Dear LPG, 

Hardly a day goes by without news of one celebrity or another doing something that contributes to the daily news, and I can’t help but wonder why they have managed to achieve fame while I have not.

They typically will have got married or divorced again, had a baby, bought a new million-dollar house, been seen in a new outfit and, these days this is much more likely than that they have achieved something tangible. 

I know so many people who roll their eyes at such news, but we are still secretly interested in what it is all about.   The other day I got thinking about what I have really achieved in my life, and I have no doubt that there are many older readers that have similar thoughts when they hear such news.   Youngsters think about this too. 

The difference is that the youngsters of today who want to be famous have visions of big houses and cars.  Having talked to a few I have worked out that for them, more often than not, fame becomes synonymous with becoming rich while we oldies think more about what legacy we want to leave behind when the time comes and being better known for something seems like a reason worth at least making the attempt for.  

Since the beginning of this century, I think that more and more younger people have become part of a culture who are busy just aspiring to be famous regardless of why.  There are now so many so-called personalities than there were in our younger days and so many more of them are famous for just being themselves rather than for some sort of achievement. Many now have no particular skill or have produced nothing tangible that qualifies them to be more famous than you or me in any way. 

Perhaps being at the right place at the right time is easier to manage with the help of the internet’s YouTube, Instagram and other such social media platforms, and all those reality television programs have a lot more to do with becoming famous too. it is also true that fame like everything else is relative, we are all pretty famous in the eyes of our friends and family aren’t we? 

I have read that the average person has a 1 in 62,986 chance of becoming famous, but Capt. Sir Tom Moore did it, so it can be done.  

NB, Camberwell

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