It must be strange to be famous

I work really hard to promote my books, as a writer I want people to read them… but supposing they became really popular and complete strangers began to know me?

I sometimes think about fame when I see or meet someone who in reality is a stranger to me but I think I know because of their work – maybe it’s their music, maybe it’s their written work, maybe it’s their politics… I would have my own thoughts on what sort of person they are, and I might very well know quite a lot about them. If I have listened to their music again and again, been to the gigs, screamed and shrieked and jumped about, or if I’ve read and reread their books, looked up interviews with them, watched them on tv programmes, I have an image of what sort of person they really are – but of course I actually don’t know, I don’t know at all. I might know what their favourite drink is or what football team they support, or where they like to go on holiday… but really they are a stranger to me, just as I really am to them.

So for the person who has fame, through TV, or film, or art or music, it must in turn be very odd to have complete strangers speak to them in a familiar way, know things about them, their birthdays, the names of their children, it must be really quite odd.