One of the big cultural fibs going around today is that this, uniquely, is the Age of the Celebrity; a time that is defined by our fascination with people who are famous, but we’re not entirely sure what for.
There’s actually a long tradition of this, but the difference with the old-style celebs is that we could never define why Peter Ustinov (for example) was famous, because he did so many things, not so few. Apart from the proper jobs (writer, director, actor, artist and so on) he was also good …