Non-Fiction: Big Name Hunting – Arnie Wilson

TV News Quiz presenter: ‘Who is this man?’
Nigel Dempster (then Britain’s most prominent gossip columnist):
‘That is Wilson of Deal, who makes four million pounds a year out of gossip columns.’

When I accosted him at a World Wildlife Fund gathering, the Duke of Edinburgh turned to Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (one of the organisation’s founders) and said: ‘This chap’s not interested in wildlife – he’s only interested in gossip.’ Not quite right. I was interested in both – but had, indeed, tried to chat to both men
about birthday presents. (It was Prince Bernhard’s birthday.)

What I was also interested in (though less so today when ‘celebrities’ are 10 a penny) was the cult of celebrity. Who are these people? Are they so different? They quarrel, flirt and cry (real tears, sometimes), they bleed when cut, they have children, and their hair thins and they age just like the rest of us. Yet strangely
their fame, when emblazoned in glossy magazines, seems to make them different. And less real. They may seem immortal, and immune to suffering, but have you noticed how many of them –
almost all, in fact, in the long run – disappear from the glossy pages and then from life itself? Sometimes you don’t even notice when a famous actor or actress disappears from public life. It’s only when you see a photo of them 10, 20 years later – perhaps in an obituary – that you say ‘Good Lord – I wondered what had happened to him.’ Or her. But you probably hadn’t wondered. And while you weren’t actually noticing their absence, they may have suffered the indignity of drifting helplessly into the stagnant backwaters of life. And just as a beautiful woman often finds it particularly hard to cope with losing her looks, the more famous a celebrity has been, the harder it is to adjust.