Dialogue: If you seek to be famous, make sure you're cool

SHELLEY BRIDGEMAN* says that those who wish to have a taste of fame need to recognise just how easy it can be to look like a chump.

Andy Warhol said of the media age that everyone would have their 15 minutes of fame. As it turned out, it was a perceptive and prophetic comment.

The real estate agents wailing about their portrayal on the television programme Location, Location, Location have certainly had their allotted minutes and they have now decided that it wasn't exactly all it was cracked up to be.

The crux of the matter is that there are two distinct types of fame - cool fame and uncool fame. And there's a widespread inability to distinguish between the two.

Cool fame is reserved for those with celebrity status. Royalty, the Hollywood set, and big-time singers and actors are the recipients of this. Photographs of Tom and Nicole leaving a London restaurant, Rachel Hunter in a park with her children or Madonna washing her boyfriend's car appear with regularity.

And we all love seeing shots like these. First, the voyeur in us relishes the candid spontaneity of these off-duty poses and the delicious sense that we're spying and prying. Secondly, it's nice to know that, in their spare time, these illustrious people do just what the rest of us do.

Then there's the other kind of fame. Quick television sound-bites and many pieces in women's magazines are populated with amazingly average people - the Joe and Josephine Bloggses of the world whose remarkability lies in their sheer ordinariness.

These folks' 15 minutes of fame isn't remotely cool. We see it nightly - masquerading as news - on our television screens.

When petrol prices rise, there is the earnest perspective of the man on the street. Some poor guy is picked at random and given two seconds' notice that he's about to be addressing the nation.

Is it any wonder then that "Urrrgh, I fink it's terrible that petrol prices will be dearer now" is the best he can come up with? And do the channels think viewers are so stupid that they need this insightful analysis from Gary of Glen Eden?

Footage just as cringe-making appears in times of natural disaster. When there are floods in the north, for example, a raincoat-wearing, often older gentleman in gumboots sagely and solemnly advises us: "I haven't seen it this wet since the great rains of the 1940s."

It's just as bad when a car plunges into a bedroom, narrowly missing the sleeping occupant. The would-be victim tells us in breathless words: "I was asleep and then the car came through my bedroom wall and I woke up." As you would.

And those people appearing in women's magazines generally don't fare much better. There are periodic features about women who discover they're pregnant only when they go into labour and, to their amazement, produce a squawking baby.

Despite the fact that there can be compelling reasons for a lack of awareness of full-blown pregnancy, it certainly does not enhance one's image to publicise such an event.

The general consensus is that it's a sure sign of low intelligence or at least of being descended from banjo-strumming, high-country hillbillies.

Similarly, having every room in your house wallpapered with cuttings of Princess Diana and every mantelpiece laden with Diana dolls and memorial plates might be considered quaint in your home town but it doesn't translate well into the pages of a national magazine.

Because of the sheer plethora of cool fame, it's easy to see how people can assume that any fame is a desirable thing and be seduced into tasting it for themselves.

We see illustrious folk like Prince William, Bill Clinton, Ricky Martin and the Spice Girls in the media so frequently that we ordinary people mistakenly believe that sharing the magazine pages or television screen with them will be a good look for us, too.

Unfortunately, quite the opposite is true. In fact, it's a very bad look. At best we appear inarticulate and pitiable, at worst we seem stupid and inbred.

So no matter how enticing the prospect of television coverage is, give it a miss - unless you're Theresa Gattung commenting on Telecom strategy, Helen Clark defending her dumping of a minister or Don Brash on the economy. Don't even think of it if you're a real estate agent negotiating a sale.

And the only appearance truly worth making in a magazine is sashaying out of Euro on the arm of Russell Crowe. Somehow, proudly displaying a new-born baby you thought was just appendicitis doesn't cut the mustard.

After all, if it can't be an uplifting and 100 per cent groovy 15 minutes of fame, what on earth is the point?

* Shelley Bridgeman is an Auckland writer.