For celebrity, read fragility

Michael Barrymore is a TV presenter. He is not, as far as I know, as great a threat to world peace as Saddam Hussein, although he has run him close lately in column inches. An inconclusive inquest into the death of a party guest at Barrymore's home last year is the reason for the current obsession with the entertainer, who was described in a tabloid headline last week as "suicidal". I have no idea whether this is an accurate assessment of Barrymore's state of mind, but it is evidence of the relish people take in watching fragile individuals crash and burn.

Barrymore has not been charged in connection with Stuart Lubbock's death, but the sensational reporting of the inquest is reminiscent of the mauling of the comic actor Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle in 1921, when a young woman called Virginia Rappe died following a party in San Francisco. After three trials, Arbuckle was acquitted of rape and murder, but his career was finished. The newspaper proprietor William Randolph Hearst recalled with satisfaction that the actor's trials "sold more newspapers than the sinking of the Lusitania".

It is not as if the allegations about Barrymore's behaviour on the night in question – he was said in court to have been drunk, boorish and loudly demanding sex – can have come as much of a surprise. Seven years ago, he published an account of his life in which he freely admitted to alcohol and drug addictions. Long before the fatal evening at his house in Essex, it was clear Barrymore was disturbed, infantile and self-destructive. All of which makes him, in a horrible way, the perfect contemporary celebrity.

The point about people like Barrymore is that their fragility – as evidenced by breakdowns, disastrous personal relationships and stays in expensive clinics – is an integral part of their appeal. If Barrymore or Geri Halliwell remained quietly at home, doing as few stunts as they could get away with to further their careers – or "career", in the case of another casualty, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson – they would soon cease to fascinate.

The tormented genius, driven by internal demons, has been with us at least as far back as Lord Byron. But these days popular culture is dominated by a personality type that often has no discernible talent other than to manipulate other people's emotions. What Barrymore is good at is capturing the attention of fickle TV audiences with banal shows like Kids Say the Funniest Things.

He has always given the impression that there is no length to which he will not go, in terms of self-humiliation, to please the crowd. Outside the narcissistic world of showbusiness, this would be regarded as a symptom, not a reason to pay someone obscene amounts of money. But fragility has become such a saleable commodity that entertainers – and Princess Diana, in her time – are rewarded for exhibiting self-destructive behaviour. Then we have to put up with synthetic expressions of astonishment when they take an overdose, like Paula Yates, or die in some ghastly accident.

The BBC's decision last week not to publish Barrymore's (latest) autobiography was taken after criticism from Stuart Lubbock's family. But why did the corporation commission it in the first place, for a sum reputed to be in the region of £500,000? The willingness of publishers to commission books from people who are manifestly still suffering from psychological problems is enormously distasteful.

Halliwell's latest autobiography, her second in three years, is another choice example. The cover rejoices in a photograph of the singer wearing the briefest of black panties and revealing the figure of a 13-year-old girl. There is some dispute about Halliwell's real age but the picture is that of an adult woman who has starved herself into an appearance of pre-pubescence, an obsession confirmed by the tape measures draped round her asexual body.

The contemporary fascination with such damaged individuals is as alarming as their behaviour. It turns us into voyeurs, and does the celebrities themselves no favours. When in 1995 The Sun bullied Barrymore into acknowledging his homosexuality, he should have been warned: people who crave the love of millions of strangers are as likely to attract envy and spite as fame. Not to mention the attention of news editors, who apparently make no distinction between a disgraced TV presenter and the world's most hated dictator.