How talentless celebs stay famous
Posh Spice, Paris Hilton, countless reality TV stars... you can find details of their vacant adventures in our newspapers and magazines every day.
These celebs are famous for being famous (have you heard Posh sing?). But why?
According to a report by New Scientist, scientists from Stanford University in the US have got their heads together and explained why we continue to care about Peter Andre and Jordan so much way after they have seemingly outlived their 'talents'.
It's because we need something to talk about.
The study didn't focus on celebs but baseball players in the States (I went to a game once, most of the crowd were too busy trying to attract the attention of a man selling foot-long hotdogs to pay much notice of what was actually going on in the field. But I digress...).
What they found is that if a player was once successful they continued to be discussed by fans even though they were now no better (or even worse) than other players.
People want to find common ground in conversations, so rather talk about an up-and-coming rookie they would chat about a has-been that they would have all heard of.
So in celeb culture, we are more likely to chat about Jordan's divorce because we know who she is, this in turn drives more media coverage, and makes even more people aware of the top-heavy 'star'.
Perhaps this is why Posh is still on the front of every style mag even though her pop career has long gone. She's made it into our collective consciousness and there's no way she's leaving.
But at least she had that an initial 'push' from her Spice Girls days - other celebrity celebs seem to have got their toe in the door through starring in a dodgy home movie or by simply wearing a revealing dress at a film premier.
They did, though, catch our imaginations somehow and started us talking.
And when we start talking, well, there's no shutting us up.
Weird Science Factoid: Eagles mate while airborne. They're the original members of the mile high club.
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Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
