As times get harder and people are repeatedly subject to  the “we’re all in it together” mantra, it seems the cult of celebrity grows relentlessly stronger and we really are not all in it together writes Our Grumpy Old Man Bill McCarthy.

As the baying pack calls for benefits to be capped at £25,000 per annum, no matter where people live or how dire their circumstances, it seems many are in thrall to, and unwilling to challenge, anyone with status or money.

Even if that status is low-life dross like Big Brother or The Only Way Is Essex.

Fat cats in the city creaming off millions are lauded as high-flyers bringing much needed income to the Treasury and ageing pop stars are called Pop Princess or the Queen of Rock.

Now, I’ve nothing against Kylie and if I was a few  years younger . . . but Princess of Pop to a 40-something is stretching it a bit. More like the Princess Royal of Pop, just as Madonna progressed from pop princess to Queen of Pop and now is more like the Queen Mother of Rock.

It doesn’t stop with pop stars. There’s the mindless tweeting of intellectually-challenged footballers who seem to think their musings equate to being modern day philosophers. They’re famous and have more money than they can spend, so you had better listen to what they have to say, no matter how mind-numbingly tedious.

TV interviewers seem to have caught the bug when quizzing loutish football managers whose indecipherable gruntings are more in tune with a simian world than our own.

Even the bankers with their snouts in the trough are given an easy ride – if you are famous it seems you can brazen anything out.

It’s a shame more of us don’t copy the famous line the classic film Network, a satire of American news programmes, where Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch, screams out after being fired: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

*****

On the subject of philosophers, the name Alan Brazil springs to mind, yet again.. That rotund sage of radio’s rantings about Ed Miliband and anything vaguely pinko makes me wonder whether we have a British, or Scottish if you like, answer to Newt Gingrich.