How to lose at the fame game
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Your support makes all the difference.Imagine being Dale Winton's careers officer. "Well, Winton, what do you want to be when you grow up?" "I want to be a celebrity, sir." "A celebrity? That's not a career. Celebrity's the product of a career. You can't make a living from being a celebrity on its own."
Well, actually, you can. There is a whole breed of people out there who've been making a nice living from seemingly doing nothing but hang around where the other celebs are until someone gives them their own show. There are the nano-celebs, like Bruce Forsyth, the Elizabeth Hurleys, who made a good start in Christabel but went for the money instead, and there are the Danny Baker celebs who, like Dale, make a living from the fact that a certain type of Ordinary Person would sell their granny for their 15 minutes of fame.
Which is where the Weekend Show (7pm BBC1) comes in. Dale, whose major contribution to world culture thus far has been the early morning beanfest Supermarket Sweep, has teamed up with Charlie Parsons's Planet 24 to front this from-the-sofa roundup of Britain in all its ghastliness. With him are Lisa Tarbuck, a second-generation celeb, who is after "those quintessentially British stories" like plane-spotting and sheep-racing, and Daley Thompson, who is famous for having actually done something once. Friday may be Poets' day, but we recommend volunteering for a spot of overtime and not getting home 'til Coronation Street.
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