the early 90s, I finally took her to a white snake concert which cured the Cassidy addiction , job done!
I don’t watch big brother, towie , kardastians etc, too boring for me, full of plastic non entities , but maybe it’s me who is wrong?-
April 10, 2015 at 10:49 am -
A mother has just been prosecuted for child abuse because she slapped her hysterical daughter at a One Direction concert. That the mother had vodka in her “water bottle” was offered as a mitigating factor…
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April 10, 2015 at 12:38 pm -
As the late, great Tony Hancock might have said “stone me, what a charmer!”.
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April 10, 2015 at 1:02 pm -
Seemed a bit heavy handed, I saw she got a lot of hours community service and a difficult one for the mother. If she had done nothing and the child had got injured or killed ( crush damage) what have happened then?
I know she had some vodka, but the child was not that young.
Of course in my day back in the 60s and early 70s if you didn’t behave you would get a belt!
Equally I can remember being asked by my dad to walk very quietly on the river bank so we didn’t scare the fish we were trying to catch, and I always did this and we spent many happy years fishing together until his life was suddenly cut short.
Being well behaved did have its advantages
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April 10, 2015 at 7:54 pm -
And she wasn’t prosecuted on grounds of abuse because she took her daughter to see One Direction? What is the world coming to?
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April 10, 2015 at 8:44 pm -
Granted taking a child to One direction is far worse than a clip round the ear
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April 10, 2015 at 11:10 am -
I blame ‘Dallas’.
Prior to that, most big audience, long-running, UK TV series tended to be rooted in gritty, sometimes grotty, ‘working-class’ life, Coronation Street etc. Over many years of its broadcast, Dallas then presented a very different view of a daily lifestyle, one way beyond the realistic aspirations of the masses but, by repeated immersion in that fantasy, they came to believe that it was attainable. The marketeers loved it, as it then enabled them to present economy versions of the Dallas-bling to the Essex hard-of-thinking classes, which they then bought in their droves. The rest is history.-
April 10, 2015 at 11:24 am -
That power requires a media platform makes for a self-selecting group. Thus you get the like of Liz Dux, whose first choice of a career was to be a news-reader. Intelligent and clever people with such vapid ambitions for glamour makes for a very dangerous society. A media lauding such shallowness makes the danger ever-present. I think this has even been recognised by those with real power – hence Cameron’s decision to stop playing the fame game with these dolly-bird election set-pieces. How cross the meeeja were with him.
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April 10, 2015 at 11:26 am -
The point has often been made that most of these people are famous for being famous. Whatever you think of the 60s and 70s there were some real characters around then.
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April 10, 2015 at 11:37 am -
Those of us of a certain age may remember Christopher Trace, presenter of the BBC children’s TV programme Blue Peter (or “Pink Jimmy” as it was sometimes referred to in my native Scotland) in the 1960s. I distinctly remember reading that after he had finally hung up his Blue Peter badge, Trace fell on hard times. Sure enough, Wikipedia has it that he retired from Blue Peter in 1967 and after a failed business venture, was declared bankrupt in 1973.
It just goes to show that there’s nothing new under the sun (or in the Sun, if you prefer).
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April 10, 2015 at 11:41 am -
He didn’t hang up his badge. he was outed by the media as a divorcee and had to leave kiddies TV because of the shame and horror of his deviant behaviour. Censorious Auntie Beeb in full flow…. the same Auntie that was sheltering paedos… complete joke innit.
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April 10, 2015 at 12:43 pm -
I heard it that the poor bastard was alegedly grassed up by that slag Valerie Singleton. She had her heart set on a long and prosperous career at the BBC, and lo it came to pass.
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April 10, 2015 at 12:54 pm -
Get down Shep
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April 10, 2015 at 1:24 pm -
Pet, don’t get me wrong but looking at that photo I have to say the years haven’t treated you kindly. Also does your gig as Editor at The Daily Raccoon pay so much that you can afford real Special Brew and straights (and does the Landlady know you’re taking your custom down the Offy)?
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April 10, 2015 at 7:39 pm -
I’m essentially a bloody intern; whenever ‘er upstairs has dozed off, I rummage about under the mattress and grab the odd quid from her life-savings. A quick trip down the offy, a can and a cig and then it’s back to the grindstone. Think ‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane’…
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April 10, 2015 at 8:49 pm -
Nothing wrong with Special Brew, the life blood of glasgow
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April 10, 2015 at 11:32 pm -
and Peckham to my memory
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April 10, 2015 at 11:33 pm -
Aye, that and deep-fried confectionery.
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April 10, 2015 at 2:20 pm -
Talent comes and goes, and there is only so much of it for the various promoters to sell on to the public. Its a rare commodity, and promoters need more.
How simpler to make a Narcissistic audience; so in love with itself, all you have to do to milk this huge market, is to keep pumping out images of the average Joe Narcissist. No need to have a high culture, or bother with all that skill nonsense; they’ll dance before a mirror, or at the end of a selfie-stick, just as much as before a full orchestra.
The summer of love moved on to the autumn of self-abuse. We’re just entering the winter of mother State, bursting into the bedroom with: “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING LITTLE MAN!!!”
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April 10, 2015 at 4:33 pm -
As for the cult of celebrity; charm school dropouts, every one.
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April 10, 2015 at 7:15 pm -
Modern culture is an oxymoron. Uncultured is implied.
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April 10, 2015 at 11:35 pm -
Amen to that!
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April 11, 2015 at 8:27 am -
Wasn’t Punk Rock all about having no talent but being able to get up on a stage and hammer out somehting that would make people go on you?
The democratisation of Fame. The Equality Machine in overdrive.
Everyone’s equal in Hell baby….. Hit it!!-
April 11, 2015 at 11:55 am -
Yes… I was firmly of the “can’t play, won’t learn” school of bass playing. But I could snarl like the best of ’em.
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April 11, 2015 at 10:57 am -
In the 60’s you did have women who were basically famous for the clothes they had on while having a photo taken – Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton – and for the famous men they were involved with. Not too different to today. I suspect, but don’t actually know if it’s entirely true, that “models” were nameless and personally obscure before the advent of Suzy Parker, Dagmar and Sabrina, who became famous in the 50’s. Zsa Zsa Gabor was, I think the first to whom the phrase “Famous for being famous” was applied (can anyone name any of Zsa Zsa’s movies without hitting the IMDB first?). Despite this she’s lasted for decades, one of those exceptions to every rule.
In the 60’s, there was a man called Simon Dee, a former DJ. He became a huge star on TV. He was essentially a handsome, classless (suitable to the era, they even invented a phony Canadian background for him), publicly personable young man, who asked famous men and women questions on a peak time chat show. He was first to admit he had no “talent” – couldn’t act/sing/dance etc – yet he was as famous Harold Wilson (and like pop stars, Dee had lot’s of young women swooning over him). But his TV reign was only 3 years, after which he fell back into almost total obscurity. Nearly all his many TV shows were “wiped” by the BBC, the tapes reused. It’s the classic British media rags to riches then back to rags again story. As he left no “legacy”, his fame was ephemeral, as I suspect will also be the case with characters like Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross (though both have remained stars in the public eye for much longer than Simon Dee did ) and the likes of the Kim Whatsername. In a similar way, a guy called Jack Paar, as famous as JFK in his heyday, is largely unknown to American’s today. But many long dead showbiz contemporaries of Dee, the likes of Sid James (dead far longer than Simon Dee), remain publicly known and will probably “live forever”, as they had talent and left a concrete legacy, one which can be seen and enjoyed by successive generations.
Would Oscar Wilde be as famous as he is without his trial and disgrace? Or would he be as obscure as other successful playwright contemporaries like Arthur Wing Pinero and Clyde Fitch? What if Wilde had remained just a playwright with no sensational scandal, one which retains a contemporary relevance, attached to his name? Marie Corelli was the best selling novelist of the late Victorian and Edwardian era – hardly anyone today has heard of her, as she has been judged (possibly unfairly) as not having left anything of cultural value behind since her death in the 1920’s – yet contemporaries such as Joseph Conrad and Kipling still retain that public renown they had in their lifetimes. Maybe Ms Corelli will one day be rediscovered as a “pioneer” lesbian whose merits and name have been lost to us due to the baleful influence of patriarchal sexism, just as Oscar “lives on” as a tragic gay icon?
When TV superstars like Simon Dee and a mega selling writer like Corelli fall into utter obscurity, the likes of the reality crowd, even the most famous such as Jade Goody, who leave nothing (or little) behind of any value to culture, will inevitably become totally forgotten as memories fade and contemporaries die off.
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April 11, 2015 at 11:07 am -
* He was first to admit he had no “talent” – couldn’t act/sing/dance etc *
I think Jimmy Savile had been there for many years already…
” When Sir James Savile OBE KCSG (Sir James is a papal knight of St Gregory) opened the door of his Regent’s Park flat to me he was wearing a red football shirt, blue pyjama trousers, a yellow dressing gown, zip-up slippers, and an embossed nugget of a gold watch. He was also smoking a large cigar. “Ah,” I muttered by way of an opening gambit, as he wrung my hand, grumped out a muscular “hello”, and waved me into the premises. What, I wondered, would Jimmy Savile Jim’ll Fix It presenter, practising Catholic, inexhaustable charity worker, and self-described “TV and radio personality” have to reveal to the readers of the Catholic Herald?
But let us pause for a moment. We all know Jimmy Savile (as we must settle down to call him) well enough the emperor-sized cigars; the revolving eyes; the great shoulder-reaching mane of white hair. But what exactly is he famous for? Well…um…er… Let Mr Saville himself ride to the rescue. “I’m not a showbiz person, though obviously I’m known as a showbiz person, because I’m absolutely talentless. I can’t sing. I can’t dance. I can’t tell jokes. I can’t act. And I’ve no desire to do any of these things. But I see it as the key to the Bank of England, because if you become famous, people give you fortunes for some peculiarity. It’s a modern phenomenon.
http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-dickens-you-say.html?showComment=1428746244235-
April 11, 2015 at 11:40 am -
I suppose there’s even an argument for Sid Vicious being the modern celebrity prototype.
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April 11, 2015 at 9:34 pm -
Zsa Zsa Gabor is usually credited with creating the genre.
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