Jim Hopkins: Fame - It's better at the bottom

News of boxer Alipate Liava'a's sickness benefit won't help his gospel music career. Photo / Getty Images

Steeped though we are in the denture mug of winter, when the only way you can stop your teeth chattering is to take them out, yet still there remain some blessings we can count. And count them we should.

Dearly beloved, raise high the abacus of relief as we, good parishioners all in the broad church of inconsequence, give grateful thanks for the liberating obscurity of our lives. Praise be to those who bestowed upon us the gift of anonymity. Verily, let us acknowledge, and fervently too, how pleased we are to have been spared the scourge of celebrity.

This is not a good time to be celebritous. Nor is it a good time to be the sort of narcissistic pillock who sticks their head above the parapet. Far better to be utterly, gloriously, splendidly invisible. If no one on the bus takes a blind bit of notice when you whip off your strides and photograph your underwear, that's no bad thing. If your workmates can't remember your name, let alone the products you've endorsed, don't fume. Be thankful you're forgettable.

Being forgettable is a fine thing. Embrace it. Only the delusional court celebrity. Fame is a deadly siren. Lash yourself tight to the mast of nonentity should you ever hear her sultry cry. No one in their right mind would wish to be a celebrity.

Celebrities are the ducks on life's pond - and it's open season all year. Sure, they get gongs and groupies, cash and contracts and the whole world falls at their fallible feet, but that's just the timebomb ticking. The minute these velvet victims stray, the moment they err, all howl breaks loose!

And their punishment is vile.

Not so with us. Ordinary folk can do precisely as we please and the front page never trumpets our transgressions. We can whip out the old Box Brownie and take a shot of the old Box Shorties and no one gives a tinker's cuss.

If, for whatever reason, an ordinary person takes hot pelvic pics of their own pelvic parts then posts them to others, no rabid newshound arrives on the doorstep, demanding to know if the shutterbug recognises the crotch in question.

Ordinary people aren't compelled to say, as did the unfortunately named Anthony Weiner, "I can't say with certitude" if it was theirs. It would be a matter of supreme indifference who's wally it wis. Unless it belonged to some body's famous.

And what's goes for groins is true for gloves as well. We anonymous codgers can challenge Sonny Bill Wislam to a round or two for a pound or two and there's no twittering about the propriety of the bout. Nobody asks awkward questions about our tennis elbows, for instance, as they have with Mr Alipate Liava'a. If we're on a benefit, so be it. Good luck to us. Ordinary people are allowed to pull a few slinters. A sick note here and there, well, we've all got one of those, some time or other, from a co-operative quack and "Brawler" Bennett hasn't come out swinging, demanding a rematch.

But if you're famous, boy, it's a different story. The hills are alive with the sound of moaning. One minute you're a battling boxer, the next a bloomin' bludger. Such condemnation does not auger well for the gospel album Mr Liava'a hopes to release.

Which is a crying shame, because things were looking good, with the album rumoured to include classics like Swing Low, Sweet Heavyweight, Amazing Grease, (apparently, if you rub it on your tennis elbow, the pain goes away), plus a timely remake of Boney M's By the Rivers of Babylon called By the Givers of Benefit and How Bright Thou Aren't.

There is a joy to being ordinary the renowned will never know. Whatever form it takes, fame is a tar pit best avoided. The great unwashed can endorse Hangover Finance in the parish magazine and Simon Power won't appear in the pulpit, breathing fire and brimstone and handing out $1 million fines. But he will for your average celeb.

Better stay under the radar than find yourself beneath contempt. So, no photos, fights, or endorsements, folks. And don't start borrowing $100 million a week that you don't really need, unless your name's Joe Blow and not Bill English. No one will notice if Joe shoulder taps the (sensibly anonymous) gnomes of Zurich. But scorn will surely send its bill to Bill.

In the unlikely event a cloven-hoofed temptress arrives at your door, seductively whispering, "Celebrity awaits," say "Yes." But only on one condition; that you're guaranteed name suppression. And also that whenever you're seen on screen, your face is covered with those dot things they use to conceal the identity of drug lords.

For, as Messrs Weiner, Liava'a and a host of errant endorsers have confirmed this week, the fame's not worth the scandal.