MAYBE I'm not the best qualified to comment (although that's never stopped me before). After all, I've never run down a crowded Coney Street in just my swimming trunks, or spent a February night queuing up for the chance to sing 60 seconds of Sinitta.

But I find this obsession with fame troubling.

Leesa Waddington personifies the modern lust for celebrity. There she was, in Monday's Evening Press, stumbling down a rain-swept Coney Street in York, wearing an barely creditable pink wig and matching bikini. It was an outfit which revealed nearly everything - most prominently her naked desire to be on TV.

She dreamed up this caper as a way to impress the people behind Big Brother, the Channel 4 game show which plonks a pack of preening wannabes in a house infested by television cameras.

"I just want to do it for the experience," she said. "All I ever wanted to do was to be famous."

One half of me says good luck to her. Leesa's clearly a game girl, and by hotfooting it down the footstreets dressed like Barbie's mad sister she has provided more interest than two series of Big Brother.

The other half thinks, oh, please, when's it all going to stop?

Hard on Leesa's silver heels, 3,000 hopefuls auditioned through Monday night for the chance to become a member of chart-toppers Hear'Say.

I wouldn't queue through the night for anything; Jesus could stage his second coming at the Barbican and I'd be at home with The Archers. But mention the chance of instant fame, and thousands of young Britons instantly strip to their crop tops and form an orderly line from Land's End to John O'Groats.

At least the Hear'Say hopefuls were expected to possess some talent. Mind you, the 2,999 who missed out may be somewhat miffed that the winner, Johnny Shentall, is a pal of Hear'Say and engaged to a member of another teeny band, Steps.

Never mind. There'll be another audition along in a minute.

If these stories were not enough, we have also had to wade through pages of newsprint about the two wet wusses who have made it through to the Pop Idol final on Saturday. This series has been running so long, I'm sure the early rounds were broadcast on the Home Service.

And what has it produced? Two finalists who look the same and sound the same. Gareth is ahead by a stutter; look out on Saturday for rival Will developing a limp and a story about a close family member needing a life-saving operation.

A friend came up with a fantastic suggestion. The winner, who will enjoy a guaranteed number one, should record God Save The Queen for Golden Jubilee year. Not the national anthem, but the Sex Pistols' version, which was so refreshingly rude about the monarchy during the last festival of grovelling, the Silver Jubilee.

Neither of these boy squares would ever contemplate so rebellious an act, unfortunately.

Andy Warhol is famous, primarily for two things: painting photographs of Marilyn Monroe a funny colour, and saying that everyone will enjoy 15 minutes of fame. His comment was meant to be ironic, but these days it has been enshrined as a basic human right.

I've done a few sums. By my reckoning, there are about 23 million people aged under 30 in this country. For all of them to claim their 15 minutes of fame, we would have to watch more than 713 consecutive years of Big Brother/Pop Idol/Survivor etc.

What can we do? Leesa said her mum "would leave the country" while Big Brother was on.

Now there's an idea...

Updated: 11:10 Wednesday, February 06, 2002