I don’t know whether you are the type of person that on a weekly basis picks up celebrity magazines, and if you are then there is nothing wrong with that.  Live and let live and all that.  However I used to be one of these people until very recently.

Whether it was boredom or just the need to know what was going on, I found myself buying each and every edition of every different magazine there was available.  Some people may say, well at least she was reading; and that’s partially true but there are in fact, far better ingredients in a thousand books out there than there is in one of these tabloid toilet papers.

Yes, it’s light reading and harmless tittle tattle, but, reading something that’s intentionally light reading via something that can become damaging to someone’s career and/or marriage can be two extremely different things. I started to notice that the majority of the magazines held the same content; obviously they all have to cover the current celebrity story of the week but some of it was word for word and some of it was so different from the rest it begged the question, ‘which one was the genuine article?’

It got to the point that after reading about Madonna’s adoption episode in several different editions, I was that confused, I began to think that I’d been adopted!  I think once you’ve read one version of a story, there seems little point in reading another account, especially if it’s completely the same, or in fact, different.  It wasn’t only wasting my time, it was burning my money.  I know I’m the one holding the choice of whether I buy or not but do we really need so many choices to tempt us in the first place?

I don’t particularly favour any such celebrities these days, they come and go so  fast, I don’t really get the chance to get to know anything about them.  Even celebrities that are asked onto chat shows these days are only usually doing so to promote some autobiography (even if they’re 17!) or they feel the need to reveal some kind of scandal (which I suppose is better than the tabloids getting their hands on it).  

Gone are the days of  Parkinson and Wogan who actually brought out the entertaining side of these stars and asked them intelligent and relevant questions.  I don’t recall Michael or Terry feeling the need to ask Dame Judi Dench who she  received her last text from.  But then there lies the difference in today and yesterdays media coverage.

As we enter a new decade it shames me to opine that the celebrities we have today are a small blot on the landscape compared to the stars we are used to from years gone by.  Everything needs to be sensationalised now, if there isn’t any kind of scandal in these celebrities lives, I honestly think they make it up.  Their agents must sit with their tiny minds locked together drinking copious amounts of vodka whilst engineering the most ridiculous stories for their clients to act out.  

Jordan aka Katie Price’s agent must be rubbing his/her hands together and planning retirement to Paradise by now.

I realise that I don’t have to buy these magazines and every TV has an off button, but it really is sad that there are so many people out there who have perhaps studied journalism, read interesting and thought provoking literature only to find themselves working for one of these banal and compromising companies.

As if the interviews are bad enough, the articles to lure young girls into the pages are just as dire.  Every page screams for you to be thin, to be sexy, to look a certain way.  I’m extremely comfortable with the way I look, both to myself and to others, however there are some very impressionable young ladies out there who look to these magazines  for advice and structure to their lives.  This in itself is very sad.  

I once read an article about a young girl who suffered from anorexia, the article included ‘tips’ on how to fool your therapist/doctor.  I was aghast, and it takes alot to shock me.  I wrote into the Editor of the magazine expressing my concern with regards to the message this was portraying and received a reply which was perhaps  more shocking than the article itself.

I was advised that I had perhaps read the article with a closed mind.

Me? A closed mind? If only she knew.