Bodyguard to the Famous

I used to buy nearly every tabloid going. Mostly so I could roll my eyes at the "says a source close to the troubled couple" and other such delightfully vague "facts". Oh, and I wanted to see celeb cellulite and make-up free faces so that my own imperfections looked trivial by comparison.

I realize fully that my purchase fed the monster that occasionally made me say "Why can't they just leave him/her/them alone?!" Enough already.

I clearly remember my turning point. It was the death of that lovely talent Heath Ledger. Every. Single. Publication. Going. wanted it to be suicide . Every last one was chomping at the bit to be the one to publish the juiciest, dirtiest detail surrounding his passing. They were all too eager to kick the corpse and feed like vultures on the remains. The front pages alone were enough to make you sick.

So I stopped buying every last one of them. Their hurried amendments after the official coroner's report and sickening tributes to his genius couldn't lure me back.

None of this stopped my passing interest in celebrity goings-on, however. And there are a few things I'd like to say about that.

Firstly, my interest in famous people comes from a shared experience angle (and a slight envy of whatever talent they may - or may not - have). Not that I am sharing the experience with them but that most of their experiences are so endearingly human. The DUI, the drunken party, the break-up, the infidelity, the kids, the hair cuts, the clothes - we've seen it all around us in "normal" friends and neighbours and, like the orange dimpled bottoms, it's comforting to know that, underneath the designer clothes, they are just as fallible as we are.

Of course, the majority of readers expects their celeb of choice/obsession to be better than your average human. God-like, if you will. Not so for me. I like when they have mayonnaise down their fronts and frown lines from squinting into the sun, slack-jawed. I like when they trip in public. I get annoyed at the fact that so many people demand public apologies for any indiscretion made by a celeb. Piss off. What did they do to you, personally? Besides slip off the pedestal you put them on, that is.

Having said all of that, I do realize that we've taken our invasion of celebrity privacy way too far. I have shaken my head many a time, muttering about the media being a large part of the problem. All too ready to build a star up so that they can tear them down with that much more efficiency. Most celebs wouldn't fall so deep into the hole if the media hadn't built them up so high in the first place.

Has that inspired me to bodyguard a celeb's right to privacy, though? Oh hell no. I don't get the people that do, to be honest. What drives the "leave Britney alone!!" types? I find them just as creepy as the ones digging through the trash and scrap-booking every magazine article. "It's none of our business", "They have a right to a private life". Of course they do and, to me this is obvious, the largest, possibly most important part of their life is private. I highly doubt they are sitting there waiting for their stalwart bulldog fans to champion their interests. There's a whole different type of mania that drives some people to rush to a celeb's aid. Hero complex rather than hero worship? Will Celeb X see me telling everyone to leave them alone and feel they can trust me? Wouldn't surprise me in the least if that was the train of thought. By the way, are Britney Spears and Chris Cocker BFFs now? Hmm? Didn't think so.

I find the most endearing part of celebrities to be their humanity. Therefore I simply cannot pretend they don't have it. I promise not to go rooting through their trash or driving by their homes, but I refuse to lose interest. After all, where would they be if all of their fans lost interest?

xxx