HOW TO BE A CELEBRITY
There are many routes to fame – some are more challenging than others
1 Be the worst
If a thing’s worth doing,
it’s worth doing badly.
People love a loser. Think
of the ultimate lovable
loser, Homer Simpson.
The Olympics is the
perfect place for failure
and every game catapults
one brave loser to the stardom.
The winning loser of the Sydney Games was
‘swimmer’ Eric Moussambani (also known as the
Eric the Eel). Moussambani, representing Equatorial
Guinea, finished his heat of the 100 meters freestyle
in the slowest time ever recorded, and almost
drowned in the attempt. But Moussambani
captured the imagination of a global television
audience and he became an overnight sensation,
making guest appearances on TV shows around the
world.
2 Buy your way to fame
Money can’t buy you love, but it can buy you fame.
In 2000, an Internet auction site gave ordinary
people the chance to bid for a part in a movie. The
winning bids ranged from $12,000 to $72,000 and
included bids from fire fighter, a florist, a psychic
and an international model. They were given acting
classes from top Hollywood teachers, and a script
was written but no release date for the movie was
ever set!
3 Discover something
The bad news is: there are no
countries left to discover.
The good news is: in the
tropical rainforests of Brazil,
there are an estimated three
million unnamed species of
beetle. One of them could be
yours. Discover a deadly
disease and give it your name, you will be famous –
at least until someone comes along and discovers a
cure.
4 Appear on reality TV
There have never been more opportunities for
‘regular’ people to become celebrities. The growth
of ‘reality TV’ shows like Big Brother and Pop Idol
which star ordinary members of the public, mean
that potentially anyone can become a star.
The good news about reality shows are that they
bring you fame at the speed of light. The bad news
is that they bring you obscurity just as fast. While
the show is being aired, you are the biggest star in
the galaxy, but once the publicity goes, real life is
waiting around the corner.
5 Be famous for being famous
Becoming famous for being famous is relatively easy
to achieve, but extremely
difficult to sustain. First
something is needed to bring
you into the public eye. You
could be the child of
someone famous (John
Kennedy, Jade Jagger), marry
somebody famous (Princess
Diana, Ivana Trump) or just
wear the most outrageous
dress you can find (Liz
Hurley). Once you have the attention, you can get
more. Your fame takes on a momentum if its own.
The original reason for your celebrity is forgotten.
6 Create your own formula for success
If you want to make it really big, don’t take any
established, familiar path to celebrity and don’t
follow someone else’s footprints. Create your own
unique route.
Someone said that genius is the ability to invent
one’s own occupation. People like Oprah Winfrey,
the Queen of talk shows, or Bill Gates, the Chairman
of the Microsoft have reshaped and refined an
occupation and even an industry in their own
image. Their fame is assured.