You know what celebrity is? Celebrity is being able to move from publicly handing down marital advice to publicly handing down divorce advice WITHOUT BREAKING STRIDE. That, kids, is what a proper star looks like, and any civilian who imagines they couldn't use a bit more of that radioactive self-confidence in their own small and cowed lives is a better person than Lost in Showbiz.
I know, I know … you're all better people than Lost in Showbiz. And there may, conceivably, be some of you who think Gwyneth could just have announced she was consciously uncoupling without then offering a lengthy tutorial in how to consciously uncouple.
But finally, finally, this column understands what Barack Obama was on about when he talked about a "teachable moment". Something bad or sad happens to one person – but it's not all a downer. And that's because it presents the perfect opportunity for the whole culture to be educated and elevated. Normally, people such as rape campaigners or race-relations activists have to step in for the task. But when the bad or sad thing happens to a celebrity, the educator and elevator is that selfsame celebrity. And you know who benefits? Humanity. Humanity is the winner.
This week, with her advice on conscious uncoupling, Gwyneth Paltrow is that educator – but heaven knows she's not the first. Today, we give grateful thanks for some of the most essential teachable moments of recent times. Now, looking back at this textbook, there may be some of you who recall declining the opportunity to take the stone tablets at the time (FYI, I always find it helps to wash them down with something 40% proof or higher). But in light of new enlightenment, Lost in Showbiz urges you to consciously recouple with the tales, and realise how little you knew before someone famous knew it for you, and gave you the benefit of their wisdom without you even having to ask.
Cherie Blair addresses the nation
On the surface, it might have looked like the then prime minister's wife had simply bought £500,000 worth of luxury flats for her son to live the typical student life in when he went off to Bristol University. But that is exactly why we needed a celebrity spirit guide, in the form of Cherie, who gave a moving televised address on the matter. It turned out this was the ultimate Everyman tale – a story about a family who have to sell their house because the husband gets a new job, and eventually decide to use some of "our only remaining capital" to buy a couple of very modest boltholes for their 18-year-old. Ultimately, though, it was about the agony of a mother trying to protect her son "in his first term at university … [failure to stifle tears] … living away from home". And, in 2002, that was a really important lesson for Cherie to impart to a perspective-seeking nation, what with all the mothers soon to wave their own 18-year-olds off to the war her husband was planning.
Big Ron: Am I a racist?
A landmark BBC documentary in which Ron Atkinson generously went on a journey to help the rest of us gain a deeper and more mature understanding of racial politics. Many people might have wondered why it was the viewing public being asked to take a lesson, what with it not actually having been them who was caught referring to Marcel Desailly as "a fucking lazy, thick nigger". But that is to fundamentally misunderstand the celebrity teachable moment. If Lost in Showbiz had to come up with a cavil, I suppose it would be that Atkinson didn't do a Paltrow, who published her homily on the same website she uses to sell $1,895 black wool blazers. But if Ron felt his line of sheepskin Klan hoods didn't need the traffic boost, then that – rather like Britain's education in race relations – is, above all, a matter for him.
Mel Gibson's DUI arrest
This, you may recall, was less a case of Mel using the opportunity of being pulled over for drink driving to explain to some "sugar tits" of a cop that "the fucking Jews" are "responsible for all the wars in the world" – and more a case of the rest of us being given a lesson in the disease of alcoholism. His struggle had lasted all his adult life, pastor Mel explained to the world, and the outburst constituted a "relapse". And thus Mel's opportunity became our opportunity, and we learned stuff like how one of the big symptoms of the disease is antisemitism, as well as finding the time to comment on a law enforcement officer's rack even when you have a roadside history lesson to give.
Trudie Styler offers a new framework for environmentalism
When longtime environmental campaigner Trudie Styler was revealed to have private-jetted an entourage – including her hairdresser – from New York to Washington for a party, the entire episode screamed teachable moment. Excitingly, LiS was the column deemed most in need of the lesson, and to this end Trudie took to the pages of the Guardian to explain to readers that environmental campaigning didn't have to be the way we thought it did, and that she was trialling a new paradigm which involved the use of "private aviation fuel". Questioning this was nothing more than "class envy".
A few personal favourites there, then. Of course, there are those who think that the above moments might have seen their protagonists realise that a brief period of silence from them would perhaps have been welcome, or at the very least seemly. But that is just civilian talk. The celebrity burden is to realise that you never, ever stop trying to better those who look to you for guidance, because if you don't, then who on earth will?
As for the uber-moral – the lesson of all the lessons – well, that couldn't be more clear. It's that we mortals should take this sort of celebrity-led education very, very seriously indeed, safe in the knowledge that celebrities would only be too delighted to return the favour, and listen to our advice on their lives were we to bump into them on the high street.
