The John Griff Column: What is it about a celebrity that makes them worthy of celebration?

I suspect that it is a generational thing. We all look to those who have gone before us and made a noteworthy mark of some kind – good, bad - something which set them apart from the mass. We then decide whether we identify with that mark, disassociate ourselves from it, perhaps secretly wish that we might make the same mark or at least do something which sets us apart too. Very few people actually go on to do it for real and yet today we have perhaps more ‘celebrities’ than ever before. What is a celebrity though – and how many of the media’s celebs do we actually celebrate because of their actions and deeds?

Throughout my career to date I have encountered people who have made very different marks in very different spheres. Years ago and understanding that I was in a mightily privileged position professionally, I started to compile a file with the names of all of the publicly known people I had ever met, worked with or interviewed – I didn’t want to forget anyone. The list is now hundreds of names long and is still developing, albeit a little more slowly now. Some have been multi-millionaire superstars from the world of pop music, giants of the theatrical or literary world or perhaps global sporting heroes. Others have played their parts in shaping the world, the country or some of the things through business or education with which the rest of us live our own lives. Some have been crowd-pleasingly brash by nature, others have been brash by dint of the roles they play in public. But away from the cameras, the microphones, the stages or just out of their public personas, almost all displayed themselves as being just regular, approachable people. Truly.

Maybe part of that is illusory – each of the famous people I met or worked with knew full well that I was a conduit to the wider public for them. The wise never, ever, assume that a microphone is actually switched off when in reality it could still be live - but I’m sure you appreciate my point. Maybe its something to do with the ‘onion’ effect which has grown over the years. Artists, businesspeople, politicians – in fact anyone aiming to stand out from the crowd these days seemingly needs to be surrounded by their own dedicated army of advisers, confidants, supporters and hangers-on – each a layer of an onion to be cultivated before they can function from the heart of it. It’s not entirely at their own behest may I say – it is instead the very members of those armies who depend, leech-like, on ‘the talent’ for their own existence. Blowing a little hot air and puffing up the egos of their principals, cements not only the positions of the army members – it also eats into the subconscious of the talent to the point where the onion layers become self-serving, self-perpetuating, indispensable forms of the professional parasite – and I’ve encountered more than a few of those. I have always insisted on guests coming into the studio to conduct their interviews with me alone, stripped away from the paraphernalia of their worlds. On numerous occasions I’ve watched as the individuals have sighed, rubbed their faces in the brief, calm moments before the interview begins and confided that it’s really rather nice to be talking one-to-one, as though freed from some kind of nagging constraint, whilst outside the onion layers are held at bay. Those moments always give me a kind of restorative sense of humanity – of normalness.

All of which brings me back to the lyrics of Harry Styles and One Direction - or rather more significantly, you. What is the story of your life? What sets you apart from the rest? What are the experiences which have shaped you, the experiences which stand out for you?

I guarantee you’ve had them – and I guarantee that if you started to tell people what those experiences were (or are), you would find an audience for them. That’s because, at the heart of it, we all love being told stories. For some reason we also love to see behind the scenes as much as the performances out front – so the anecdotes of our lives have a shared resonance. As a child chorister at Cambridge, I was always more interested in how the microphones and recording equipment were set up than the singing that I contributed, because performance was so familiar and regular to me. On tour in Australia in the 70s my recollection of the Sydney Opera House isn’t of performing from the stage – it is, instead, of the one metre thick pneumatic door as it hissed and swung open to allow us access onto the stage and out in front that night’s audience. It happened on the night of my 14th birthday – but I have no recollection of that either. Strange…

If fame is fleeting, then surely the status of celebrity is even more so. In the United States there are nominated days of the year with which to celebrate a variety of noted stars – Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin are but two. Both are massively famous, both made significant contributions to music. But should we celebrate them? Dig a little and you’ll find their work influencing human rights as well as performing to the masses. Look at this year’s New Year Honours list and you’ll find similar things where ‘…for services to…’ isn’t perhaps what you might have expected. The real reasons for those honours – whoever they are bestowed upon - are the ones with their own back stories and worth thinking about. Perhaps the people earning those honours (and they are earned) are the people we should be truly celebrating, be they famous or not.

There’s a moral to this, perhaps. If you celebrate someone, why do you celebrate them? Are they worthy of actual celebration through their deeds? And might not you be too, through your own? If not, maybe you have work to do.