Corporal Jones lives! (Celebrity deaths: Why do they affect us?)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	Celebrity deaths: Why do they affect us?
Date:	08/10/08 (164 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You can wail if you want to but this guy is not for wailing

Disadvantages: Who really cares about them

First of all I will surprise you with the news that Corporal Jones from Dads Army is not dead. Yes, Clive Dunn lives happily in Portugal with his family and is of sound mind. I couldn't believe it when I read it. He was 91 last week. He looked 91 in Dads Army, a show made in the mid 1970s! But as and when he departs us he will quickly be forgotten, he is just too old to matter sadly. The burst of Dads Army reruns in tribute will be buried by the fact we are still regularly running Dads Army reruns. As great a show that was and he pivotal to once you get old in the celebrity world no one remembers you, Paul Newman's parting earning a couple of showings of the Sting on terrestrial TV. Paul Newman was possible Hollywood's greatest reaming star of the glory years.

Sadly we have fewer and fewer big stars these days, the lines of celebrity beginning to be blurred as more and more talentless people become famous through tacky reality shows and cheesy Halifax ads. Howard has a 500 grand house off the back of that finger nails down the blackboard commercial. Now that Halifax is going to be broken up one hopes he will be finding pastures new.

An example of that feverish need to accept Joe Six-pack as a celebrity was highlighted in my local shopping centre. I was strolling through the one in Northampton's town centre minding my own business when I happened upon a heaving throng. It was a book signing at WH Smiths. But the big queue (nearly Harry Potter levels) turned out to be for a pretty insignificant celebrity, none other than Alan Carr, the extremely camp stand-up comedian and son of the very successful ex Northampton Town manger Graham Carr. The snake of punters was surprising to say the least and I could not work out why so many people wanted to spend £17.99 on his life story, which was mostly spent in Northampton and of late, C4. This is not the star factory here guys. But these were not C4 people. These were ITV people. There were one or two camp middle-aged guys in the queue (and they are probably in the book) but just not what you would expect. What was most surprising was how young and female his fans were. I was expecting gays and menopausal mums, not admin assistants and shop girls.

But then it became clear what this was really about. When you actually saw the interaction between the people who bought the book and the star then you realized they weren't particularly fans of his but just drawn to the celebrity of the event. I mean this is Northampton after all. There was local press and TV there and the girls were more concerned about getting on the telly than talking about a book full of smutty gay innuendo and double entendre with the likewise star, and if that content was repeated by this heterosexual reader, would certainly invite accusations of homophobia by its apparent celebrity author!! Is that a star?

The kids were flashing away on their camera-phones and then darting off to Boots the Chemist to print off copies through the digital camera process machines for their mates...look I've just met someone famous type deal. I did have the last laugh though as an approaching and emaciated heroine addict with a purposeful gate stopped nearby and then started projectile vomiting all over the floor, of which I quipped to the media pack that perhaps he's read the book and you could interview him, to which Carr snarled viciously at me.

I have been snarled at by homosexuals before. The camp ones are not my cup of tea.

To me there are one too many of these bland comedians about who make their reputation by being bitchy and outrageous, their shelf life often as short as the kids dreams in the queue. The modern day celebrity seems to walk on the red carpet before they have earned the right. The question here then is would any body mourn the death of this new generation of so-called celebrities?

I fear they wouldn't for Carr.

My point here is (apart from being very vague throughout this review) is that maybe the celebrity is moving away from the star and more towards the fan, the point being that it rubs off onto the fans, so if the star dies the tears will be short as there's another Alan Carr in another Midlands hopping centre.

I think we are all looking for celebrity in some form, even the daughters of notorious Muslim fundamentalist preachers it seems. Some of you may have seen the headline in the Sun last week but just in case you haven't, one of their hacks unearthed the hilarious fact that Omar Bakri, the self-styled 'Ayatollah of Tottenham', who fled to Egypt after MI6 started taking his fanatical but rather comical ramblings rather too seriously for some reason, has been helping his daughters 'lap dancing career' in Soho by buying her false tities. Now you would think that a pole dancing daughter would be bad for his 'rep' at the annual Al-Quieda dinner and dance ,even though the 911 terrorists actually enjoyed such perks before their big mission in America, but to actually see it in print you had to chuckle. Not only that but he fiddled the dole to pay for her new plastic boobs! When MI5 are trying to decipher those alleged Al Quida plans they now know that 36dd isn't a home made military explosive!!

To me most of these Muslim fanatics are just benefit scroungers and into all this fanaticism to avoid working for a living, their terrorist involvement and actions their particular need for their particular variety of celebrity. We all want to be loved by our God or someone special and that's really what wanting to be famous is all about. If nobody's going to love me then I will make them remember me. I think we all agree this type of extreme celebrity is better off dead. The 911 bombers were the David Beckhams of South East Asia. 60% off Pakistani nationals surveyed still feel empathy to those terrorists.

911 may have changed the world but for those gays guys (again) and menopausal women the death of Princess Diana was their September 11. Coming from Northampton the event was the biggest thing to happen in my town since the 60s when George Best scored 6 goals at the Cobblers. I personally wasn't affected by her death and don't recall wailing in my living room or being remotely drawn to London to see the funeral. But others were. The men who went to the public weeping were basically dragged down the M1 as designated drivers for those silly middle aged women that had lost their patron saint. To me Diana was just another vacuous woman that thought her looks would always have the answers. But for the more fragile she was some sort of spiritual leader they couldn't live without. I suspect Alan Carr was one of those that went to London to wail.

Diana's death was a huge shock, of course, and the most exciting news story of the decade until the McCann's. Rather ironically more people are now visiting the apartment in Pria De Luz in Portugal to take pictures than there are at the Diana Museum at Althorp. I have been to both places.
To most, Diana seemed invincible and her later problems made her human. But ten years on even the most gullible could see her marriage was a sham, her genes more important than her sanity. But she wanted to be a princess and so she had to marry a prince to archive that. People say her downfall was a freak accident, but the truth is that for women that unfortunately die under the age of 40, a car crash is the number one method of dismissal. As she spent too much time swanking around in limos without a seatbelt on it would be that feckless luxury would claim her. But when someone so protected and so seemingly invincible dies then we are reminded of our fragile mortality. The vainest people may not want to die young but they want to take their beauty to the grave.

28 is apparently the optimum age for A-list celebrities to exercise their suicidal tendencies before the first wrinkle arrives. Monroe and James Dean were lights out in that year and so were many others, Heath Ledger quite recently. Britney has very close call. Britney would be aware of that number 28 significance. And its here, of course, when celebrity deaths have the most impact. If you can die young and beautiful you are immortalized in that graven image. Paul Newman's recent death was expected and so there was no great hullabaloo. He was a greatly respected actor and he will mostly be remembered for those iconic blue eyes, his sex appeal. But because he was 80 odd when he died he is normal and unattractive, and so no wailing, just that patronizing five second d moment of silence on the 9 o'clock news.

I personally have never felt remorse for the death of a celebrity, or not one that I recall. I did get very upset over Hillsborough in the 80s because I had been to big those big game crowds and was one of the well behaved fans that got there early and at the front, the same people that were crushed by the drunken Liverpool fans arriving late. I think I also would have been affected if I was around during the Munich air crash as I could identify with that loss as a Manchester United fan. But I do generally distance myself from feeling an affinity with a celebrity. I don't celebrate people for being famous, only if they have an extreme ability or talent. The retiring Michael Parkinson was just the same. He said very few people had that real presence of greatness on his show. Mohammed Ali was one of them. In life you are either a person who collects autographs or someone who should be writing them.

http://current.com/topics/88794855_celebrity_deat hs

Summary: Crocodile tears..