YP Letters: Star deaths shed light on the cult of celebrity

ONCE again, Jayne Dowle is one step ahead of the rest as she laments the curious cult of celebrity adulation, particularly in the world of entertainment (The Yorkshire Post, December 29) after George Michael’s death.

Her soundings come just one day after the Post on its front page had a picture of mother Debbie Reynolds and daughter Carrie Fisher and inside came a whole page of the “mug shots” of those entertainers now no longer with us.

This ‘communal emoting’, as Jayne calls it, seems to apply right across the entertainment business and even to lesser known celebrities. My son Neil, on leaving university with a performing arts degree, went straight into the soap opera Crossroads and, as Phil Berry, a mere porter at the hotel, was within a few weeks receiving fan mail from his adoring young viewers. And he was only just starting out on his acting career and hardly in the top flight of actors.

This celebrity adulation has got completely out of hand and now extends not just to entertainers but to politicians, largely due to television exposure. We appear now to have reached the stage where it matters not what a politician says but how they look when saying it.