My first entry
Written at 1:32 p.m. on 2006-09-25
Right, I've done my first entry for the new book, so here it is. It will be going under 'O' for 'Overly Political Celebrities'.
Overly Political Celebrities
There was a day when celebrities who were in at the time and fairly intelligent wrote a book or became a patron of a charity. They appeared from time to time at charity balls and it was all very nice and very civilized. How things have changed. Now if you are famous and want to be up there with the A-Listers they way to get in is to rabidly jump on the �Help Africa� bandwagon, which is being towed from the front by Bob Geldof (sorry, SIR Bob Geldof). Now don�t get me wrong, Sir Bob has done plenty of good work for Africa but you have to ask yourself if Africa hasn�t done a lot of good work for Sir Bob. After all, he has only had one single that anyone has heard of and, not to put too fine a point on it, it was shit. Where are the Boomtown Rats now? Quite probably touring local shitholes on a Thursday night after the pub quiz has finished and wishing they�d thought of organizing a big charity concert in the 1980s.
Then you have the likes of Chris Martin from Coldplay. Coldplay are a band that have made an awful lot of money from creating songs that all sound the same and all make you want to jump in front of a bus just to escape the tedium. This evidently (in his head anyway) makes him qualified to solve the problem of world poverty single handed. And the best way to do this? Write �Make Poverty History� on your hand in biro before a concert so everyone can see it while you play the piano. Absolutely Chris, that should sort the problem and no mistake. Hundreds of years of shoddy infrastructure, drought, famine, civil war, corruption and feudal fighting can all be overturned by someone who looks like a badly dressed mature student writing on the back of their hand. Now Mr Martin (who is probably hoping to eventually become SIR Chris Martin) has shown that he thinks poverty is nasty and not very sporting, everyone currently living in a Malawian hellhole is going to wake up to find they are a Funds Manager living in a 3 bed semi in Surrey and they drive a Lexus. Pillock.
The Award for Most Obnoxious and Overly Political Celebrity however has to be handed to Bono of U2 fame. This is a man who in a Sunday Times interview claimed that President Gorbachev only realised that things couldn�t continue in Russia as they were when he dropped by for Sunday lunch and while they were eating, in walks a small girl on crutches with no lower legs thanks to the radiation from Chernobyl. His revelation had nothing to do with the fact that Russia had no economy, there was no food in the shops and their only international exports were cheap vodka and prostitutes then. If Gorbachev hadn�t twigged that things weren�t really going all that well in Russia before this point then he was obviously a lot more pissed than anyone gave him credit for and really shouldn�t have been left in charge of one of the world�s largest land masses. Bono could have done an awful lot for the financial wellbeing and public services of Ireland by not moving U2�s publishing empire to the Netherlands in order to pay a near zero rate of tax but that would have affected his personal fortune. Evidently in Bono�s house charity begins at home as long as it isn�t funded by tax.
All of which brings us to the biggest problem with Overly Political Celebrities, the fact that they do moronic things like writing on their hands but despite the fact that half of them earn more than the GDP of Guatemala they spend their time demanding we donate a sizable portion of our �20K a year while not actually dipping into their own funds. Tell you what Bono, if I give them a grand, a twentieth of my yearly income how about you give them a twentieth of yours. No? Ah well then, just thought I�d ask. What�s that? Oh, you won�t donate all that cash but you will invite George Bush round for a fondue and Babycham evening complete with photo opportunity. Right, that should help a Nigerian farmer whose entire yearly crop has just been eaten by locusts. The cause is being pushed by people who have spent enough on crack and champagne (or on Chris Martin�s household, designer organic tofu-mung protein pellets) in a lifetime to send half of Ghana to Harvard. When Chris Martin, Bono and their ilk donate their entire personal fortune to dragging the poor out of deprivation and start buying their clothes from Asda instead of Armani then I�ll listen. Until then I�ll wait with bated breath for the media coverage of Bono�s next wine and cheese party for the rich, famous, influential and irritating.
I'm thinking I could possibly get sued for writing that but I'm not sure. Cass is sending me her entries she's done today. This is good fun and miles more interesting than what I'm actually paid to do.
