Thoughts on politics and life from a liberal perspective

Saturday 20 March 2010

The which celebrity do you really, really hate meme

Bryony Gordon has a standard sleb based opinion piece in The Telegraph today where she sounds off about how much she irrationally hates Hugh Grant despite never having met him. So far so barely worth linking to.


However she makes this statement in the article:

I have a theory that almost everybody loathes one person in the public eye with such passion that the mere mention of their name is enough to make you combust with rage. This person has to be someone famous, someone you have never met before, someone who can pop up on the television for 30 seconds yet make you feel apoplectic for hours afterwards.

She then goes on to explain that she put this proposition to a number of her colleagues and they each quickly came back with someone.

As I thought about it, I realised that this actually does apply to me. In my case I rather irrationally hate Patrick Kielty. I mean come on, look at his smug face! Also, he just strikes me as a nasty piece of work. I recall years ago seeing him having a spat with someone on Fame Academy (I think it was one of the judges, I wasn't really watching it) and he just really reminded me of people I have known in my life like that who are snide and take real pleasure in doing down others. Since then I can barely stand to see him on the TV at all and will actively switch him off even if he is on something else that I really like. (I just pray to Jeebus that Uncle Stephen does not make him a regular guest on QI).

Anyway, I wondered how common this phenomenon is so I thought I would memeify it.

The rules are as above that they must be famous and also that you have never met them. I am going to exclude politicians or people you hate for political reasons too. It has to be just based around their face or demeanour or something else equally shallow and irrational! And you can only pick one so if you have loads it has to be the one you hate the most. However irrational though you must justify your choice and try and persuade the rest of us of the rightness of your cause!

I tag:

Dazmando off of Bracknell Blog

5 comments:

Sean O'Hare said...

For me it has to be Jonathan Ross. He comes across as the most arrogant and conceited tosser on TV. The fact that my licence fee is helping to pay him his outrageously and unearned salary just adds fuel to the flames.

Lorna Dupré said...

Jordan. Artificial, attention seeking, and utterly vacuous.

Anonymous said...

I'm with you too Lorna. Check my thoughts on her below. I posted on this a few weeks ago but picked seven female celebs. If I had to narrow it down to one it will still be her though. I need to get onto thinking of my male celebs.

http://wp.me/pNfbd-23

Jennie Rigg said...

I have to pick just ONE? That's evil!

Cardinal Richelieu's mole said...

The term "celebrities" is quite wrong and a better, more modern term would be "denigraties".

The unhealthy truth is that many of them, possessing little or no talent or even skills beyond assiduous attention seeking, are just there to be denigrated. The public are variously entertained by boosting them and watching the fall-out as they crash and thereafter, most dreaded of all, may become uninterested in them - prompting even greater depths of self-denigration to be mined as recovery of attention is sought.

The whole phenomenon of the "denigraty" is bad for everyone it touches. I therefore resist providing a (rather long) list of names.