The Hello! Effect

I’ve named my car after Madonna’s Malawian adoptee. My sporty, sexy little black number is called David Banda.

At around the same time that Mr and Mrs Richie got their mitts on their latest African novelty, I adjusted my aircon to full-throttle and ironically, with ‘Hung Up’ as my soundtrack, glided onto Sheikh Zayed highway for the first time.

There is a disturbing undercurrent to the flippant naming of my child after The Queen of the World’s new bundle of joy. While fortunately I wouldn’t go as far as wearing leotards and beige tights to a night-club, the fact that I bought in to the tons of coverage that were fork-lifted onto the front pages of the tabloids masquerading as newspapers frankly appalls me.

‘News’ of this caliber is delivered with unashamedly alongside war headlines and we lap it up like chavs at a trough of free snakebite mix. Hugh Grant lobbing a tub of baked beans at a photographer? Heaven. Richard Gere’s shameful lunge at Shilpa Chetty? The stuff of dreams fergodsake!

Tell me there is a dividing line between the average mild (to growing) interest in the Brangelina-beast and the maniacal hoards foaming at the mouth, frantically feuding on eBay over the last strand of Britney’s hair?

Today’s news: Paris begs Arnie for a pardon on her prison sentence. Hundreds of thousands of demented fans have started up a ‘Free Paris’ petition because she ‘brings beauty and excitement’ to ‘most of [their] mundane lives’. They actually say that. Someone harpoon them all and put them out of their grief!

Closer to home, there are certain people - mates even - whom I have been known to mock (OK … abuse) for their tendencies to ‘name drop’ and casually flick a celebrity on first name basis into random, otherwise unrelated conversation. This … tendency … can after all only become a natural reflex when untold portions of monthly salaries have been spent on Heat, OK!, and You (if sold out, Huisgenoot will do as a last resort because of all the pictures).

Here I should apologise, and admit I am prey to the same wretched obsession with CELEBDOM.

Yet to you I say: “How about …“NO”.

To those people: I won’t back down. You’ll still be mocked ‘til the damn cows come home.