Who Actually Gives A F***

My heart sunk at the weekend. The media has decided that the most important news of the weekend was the end of Prince William and Kate Middleton's relationship. All day yesterday and this morning the first news item on Five Live has centred on this story. My question is why? What is so important about two people in their mid-twenties splitting up? It happens all the time. I don't understand why this non-event warrants so much media coverage. According to the news this morning the tabloids have given over forty (yes forty!!) pages this morning to the story. What is there to report? Nothing as far as I can see. Okay, so he is possibly going to be King one day (unless there is a glorious revolution of course), but who actually gives a flying fuck who he is going out with?

This country is obessessed with the cult of celebrity and the need to know everything about their lives. Or is it? Is the whole thing driven by the media. I have long had the belief that although the media tell us they are giving us what we want, and I'm primarily talking about the newspapers here, they actually create this myth so they can justify printing the crap that they do. This may sound a little patronising (it's not meant to) but I think the general public will just lap up what they are given. If the newspapers chose to print interesting stories about 'real' people and global events, rather than who is shagging who, or who has, God forbid, gone to the pub and had a couple of beers, I seriously believe that the masses wouldn't really notice. They would still buy the paper that they have always bought.

Of course I don't hold out any hope that things will change. We will still be fed shite year after year. I haven't bought a newspaper for years because I can't stand it and although I listen to the news on the radio to keep up, I'm slowly getting pissed off with them too. When the end of a relationship between two people 99.99% of the public have never met is top story for two days on the news networks, on a day when people are being killed in a war in the middle east I think we need to step back and have a look at things.

As I'm writing this Five Live has just announced that the majority of listeners in a poll this morning have stated that the amount of coverage given to this story is unwarranted. Maybe there is hope after all.