Status Anxiety

‘So,’ said the television interviewer, fixing me with an inquisitorial stare, ‘why are you so desperate to be a celebrity?’ This was last week on BBC2, but the question comes up in virtually every television interview I do. I’m beginning to suspect that I’m the only member of the chattering classes foolish enough to admit I want to be a celebrity. Indeed, it’s more or less the sole topic I’m asked to comment on. Whenever it hits the headlines, the 22-year-old researchers employed by news and current affairs programmes flick through the ‘celebrity’ category on their Rolodexes, starting at the top with ‘A-listers’, then gradually work their way down until they get to ‘wannabes’. There they find just one name — mine — along with a work number, a home number, a mobile and three email addresses.
Why is this admission so infra dig? After all, the desire for fame is not exactly uncommon. A recent survey carried out by a CBeebies television programme discovered that 31 per cent of pre-school children want to be a celebrity when they grow up. Is this supposed to be something you grow out of? Not judging from the number of people who apply to be on Big Brother each year. Wanting to be famous is surely the most ubiquitous ambition of our age, afflicting young and old alike.
So why do people look at me when I say it as if I’ve just confessed to being a Nazi sympathiser? Is it because I’m a scribbler? Are writers expected to be inspired by higher things? Samuel Johnson’s famous quote springs to mind here, but even admitting to doing it for the money is respectable by comparison. There’s something cheap and tawdry about wanting to be a celebrity, as though no one setting out to achieve something so vulgar could possibly produce anything worthwhile.