You're Not A Celebrity, Get Out Of Here

So, a friend and I had a conversation (over tea and cake) about exactly what qualified a person as a 'celebrity'.

These are the first nine 'celebrities' named on the front page of the UK's OK magazine website:

Jorgie Porter
Matthew Wolfenden
David Walliams
Jessie J
Ben Kelly
Konnie Huq
Sam Faiers
Amanda Holden
Imogen Thomas

Hell, I've only ever heard of two of those people. That said, I'm probably not the best person to ask about celebrities.

Even so, if I've never heard of 'em are they really celebrities?

Naturally we ended up referring to a dictionary:

Celebrity
noun: a famous person, especially in entertainment or sport

Hmm. So, a celebrity is a famous person. But what actually makes someone famous? I wonder what the dictionary has to say about that:

Famous
adjective: known about by many people

Many people, eh? Qualify 'many'.

Many
noun: a majority

I think I know what 'majority' means, but let's check, just to be sure:

Majority
noun: the greater number

Righto. So by my interpretation, a 'celebrity' is a person who is known about by more than 3.4 billion people.

(I know, I know. You're gonna say that I'm casting the net too wide. I shouldn't be using the whole world as my base figure - that's way too divisive. But if we start limiting the pool to people who are likely to have heard of 'em, then we might as well say that I'm a celebrity on the basis that my cat knows me!)

I'm willing to bet that, Jeremy Clarkson notwithstanding, there's not a single so called 'celebrity' on the planet who's known about by 3.4 billion people.

I mean, perhaps George W Bush is. He got a lot of press. Elvis, maybe. But definitely not Matthew Wolfenden. Turns out, he's just a guy.