How many people do you suppose set out to become famous? It's not really something you can predetermine. It was Andy Warhol who said everybody would be famous for fifteen minutes. Given the global population, that is not a realistic expectation and the irony is that Warhol is now as famous for that quotation as he is for painting a can of soup.
It seems to be the quest of modern youth to want to be famous, but they do not want to work for it. They believe that getting themselves on television will automatically guarantee them fame. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a surfeit of reality shows on TV today ranging from TOWIE in the south to Geordie Shore in the north. All populated by young beautiful people chasing a fame they will never achieve. They may become very well known to a couple of million people, and a small percentage of those might want their autograph, but famous they will never be.
Ten years ago the BBC commissioned a poll of the top 100 Greatest Britons, one could easily substitute "famous" for Greatest, the results would have been very much the same. The most interesting finding was that not one living person featured in the top ten, and Margaret Thatcher was the highest living person at sixteenth. The list included famous Britons from all walks of life and the highest placed celebrity was Michael Crawford at a surprising seventeenth.
If they repeated the process today, how different would the results be? Times have changed, the internet has developed far beyond anybody's wildest imagination. We now have hundreds of television channels, twenty four hour news coverage, and a media and public with an insatiable appetite for celebrity chat. Magazines pay millions of pounds to orchestrate a celebrity wedding, and newspapers have celebrity hotlines to gather more gossip.
How many people could tell you who Tim Berners Lee, Francis Crick or Patrick Steptoe are today. Not as many who could identify Robbie Williams, Katie Price, or Wayne Rooney. The difference here is the first three did not set out to become famous. Fame came from what they achieved, and because of the contribution they have made to the world we live in. They will still be famous in another hundred years and if the BBC carry out another survey in 3002 Berners Lee, Crick and Steptoe will surely be on the list.
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