#oneaday, Day 215: Who?

Front page of ever-reliable rag The Sun today bore a story about David and Victoria Beckham sacking fourteen members of their staff. That’s a whole third of their staff! Disasteriffic! How terrible! How awful! How nightmarish! It must be so tough for them!

Bollocks, of course, and certainly not front-page newsworthy. The thing that comes to mind any time I hear any kind of celebrity gossip is one of those awkward conversations you have with your parents where they tell you all about someone whose name you’ve never heard before but you’re apparently supposed to know everything about, including their medical history, any past indiscretions, marital status and whether or not they or anyone close to them has died recently.

It’s easy to do, of course. We all do it. We all talk about our friends to other people as if they know them. Because we know them, we refer to them with a comfortable familiarity. It sometimes doesn’t cross our mind that certain people in one group of friends might not know who “Jeff” or “Calin” from another group of friends are.

But with celebrity, it’s a different matter. People who are into that sort of thing talk about celebrities as if they are their friends. They excitedly talk about their idols on a first-name basis, assuming you know who on earth they’re blathering on about. Worse, sometimes they use nicknames dreamed up by tabloids that make it even more difficult to work out who it is they’re on about. If they’re involved in football, it’ll probably be the first syllable of their surname followed by either “-o” or “-s”. Sometimes, it’s a reference to pop culture long forgotten, or never known about at all by some people. Does Victoria Beckham still get called “Posh”? I bet she does by someone out there.

I still find it difficult to understand the fascination with the minutiae of these people’s lives, though. Fair enough if you want to follow the career of someone who is interesting, or does something that you find particularly stimulating. But these people are not, in most cases, close personal friends. How is the fact that poor old Posh ‘n’ Becks are having to sack a whole third of their staff to “save money” newsworthy? What are we supposed to get out of that story? Envy? Because that’s a Deadly Sin, I believe. Are we supposed to feel compassion or empathy for them? Because the vast majority of us don’t have one person to sack, let alone fourteen. Let alone fourteen people being only a third of our “staff”.

David Beckham doing something exciting and footbally. That might be newsworthy. On the sports pages, not the front page. Victoria Beckham doing something exciting and pop-starry. That, too, might be newsworthy. On the entertainment pages, not the front page.

Also in the news today: A man saved his daughter from a bear pit. That’s pretty heroic. Why isn’t that on the front page of The Sun? Because people are more interested in the life and times of poor little rich kids.