Celebrity: UK Power 50

The Sunday Times Style magazine have unveiled the first half of their UK Celebrity Power 50, a list compiled by ‘a panel of experts’ that qualifies celebrities based on their power as style icons and commercial faces- gauged by the amount of times they were named in the media, the number of magazines they have fronted, and their UK Google entries. No great surprises on the list- Kate Moss obviously tops it, followed by Madonna, David Beckham, Kylie, Angelina Jolie (who just beats her other half, Brad) etc.

Surprisingly, Paris Hilton only comes in at number 12, behind Keira Knightley and Nicole Kidman- but still getting a considerable 4,920,0000 Google mentions and £5million in earnings this year. Bryan Appleyard writes a great summary of her in which he describes the heiress as a ‘contemporary genius’ for her advertising abilities-

"Bascially, she is a brilliantly constructed blank sheet. She can’t do
anything, because she isn’t anything. Or, to be exact, she is not a
person, she is a platform. She is not a product, she is the shelf on
which it rests. She is not the heroine of blogged rumours, she is the
internet browser that summons her from cyberspace. This is her job.
Just as models are mere dead-eyed carriers for clothes, so Hilton is
the empty carrier for the entire culture of pallid, inattentive
distraction.

The genius of Paris lies in her seamless self-insertion into the
marketing ecosystem. To her, perfumes, clothes and burgers are trees,
rivers and mountains — natural features of the landscape, of the only
world she knows or can imagine. She has raised the celebrity stakes; she is the prophet of the post-human future."

Even more worrying though is the presence of Jade Goody at number 25. The girl made famous from coming fourth on Big Brother and being unbelievably stupid is placed in importance just after Bono, a sad statement on what celebrity in Britain has become. Paul Flynn’s article is a generously kind insight into Jade’s world, but also a true explanation of the current state of fame in the UK-

"In a post-Goody society, celebrity is no longer just for the celebrated.
It is for anybody who can empathise with the man — or woman — on the
Clapham omnibus. Only Jordan rivals Jade as the epitome of what fame in
Britain has become.

She is the Madonna of chav, the Shakespeare of inarticulacy and the
Picasso of Fake Bake. Her influence can be felt in the comic characters
of Little Britain (Vicky “Yeah but no but” Pollard) and Catherine
“Bovvered” Tate. She is also the new emblem of escape for the British
underclass. As she says:“I think a lot of women who don’t look
beautiful all the time, or have what the papers call yo-yo weight,
yeah, they probably do look at me and think, ‘That could be me!’”

Celebrity: the Sunday Times power 50