At last, celebrities are acting like celebrities again.

Life finally feels like it is getting back to normal. Not just because travel is back and lockdowns are long gone but because celebrities are acting like celebrities again. 

Over the last few years, our relationship with celebrities has changed, and not for the better. Gone were the days when celebrities were just expected to look good, marry and divorce one another with enough frequency to keep the tabloids running and be embroiled in a scandal every few years. Suddenly, the public wanted them to be “role models”, declare their political alliances and felt “let down” if they didn’t double as activists.

Then, the pandemic arrived and the point of celebrities was further confused by a lack of performance, promotional tours or paparazzi; famous people had to rely on a more intimate social media presence to keep themselves relevant. The problem is, celebrities are best enjoyed with a little bit of distance.

On March 18 2020, actress Gal Gadot rounded up her celebrity friends to create a virtual rendition of John Lennon’s Imagine. The video, posted to Instagram and filmed in their respective multi-million dollar homes, was intended to inspire and remind people that “we are in this together”. Instead, it did the opposite; it reminded people suffering through lockdowns that celebrities are completely out of touch with reality and acted as a painful reminder of the stark difference in experiences of lockdown between the rich and the rest of the world. 

Despite the backlash to the Imagine video, the celebrity saviour complex didn’t end there. On the day Putin invaded Ukraine, American actress AnnaLynne McCord, famed for her role in teen drama 90210, decided to take it upon herself to perform a spoken word poem for the Russian president. “Dear President Vladimir Putin: I’m so sorry that I was not your mother / If I was your mother, you would have been so loved,” the poem went. Surprisingly, it did little to bring peace to Ukraine.

Thankfully, the tide seems to have turned. Just as the sun begins to shine and Covid fades into memory (if you ignore the constant coughing echoing across London), celebrities are back to behaving as they should. J-Lo and Ben Affleck are engaged 18 years after they called off their first wedding in 2004, Britney Spears is freed from her conservatorship and is pregnant, as is Rihanna, whose baby bump has appeared on more magazine covers than most models do in a lifetime. 

In a scene so farcical its authenticity was debated for days, Will Smith punched Chris Rock at the Oscars and now has a 10-year ban from the event; 41-year-old Kim Kardashian is breaking the internet by dating Ariana Grande’s ex, 28-year-old comedian Pete Davidson. Meanwhile, Kim’s ex-husband Kanye West’s brief and steamy romance with actress and model Julia Fox gifted the world a new muse. The 32-year-old is the epitome of proper celebrity; she wears ridiculous smudged eyeshadow and is always showing her entire midriff. She speaks a lot but says very little, and what she does say is instantly iconic and repeated across the internet for days on end. 

For those wiser than me who manage to keep themselves out of celebrity gossip, this might seem like the meaningless goings-on of the one per cent, but that is exactly the point. These celebrities are doing it right — they’re providing gossip that has nothing to do with us and is all the more entertaining for it. They’re flashing their wealth and proving themselves to live in a completely different universe. This makes watching their fascinating lives unfold on social media feel somewhat similar to watching a documentary about a rare and peculiar species on the nature channel.

The celebrity dramas of the last few weeks suggest we are entering a golden era of celebrity — ushered in by the ultimate celebrity wedding. At just 23-years-old (a year younger than David was when he married Victoria), Brooklyn Beckham married Nicola Peltz over the weekend, an American actress and daughter of billionaire businessman Nelson Peltz. 

The wedding, rumoured to have cost over £3 million, was held at the Peltz’s £79m oceanfront estate in Palm Beach in Florida. The guest list was suitably filled with A-List names; Peltz wore a white Valentino dress with controversial Versace platforms; Victoria Beckham almost outdressed the bride and the couple sold the rights to their wedding photos to Vogue. 

Over the last few years, Brooklyn Beckham has excelled in the category of celebrity (yet failed in his pursuits as a chef and photographer). Despite only dating Nicola for two years, he reportedly has six tattoos dedicated to his girlfriend including; her mother’s rosary beads tattooed on his hand, a love letter from her reproduced (in full) on the back of his neck, her name, her eyes, and her deceased grandmother’s name (a personal favourite). This is top tier celebrity behaviour. 

In a world where former comedian and actor Volodymyr Zelensky is president of Ukraine, Arnold Schwarzenegger was Governor of California, Donald Trump was a reality television star and Ronald Reagan starred in 50 films before becoming US president, it is impossible to say that politics and celebrity should be kept separate. But off the back of a pandemic and in the midst of a war, pointless, extravagant and ridiculous celebrities are exactly what the world needs right now.

Celebrities exist to provide entertainment and escapism, there are thousands of other people to look to (journalists, academics, experts) for opinions or information on politics and current affairs. Celebrities are good at looking good and acting badly — and when they do it right they make the world (particularly the internet) a more interesting place.

To quote the current queen of the rich and famous, Julia Fox, “Celebrities are not that f***ing important. You can tell us about your stupid f***ing date. We’re in a pandemic. Give people something to talk about. Do your f***ing service, do your job.”