Idols with Clay Feet

The brouhaha surrounding Kate Moss has helped me crystallise my thoughts about celebrity worship. I use the term without any irony – as a species, we appear to have a very unhealthy relationship with celebrity. With the help of the high priests of celebrity worship, the media, we have built up whole cults around these actors, singers, models, rich kids, dilettantes. We adore them for their talent, beauty, wealth and/or personality. At the same time, these high priests are always looking for clay feet to smash – all to feed some indefinable need in us.

Consider Kate Moss. Discovered at 14 and thrown headlong into the world of high fashion where she rose to the top in the blink of an eye and successfully stayed at the top for 12 years. I compare that with my own kids now: at 15, 13 and 11, they are around the age when she first caught the public eye. Are they mature enough to handle the kind of fame, exposure and money she won all those years ago? The answer is more than obvious.

Consider Kate Moss. She is a fashion model. She is the vehicle for the selling of clothes, accessories, make up and other products. People praise her for her chameleon-like ability to metamorph, to project the perfect mood and attitude for any situation. That takes real talent and coupled with her undeniable charisma, makes her the ideal model. But is that enough to warrant the phenomenal number of column inches that has been dedicated to her, in particular, in recent years?

Has she done anything positive with her fame and celebrity aside from giving birth to a daughter without losing her figure and snapping her fingers for Live 8? Has she shown herself to be a sincere, caring person with more to her life than fighting with her boyfriend and attending parties with her beautiful friends?

Yet the priests offer us minute examinations of her every action and indiscretion which we avidly devour. Devoting ourselves to the naughty, exciting lifestyles of our idols allows us to forget our own dull, mundane existences. Paradise is no longer symbolised by pearly gates or shadowy boatmen but red carpets and limousines.

Now, poor Kate is mired in a cesspool of her own making. The high priests of media had built her up so high, she never noticed that her clay feet were getting heavier. Is anyone really shocked to find out that she takes drugs? I think what we are reacting to is the ugliness and seaminess of that incriminating photograph. Where is the pocket Venus? Where is the earthy angel? Instead we are faced with a grainy, ill-composed shot of an arrogant, self-destructive woman whose main impetus in life is self-gratification, consequences be damned.

So she has apologised publicly but what has she apologised for? For being a drug user? For being caught? For having personal issues? For jeopardising her obscenely lucrative contracts? Frankly, I don't think she owes us anything, least of all an apology. She needs to apologise privately to her daughter, her family and to the many people who earn their living through her. While she's at it, perhaps she ought to apologise to herself for allowing herself to sink so low, for turning the oyster the world offered her into a can of worms.

At this point, I cannot predict where this is a hurricane in a teacup or whether Kate Moss's clay feet have been well and truly smashed. But I would hold it up as a lesson to any aspiring celebrity.

And I have resolved to be even more vigilant against getting sucked into the vortex of celebrity gossip which is just half a step away from celebrity worship.