“Getting thrilled, titillated or angry at celebrities can change how we think”
Ellie Cawthorne: You argue in the book that celebrity is a slippery concept. How do you define it?
Greg Jenner: When I began writing, I made the foolish assumption that there would be a clear-cut definition of celebrity. But a year-and-a-half later, I still couldn’t find one. So I’ve come up with my own.
Firstly, a celebrity has to have something about them that’s distinctive, recognisable and iconic. They are someone who is known to strangers, but they don’t know the strangers in return – that’s called ‘parasocial intimacy’ – and their fame is spread through the mass media: they appear in newspapers and on the telly and radio.
But it’s not enough for someone to be professionally interesting – they also need to have a private life that is fascinating to the public. On this basis, I would make the controversial argument that Sir David Attenborough is not a celebrity because, while I know an enormous amount about his career, I don’t know anything about his life.
Finally, I would argue that celebrity requires the existence of a commercial marketplace based on the person’s fame – basically a micro-economy where other people can make money from
