Medway Messenger 13th February 2004 "I'm A Celebrity - Worship Me"

All of Kent was supporting Ashford-born Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock to win I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here. It must be true; the Messenger told me so in its January 30^th edition. By the time you read this, we’ll know whether those millions of votes from the Garden of England have carried the day.

This year’s combination of inflated egos and inflated busts has contained the usual mixture of celebrity wannabes, celebrity used-to-bes, and those famous for being famous. There’s a perverse pleasure in watching these fame junkies squirm in the Bush Tucker Trials.

It’s just the latest trend for giving ‘Reality TV’ a celebrity twist. It was Fat Club for the plebs, but when the celebs got involved it had to become Celebrity Fit Club. Oh, the poor dears, they can’t stand anything that doesn’t massage their delicate egos. That one hasn’t been so much ‘Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster’ as ‘Freddie Starr Eats Like A Hamster’.

Our obsession with celebrity has reached absurd proportions. Last year a scientific study of over six hundred people concluded that one in three of us suffers from a condition that has been christened ‘Celebrity Worship Syndrome’ (‘CWS’). At its weakest level it appears harmless but shows signs of being addictive.

At its next level (which affects one in ten) sufferers begin to imagine an intense personal relationship with celebrities, such as believing they have a special bond with them.

At its most severe (one in a hundred) you get those who become stalkers, or who would harm either themselves or others in the name of their hero.

Are our lives really so drab that we have to live for vicarious thrills through someone else, buying a Vodafone mobile because that’s what David Beckham advertises?

From a Christian viewpoint, I see two cures for Celebrity Worship Syndrome. One is that our celebrity worship seems to depend on seeing ourselves as worthless, compared to these shining stars. But God sees each one of us as uniquely valuable. Every single one of us has a destiny that only we can accomplish in partnership with God.

The other question is one of worship. I believe we were made for worship. Even atheists worship something. But who is really worthy of our worship – a celebrity airhead or the One who created this magnificent universe and who sets people free through his own sacrificial love?

I know which one I’m going for –and it’s not the airhead.

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.