[garinda]

At school in the late seventies, I discovered Paris Match in the school library.

A magazine full of photographs of the Grimaldis, Johnny Halliday, and Catherine Deneuve, and very little text. Fascinating.

We certainly didn't have a British equivalent at that time.

We knew that Kevin Keegan had a bad perm and was married, that Prince Charles played polo, and that Brucie and Tarbie played golf.

Besides, we as a country had no interest in what famous people did, or didn't do.

Pat Phoenix may have been stuffing fivers down the g-strings of any number of nubile strippers, but we didn't know, and frankly didn't care.

The word paparazzi was a name only bandied about by a few Fellini film buffs. No one knew who they were, and we certainly didn't have them in Britain at that time.

To me the rot seemed to start in early 1981, when the media started to become obsessed with the young Lady Diana Spencer. A photograph of a decidedly full bossom in a off the shoulder black dress, followed by a pair of shapely pins, seen in shilhouette under a Laura Ashley skirt. As a nation we were hooked.

The seeds were sown, and the great British public watered those seeds, by buying the newspapers, and the magazines devoted to celebrity that followed.

Now we have a multi-million pound industry based around the cult of celebrity. People are famous for being famous, and not for what they do.

I wish we, as a nation, could turn our collective clock back.

Sienna Miller has cellulite.

Duncan from Blue has a lovely home.

Kate Middleton shops at Topshop.

I DON'T DAMN WELL CARE!