Famous for 15 minutes

A man was arrested for swimming into the path of the University Boat Race. With almost equal stupidity, the media told us his name, thereby giving him the publicity he craved, and advertising this as a route to fame. (At least he kept his clothes on, unlike some others who disrupt sporting events.)

There are many ways to yell “Look at me,” if that is what you live for. Some people get a car number plate that declares their name. Like Postman Pat or Noddy. (Bless.) Some people try to catch the coat-tails of someone else’s fame – for example, by shooting them. One general (whose name is ironically only approximately remembered) had his shot at fame by destroying the Temple of Diana.

A very popular method these days is to sign up for a reality show on TV. Of course, you have to choose carefully. You need a grain of talent to gain a place on Masterchef. (Unless of course you are already famous for something else. In that case you are readily offered further fame regardless of talent, as a chef or dancer or ice-skater. To him who has, it will be given.)

But those lacking talent can still get their 2 minutes of fame (falling short of Andy Warhol’s utopian 15) on the freak-show of the X-Factor auditions.  Or simply Big Brother, which openly embraces the fact that its participants simply want to be famous.

I have a proposal for the next series of Big Brother. At the start of this piece, I objected to our being told the name of the boat race swimmer. Following the same logic, I would like to see the identity of the next lot of self-publicists carefully concealed. Let them preen into the Big Brother house in front of a crowd of carefully-chosen unbelievers, who will dutifully wave and cheer and then utterly forget the utterly forgettable. They will be there again, when the suckers emerge.

Let there be cameras all over the house, and let no film be made. (This seems to work quite well with CCTV. The bad guys see cameras and tailor their behaviour accordingly.)

And then (this is the clever bit) comes the “real” reality TV. Let secret cameras follow each emerging contestant into the outside world, and let us all watch their bemused response as they realise that nobody knows who they are.

But above all: we do not want to know their names.

(Or maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe Big Brother is a necessary conduit. Maybe without it, people would be reduced to shooting people, destroying religious buildings, wrecking sports events, or demonstrating their catastrophic inability to sing.)

How to save the planet

My wife remarked the other day how many baby-wipes we get through with our toddler. It's a small thing, but it reminded me of a question on QI a year or two ago, about environmental damage. And it seems that if you're looking for the biggest carbon culprit, you can forget about dogs or horses: and presumably the Porches and petrochemicals and fossil fuels and fighter planes which sustain our democracy. The greatest carbon damage, it turns out, is achieved by having children.

That is: to save the planet, stop having children. This will probably work: but taking the human race out of circulation seems a little drastic.

I expect there are some with an agenda who would approve. Our extinction would doubtless be well-deserved, might be pursued (by quicker methods) by certain religious sects seeking divine approval, and is also  the logical end of eco-terrorism. I don’t know whether there are militant nihilists out there, who reckon creation “ex nihilo” was a bad move, and would like to restore our bit of the universe to its pristine chaos.

I wonder, though, about the Buddhist take. The end of the world would free us all from that troublesome reincarnation business: but I don’t think Buddhists are actually meant to kill people. So would Buddhists approve the “QI agenda" of letting humanity die by simply not having children? It is probably the surest way of saving the planet.

But what does it mean for the path to Nirvana? If I’ve got this right, current reincarnation arrangements allow you to be - as it were - promoted (eventually to a life as a monk, and thence to Nirvana) or relegated. Someone relegated to (say) a flea can presumably work their way up through the leagues of newts and newspaper magnates.

But if all the human divisions are removed, will it be possible to gain Nirvana? Or will the spiritual Premiership forever be out of reach? It’s like removing the Championship and League One and Two, along with the various feeder leagues: so that qualification for the Premiership will depend on improbable performances in the pub leagues.

Meanwhile we are rapidly filling the air, sea and soil with stuff with unguessable side-effects. It’s quite likely that we will all soon be infertile, the QI agenda will be fulfilled, and the planet will be saved. (Without abandoning the consumerist agenda! Win-win.)