* what exactly is it that you're famous for...?

...
Ok, so when I was young, I wanted to be... something...
An actress
A page 3 girl
A princess
A checkout girl

I knew I wanted to be seen and recognised
[Hey! Aren't you the girl who sells me my scran and booze every Saturday? You’re great! I love you, man! Woooo...!]
- BUT -
I also knew that for most of these, I didn't have what it takes - sufficient talent, attributes, connections, etc

Most of all, I just didn't have the drive

I knew I wasn't willing to take the risks and do all the incredibly hard ongoing work needed to be a long-term success in the first 3 on the above list

Them’s the breaks, get over it, get on with life - next at this till, please!

Except that now, there seems to be an attitude - if not a whole generation - that seems to be all about shortcuts - look at the number of reality shows and docu-soaps and talk shows and real life dramas and reconstructions and the hordes [wh*re-ds?] of people queuing up to appear on them

In the UK version of Big Brother, housemates are voted out by the public and more often than not they are booed vociferously on leaving the house, both of which implies that they are figures of utter hate…

Except that then they appear non-stop in newspapers and magazines and in other TV shows until the next person leaves the house and we start all over again with this new victim- they get paid for just being themselves, until we are bored with them - then they keep wh*ring and demeaning themselves more and more to try to keep themselves in the public eye

Worse still, there's the karaoke x-pop-‘talent’-factor-star-idol shows that
[1] Humiliate and bully people and play the incident over and over again to millions of viewers
[2] Promotes even more blandness to the people who think that they can do it better themselves

Out of all the shows of these types, how many success stories have there really actually been?

Who has ever been on/won one of these things and had an easy ride being famous – because presumably that’s why they did it, fame and money and recognition for minimal effort, no?

Would you want to go to a job interview and have to deal with the fact that you’d seen the interviewer’s rudey bits on national TV [or worse, they saw yours when you were on…]?

Would you want your doctor or surgeon talking you through an impending complicated and life-threatening procedure knowing that you’d recently seen them lying and drinking heavily and being copiously sick in some televised task?

Would an undertaker take you seriously and arrange a funeral for you, if they’d seen you do a 'comedy corpse' skit on a prank show?

Does ANYONE agree to appear on a Jerry Springer/ Ricki Lake/ Trisha Goddard/ Jeremy Kyle type shows without being at least a little suspicious or worried that they might not come out of it looking snowy-white and blameless themselves?

Why would you put yourself up for the tell-all secrets that inevitably come out – why do you think the world wants to know about your childhood/ troubled past/ ex-partners/ struggle with whatever affliction is in fashion right now?
[oh mi Gawd, anorexia is like SO 1990s… depression is SO the new eating disorder these days, don’t you know…]
Is your ‘heart-breaking battle’ really any different to what any one of the rest of us goes through in life, without all the public-eye pity-me attention seeking, of course…?

And what in the wide wide world of sports would make you think that the world wants to watch you sit around and burp and f@rt and scratch your @rse and hear you talk about yourself?

Why would you think that you’d be different - that you’d be THE ONE who really really made it, who had a consistent and lengthy and rewarding and awarded and lauded and respected and well-paid career out of making an utter utter f@nny of yourself on telly?

And how will it feel when you aren’t recognised?
And you don’t get special treatment?
Or when you get pitying and/or disdainful looks when people do realise who you are and what you did so publicly and is probably still available on YouTube?

Wait – are these the audition questions?

Well they should be.

Can the general public please go back to having a little dignity and being afraid of shame, and stop wanting and expecing absolutely everything immediately, please?

And can TV people please stop paying people to humiliate themselves in the name of entertainment?

please...?