Paparrazi: the best show on Earth

Wouldn't it suck driving (or being driven) along, stopping at traffic lights (cos even celebs obey the red and green lights, particularly German ones) only to have someone slam their camera lens into your windscreen and snap away, then turn and jump into the car behind that is going to follow you wherever it is you are going? Or to have people sitting in the supermarket carpark all day waiting for you, making huge bucks out of the fact you bought groceries and then loaded them into your car? Yes, but it's also awesome that Angelina shops at Sainsbury's (like me!) and Robbie spends ages in Cardiff at night looking for something to do (like me! Obviously he never found the Walkabout pub next to Travelodge). That's why Paparazzi is such awesome viewing. Following the team of "paps" behind Aussie entrepreneur Darryn Lyon's Big Pictures photo agency, it shows how boring, futile, interesting and oddly obsessive the world of celebs is. Especially in Britain ("who's that? I don't know. Surely she's on a soap? Dunno. Take her pic anyway"). For those of you with cable you've probably flicked past it a thousand times or the current episodes are more current than 2005, but for those of you with only 5 channels to choose from it's on abc2 every wednesday at 9:30.

Huge money is spent and paid in getting these pics. The first Brangelina pics apparently netted them nearly $1 million. It sounds like an exciting job, but I'm not so sure...I wouldn't spend a week following Charlotte Church around Cardiff and then driving behind her all the way to London, just to get a few snaps of her in baggy pants and thongs. I'd be pissed off if I spent a week in pink-Pommy infested tourist spots like the Algarves trying to get pics of footballers wives such as Colleen (Wayne Rooney, looks like Shrek) "whose only talent is shopping". I would, however, gleefully stomp around in the mud at Glastonbury, swilling pints of watery crap beer and take pics of the massive crowd, enjoy the show and run into Kate Moss. Unfortunately it takes alot of sitting in vans outside Selfridges waiting for Pammy Anderson before you get to do that.

It's oddly compulsive and completely awesome viewing. Aside from the fact that Darryn's wardrobe match is Edi from Ab Fab, and his 'current' project involves turning a talentless bunch of pouty boobs into "the next big girl band" (which obviously never happened, though Westlife did miraculously reform), you too will sit on the edge of the couch waiting for that moment when the celeb finally appears. It's all over in about 3 seconds, and he/she generally looks dishevelled, pissy, and oddly like a suburban chav for someone who's rolling in dosh. LIKE THE ONES WHO WEAR PINK TERRY TOWELLING JUICY COUTURE TRACKSUITS FFS. It's like some odd sense of relief to see that they don't walk around in real life airbrushed with appropriate theme music traling behind them. I don't even care that these screenings are 3 years old now and Brangelina have adopted a mini United Nations, Sienna has gone from boho to badho and Charlotte Church is....umm.....possibly in Cardiff somewhere. I could go on about our celeb obsession for days (think about it, something isn't cool or sellable or worth having unless a celeb has it/wears it/dates it); but instead I'll leave you with this, from celeb blog JustJared: