All worship at the temple of celebrity.

Until fairly recently you had to do something to become famous. You needed a skill or talent which set you apart from the rest of society, whether that be acting, singing, playing sport, running the country or being a little too handy with an axe or shotgun. It was about your peers recognising your unique gift, raising you above the masses and lavishing praise and adoration on you for it, or in the case of an axe murder, infamy may be a more appropriate description.

Sadly, that no longer seems the case in modern Britain where you only need lie down and 'think of England' with a second rate soap star or soccer player and then sell your 'story' to the newspapers to kick-start a career as a celebrity.

It's not just in Britain; my Polish wife has noticed the emergence of a new word in the Polish language over the last few months - 'celebrita'. In Polish there was no such word as celebrity; you were an actor, singer, pianist, axe murderer etc. But increasingly the media needed a word as a catch-all for the new breed of vacuous, talentless pond-life that is crawling out of a gutter near you.

And because those talentless individuals are now occupying so many rungs at the bottom of the celebrity ladder, those with genuine talent are propelled to stratospheric levels of hero worship.

It scares the hell out of me when an entire generation are growing up with the sole life ambition 'to be famous'. Ok, to say an 'entire generation' is an exaggeration, but there are certain socio-economic and geodemographic pockets for whom schooling is no longer seen as a necessary route to success. In a recent report by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, 70% said the cult of celebrity was perverting the aspirations of children, while 37% felt their children just wanted to be famous for being famous. A primary school teacher from Scunthorpe said that her pupils believed academic performance was irrelevant as they could become rich and famous by appear on a reality show.

Unfortunately this celebrity obsession is unlikely to diminish any time soon for the simple reason that it sells newspapers and magazines at a time when traditional media is under pressure from the internet. You only need to venture into a newsagent to see rack after rack of celebrity magazines.

Finally, I heard a very funny line in relation to Queen of the bottom feeders, Katie Price (aka Jordan), who for those of you who have had a) your eyes closed or b) have been engaged in missionary work in Africa is currently engaged in a bitter divorce from her equally talented husband, Peter Andre - 'Katie has requested that the press respect her need for publicity at this difficult time.' For me this so succinctly sums up everything that is so wrong about the nation's obsession with celebrity.