Whatever new things 2007 will bring, you can rely on some good old-fashioned cultural standards to see us through the next twelve months.
For example: Scissor Sisters will release a couple of singles that make reference to 'dancing' in a favourable light. Natasha Kaplinsky's head will continue to be inordinately large. And Russell Brand will carry on hosting a billion awful TV shows, all the while prancing around like a distressed homeless man auditioning for Beetlejuice.
Notice the one constant in all of those? That's right – celebrities. See, kids, no matter what year it is, celebrities are always going to remain the bestest most interesting thing on the entire planet times infinity.
Or maybe not.
A 'boffin' (please note – we're using the term in the proper sense, and not the way the Sun uses it to describe anyone who has a couple of GCSEs and doesn't enjoy beating up black people) from the University Of Hull has become so fascinated with our growing celebrity-worship culture that she's only gone and launched a big old study on it.
Psychologist Honey Langcaster-James was granted permission to take her students along to witness the horrors of the Big Brother auditions. Why inflict such torture on your poor class-goers? She explained:
"Since the celebrity scene is something of a modern-day phenomenon, the psychology of fame in the UK is surprisingly under-researched, only studied by a few people… Reality TV is making it easier for people to identify with celebrities, this makes it easier for my students to have an empathy with those that they are studying, and therefore gain a greater understanding of their behaviour. Although the cult of celebrity is often seen as shallow, deeper academic research can be very useful in understanding why celebrities fascinate us and why so many people desperately want to pursue the limelight and aim to become celebrities themselves."
Who knows what could happen if this celebrity-idolising trend is reversed? God knows – people could actually start turning their thoughts to serious topics. Like the coincidence of Saddam Hussein being executed before taking part in any additional trials that could implicate the US and Britain in a number of arms-dealing scandals. Or something.
There's one big worry, of course – if no-one was interested in celebrities anymore, then there wouldn't be thousands of you logging on to hecklerspray every day and basking in our piss-taking glory. Which means we'd be taken off our thrones, made to hand our laptops in at the palace gates and given our old jobs at Asda again.
Which would be rubbish.
Read More:
Academic Calls For Research Into Celebrity Cult – The Guardian
Robin says
Holy smokes! Nobody wants THAT! Let’s hope Britney Spears keeps acting like an arsehole so that I can still read hecklerspray!