Do we care about Whitney?

Do we care about Whitney? As the world slides into recession, somewhere in a hotel in America another star fizzles out in the great pop firmament, while from the comfort of our TV rooms, we idly observe another example of the rich and famous getting their just deserts.

The TV tells us the number one death for a rock star is still a heart attack closely followed in second place by drug overdose, while holding in there for the third week running, is suicide.

Like all of us, rock stars create and cling on desperately to their own version of reality, if it’s not McCartney believing that singing into Nat King Cole’s microphone well give him more of the same, then it’s Elvis, Hendrix, Joplin and Jackson, driving their desire for love and adoration with a mouthful of booze and pills. As one star crashes and burns, we watch with amusement smugly sipping our gin and tonics, anaesthetised by our unreal reality TV, as another X-factor wannabe squeaks, ‘Please, Simon, it’s all I’ve ever wanted, let it be me, it’s what I live for ...’

The choice is still ours; well that’s what they tell us, it’s the people’s vote. Do we care? It’s showbiz, theirs is an unreal world, what’s it got to do with us?

So press the red button and we get Mark Bolan, the 20th Century Boy singing:

‘Friends say it's fine, friends say it's good
Ev'rybody says it's just like rock'n'roll’.

But press the green button and we get a blast from that 17th Century Donne of rock:

‘Any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’

A ah huh!