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The prime minister's urge to appear 'normal', like so many celebrities, just proves we're not all in it together It is a strange sensation to attend a concert and find yourself sitting a few rows behind David and Samantha Cameron. It happened to me recently at Gillian Welch's show in London: alongside the shock of discovering I had similar music tastes to the prime minister, it was startling to see Dave and Sam seated with only a discreet security presence, and filing out at the end rather than disappearing before the encores. In the same way that the photograph of a grinning Tony Blair chatting to Noel Gallagher embodied the 90s era of Cool Britannia, so seeing David Cameron dressed in sober casuals and seated in the stalls listening to Welch singing Hard Times seemed to capture this year's mood – a year when the chill of economic austerity drove celebrities to adopt the pose of normality. The most popular way to show common cause with hoi polloi was to use public transport, and this year commuters were spoilt for choice between gawping at the Queen taking the First Capital Connect service from London King's Cross to Norfolk, staring at Rihanna as she turned up to her own gig at the O2 arena on the Jubilee line, or, if you were less fortunate, sitting on the night bus that Top Shop heiress Chloe Green boarded to return home. The intention may have been to suggest that if you take away the crown jewels, the predilection for raunchy lyrics and the billion pound inheritance, then the Queen, Rihanna and Chloe are much like the rest of us. The effect is the precise opposite. When I take the bus I don't, as a rule, excitedly tweet about it – as Green did – and I am rarely accompanied, as she was, by a "showbiz blogger". The images of star-struck fans huddling close to Rihanna on the tube similarly reminded us how different, rather than how similar, she was from those who fund her lifestyle. "She was just like any other passenger, except accompanied by a huge entourage," one fellow traveller was reported as saying. What I find most objectionable about this celebrity austerity is that it is so nakedly PR driven, so shamelessly contrived, and that we are expected to fall for it. As if seeing a photograph of Kate Middleton doing the Waitrose run is meant to convince us that she too is worrying about whether to fire up the central heating or slip a jumper on. As if reading Gwyneth Paltrow claim that "I'm just like any other regular mum; cooking, cleaning, wiping butts, picking up after kids, being a wife and helping the kids with their homework" is anything other than hogwash and borderline offensive. There was a reminder of an earlier, more honest era of celebrity in the sale of Elizabeth Taylor's jewellery earlier this month, which raised more than $100m. In the 60s Liz and Richard Burton would fly to Jamaica by private helicopter for the weekend to attend hedonistic star-filled parties; this year Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie visited the Richmond branch of Halfords. Stars like Taylor didn't even pretend to be ordinary, but in austere times flaunting one's wealth, gems and nannies endangers losing the public goodwill that created the wealth in the first place – hence the ostentatious displays of ordinariness. The irony is that this year also presented many more opportunities for ordinary people to indulge in the very lifestyle from which the stars were attempting to distance themselves. Rihanna may have rocked up to her gig by tube, but the X Factor finalists rolled up in stretch limousines for their public appearances; David Beckham was photographed tucking into pie and mash, but shows like Geordie Shore, Desperate Scousewives and The Only Way Is Essex offered the over-tanned and under-talented a chance to dress to the nines and get on the VIP list for Chinawhite. The success of such shows suggests that the lure of the good life, of money and its comforts, is as strong as ever. But in a time of mass youth unemployment and widespread economic unease, the world of the rich and famous feels more distant than ever. While the truly desperate resort to desperate measures, be it rioting or sporting a vajazzle, the rest of us look at those with big houses, luxury cars and holidays on private islands and conclude that this age of celebrity austerity is less about societal empathy, and more about personal insecurity. In their desperation to affect normality, the rich, powerful and famous merely convince us of the falsehood that we are all in this together. Sarfraz Manzoor
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