Baz Blakeney: Let’s get this straight. If I watch TV, I’m a celebrity?
So there was a TV show about people who watch TV shows, then some of the people who watched TV shows became TV personalities and they were invited to be on a TV show. We live in exciting times, writes Baz Blakeney.
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So let me get my head around this. There was a TV show about people who watch TV shows, then some of the people who watched TV shows became TV personalities and they were invited to be on a TV show called I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here.
Am I right so far? I do hope so. It’s so confusing.
I have seen one of the TV-watching women in a TV ad for her new TV show talking about feeling a “nervous poo” coming on because she’s going to the jungle.
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As well as class and charm and dignity, she oozes something a little extra, apparently.
I had not seen this show until now, but I decided to tune in this time. Perhaps if I watch it, someone will make a show about me watching the women who watch television and then I will be a celebrity and you could watch me watching the women who watch television and you could be a celebrity, too.
I think that’s how it works.
We live in exciting times.
As the title suggests, this “jungle” that can inspire a nervous poo is a place celebrities want to get out of. There are nasty, bitey animals and strange foods, and they pour slime over you and blow things up.
Other celebrities have already been to the jungle in previous series and all of them got out.
I guess you don’t want your celebrities getting eaten by a lion or trampled by a hippo if you can help it. Mind you, we can always make more celebrities if we lose one or two to the wildlife.
There are many ways to become a celebrity.
The traditional way is to exhibit some form of talent. This is now considered optional.
Good looks is another way. Good-looking people can become celebrities because a fluke of DNA gives them a slight difference in less than 1 per cent of their genes, resulting in good cheekbones and glossy hair and faultless skin and tight tummies.
Yes, there’s not even 1 per cent difference between my genes and those of, say, David Beckham. The poor devil. It must torment him.
Some people are born into celebrity. Being an heiress helps. Being a stylist for an heiress also helps. Kim Kardashian was a stylist for Paris Hilton and those two ladies personify style, as their tasteful and elegant sex videos demonstrate. For the record, Paris and Kim are worth about $300 million each. They are examples of the communist creed in reverse: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
Other people become celebrities by being smart or ambitious or creative. Stephen Hawking was a celebrity despite being hunched in a wheelchair and speaking with a robot voice.
But all these routes to fame are too chancy or simply too much hard work.
A vlog is the way to go. Vlog it and flog it. Easy. Lights, camera, do something. Do anything.
Or just watch television. Before you know it, you could be heading off to the jungle with a nervous poo coming on.
But just the other day, I asked the man at the hardware store if he had any of that super-duper masking tape they advertise on TV.
He said he didn’t know, because he never watched television.
I was taken aback. Way aback.
A life without television? A life without I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here? Without Bride and Prejudice, without The Bachelorette or Married At First Sight or Dance Boss?
I tried to imagine what Mr Hardware Man did of an evening without television.
I tried and tried, but I couldn’t.
Baz Blakeney is a Herald Sun columnist
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