When I asked wannabee club queen Jodie Marsh what the point of her was, she chuckled and replied: “There’s no point to me. I’ve got no talent. I just want to make as much money as I can, as easy as I can and have as much fun as I can doing it.”
Reading this makes me see Jodie Marsh in a whole new light. While I don’t think I’d like her as a flat mate, it shows she certainly has a fair bit more self awareness than you’d credit her with when you see pics of her tottering out of clubs claiming to be the new Jordan (she certainly shows more than many journalists).
Perhaps it’s because I too am pretty talentless, that I’m all in favour of celebrity culture. At a time when the economy as a whole is starting to flounder, ‘Celebrity’ is probably one of our great growth industries keeping thousands of journalists, PR people, photographers and assorted flunkies in full time employment. Not to mention the celebrities themselves, most of whom – by their own admission – would have little else to do all day, but have now been transformed into medium size businesses.
Not only that, but it’s incredibly egalitarian: when Jade Goody can make from nowhere onto a magazine cover, you realise that traditional barriers of looks, wealth and class have finally melted away. Social mobility in action. Gordon Brown would be proud.
Palabras de Simon Waldman. Ten