The Fame Game

I was thinking about the nature of fame today.

I was in quite a philosophical mood.  Everyone else has gone out for the day except Oscar and I.  It was my duty to entertain him in the morning and stop him exploding with excitement before lunch time.  He was going to a friend’s party this afternoon and naturally, not having any concept whatsoever of time, he has been ready to go to this party since seven o’clock this morning.

By the time we got to the party I was somewhat worn out, thanks to the constant discussions on the nature of time and its arcane doings:

‘Is it time for the party yet, mama?’

‘No, Oscar. It is eight o’clock in the morning.  The party is at two o’clock in the afternoon.’

‘OK. So I can go after breakfast then?’

‘Umm. Yes. Sort of.’

‘Well. I will skip breakfast because there will be food at the party.  Can we go now?’

‘No. It will be a long time after breakfast, so it is important that you have your breakfast, and then your lunch, and then you can go to the party.’

‘OK. What time is it now, mama?’

‘It’s ten past eight in the morning Oscar.’

‘Great. I’m going to go and get ready for the party…’

The party was at a Wacky Warehouse.

I hate the Wacky Warehouse.  It is the seventh circle of hell rendered in brightly coloured plastic balls and the smell of a thousand children emptying their sweat glands.

The Wacky Warehouse we had to go to was a long way from our house.  I did not have time to drive him there, dump him with a friendly face, and come home.  I contemplated sitting in the car park, but within two minutes of entering the building he had given me his shoes, his coat and anything else he could rip off, and demanded drinks, snacks and someone to watch him have his face painted while he dangled from the monkey bars.

Resistance was futile.

I holed up in a corner with all the belongings, and tried to think cheering thoughts about things other than being trapped in an echoing warehouse with forty toddlers hopped up on Fruit Shoots and sugar.

Hence my thoughts on fame.

My delightful blogging friend Emma over at Belgian Waffle, has an article in this month’s Red Magazine.  I was reading it one evening this week when Tilly asked me what it was I was reading.  I explained about the article and that my friend had written it.

She said: ‘That’s so cool.  It must be excellent to have famous friends.’

Bless her. I think Emma would probably be the last person in the world to think of herself as famous, but she is certainly becoming well known, and who knows, one day she may well be featured in OK magazine lounging on taupe sofas with the weepette.

It is cool to be her friend though.  Not because she is a bit famous.  Just because she is funny, and kind, and she makes me laugh.

I thought about whether I would like to be famous.

When I was a child I was desperate to be famous.  I thought it would be very exciting and glamorous.  Since those days, everything I have seen and read, and  the reports of the few reasonably well known people I have ever chanced to speak to about it, has undermined this view.  My current belief is that fame looks exciting and glamorous, but actually it is ball breakingly hard work, often quite miserable and lonely and massively intrusive, if you want to have any kind of real life of your own whatsoever.

I do not want to be permanently jet lagged. I am already bloody exhausted and I only have to travel within the confines of Leicestershire on a daily basis.  God knows what I would be like if I had to jet from Las Vegas to Kuala Lumpur every Tuesday.

I do not want to be constantly nagged about losing weight, so that I can be size zero.  I like cakes.  I like chips. I love carbohydrates.  I get a headache if I miss elevenses.  I cannot cope with diets that make my breath smell like pooh or fainting with desire every time I see a piece of Battenburg cake.  I do not want to have to lie and say that just because my ribs are sticking out of the top of my head it does not mean I have an eating disorder, it just means I have a really fast metabolism. Nor do I want to tell people that I am not fat, I am just having trouble with my glands.

I do not want to have to make pleasant chit chat with people I don’t know.  I can barely cope with fraternising at the school gate.  What am I going to say to Robert De Niro, other than ‘nice tie’? I either talk too much, too fast, or dry up completely. I invariably prattle on about myself, mainly because I think it is too rude to ask other people about themselves in case they think I am prying, even though I am dying to know everything about them, from their inside leg measurement up.  I always say the wrong thing.  I am totally irreverent and usually make hugely inappropriate jokes about things people think are critically important.  I am a social nightmare.

I do not want to develop a drink or drug habit.  I am too old for that kind of crap. I barely managed it when I was just the right age.  I have a nasty tendency to vomit  copiously when ingesting substances best left uningested.

I cannot cope without sleep.  At the moment, thanks to stress and bad dreams, I am averaging four hours per night again.  This is terrible.  I am incoherent, barely functional and have brain activity that would only be considered normal in a comatose tortoise.  I do not thrive on less sleep. I wither.  I cannot be witty and sparkling and charming in these circumstances.  I just get cranky and shout a lot, usually before weeping uncontrollably.

I am not interested enough in my appearance to be famous.  I would like to be well turned out and have glamorous clothes.  I would love to be able to walk in heels.  I can’t.  If I have glamorous clothes I chuck my dinner down them, or catch them on a nail, or tuck my skirt into my pants on the way out of the loo.  I spend most of my days looking like a hobo.  I rarely brush my hair. I pick my spots. I chew my lips. I let my eyebrow hair get out of control and take over my entire face.  I could rectify all of these things.  I can’t be arsed.

I hate seeing photos of myself, or being photographed or filmed.

I have decided that fame is not for me.  Which is a good thing, because I have done absolutely nothing whatsoever to be famous for.  But at least it has crossed ‘being famous’, off the list of things I am going to do when I grow up.

I shall have to be a rock drummer after all.  I will be a session drummer. I don’t want to go on stage in front of lots of people. I will only drop my sticks, and probably wee myself with nerves.

I would however, like to be friends with someone famous.  That would be cool.  I wouldn’t particularly like to go out on the tiles with them.  That would be weird.  But I would like to be able to pop round for tea, so they could regale me with tales of their life, and let my try on their new shoes, and just borrow their life for a while by filching all their stories and mentally wandering about in them, like an extra in a film.

That would be alright.

So. If you’re thinking of becoming ridiculously famous and want a down to earth friend who doesn’t want any freebies or to be in your next film/novel/song, and won’t get ridiculously jealous of the fact that you are flying to the shops in your own Lear jet, I’d quite like to apply.  I demand the right to eat cake without you getting narky, and I will only accept invitations from those people who are willing to swear on a stack of bibles that they aren’t going to turn into Michael Jackson or JLo.  I can’t be doing with that sort of nonsense.  Britney, that means you love, I’m afraid.

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