Fifteen minutes…

What a couple of days, Roger Bannister, the runner who ran the first sub four-minute mile, and Trevor Bayliss, who invented the wind up radio amongst other things, both died within two days of each other. Both men achieved wonderful things; how many people have ever ran a mile in less than four minutes? Not many, that’s for sure. And Trevor Bayliss reinvented clockwork when he made his radio (and later a torch) specifically to help people in Africa with no electricity so that they could learn about Aids.

Both men were connected by time, clockwork and four minutes, a tenuous link maybe but it got me thinking about the nature of fame. Both men did something very special, but in each case it wasn’t their full time occupation really. Bannister was a top neurological surgeon, and Bayliss a stunt swimmer who once performed in the Berlin circus. Both running and inventing were hobbies that they kind of slipped into really.

Of course I’m sure that there are plenty examples of people who do this today, but it seems that the nature of fame has changed. These days fame is linked to either things you do professionally, like sport, or things you don’t need to do professionally at all, like watching TV or getting lucky on a reality TV show. I doubt that Bannister or Bayliss (what a great name for a TV cop show) set out to become famous and in many ways they hid from fame. Bayliss made very little money from his inventions, and invented because he could do good and help people with his ideas, and Bannister worked in hospitals doing good and saving lives. But somewhere along the way they both had more than their share of the almost proverbial Andy Warhol fifteen minutes. They became famous.

Ask people today what they want to be and many will say ‘famous’. Most don’t have any idea of how they are going to get there or even the skills to do it, but that doesn’t seem to matter; fame is the thing and it seems to work. The media is full of people who don’t really do anything but are famous. I’m sure you don’t need a list (you will probably each have your own anyway) but mine might include Scarlett Moffat, Rylan, Joey Essex, Katie Price - I don’t think I need to go on. There are plenty of forgotten famous in the halls and on the walls, pavements, the scrolls of fame, and eventually all but the goliaths will be lost from people’s memory.

I really don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. The fact that people become famous when there’s no reason why they should and then, in many cases, do it pretty well, are even taken to the nation’s hearts, is encouraging I think. Of course it’s likely to be a passing fame. Nobody will remember who was on TOWIE or X Factor in a few year’s time. But then who will remember Trevor Bayliss or Roger Bannister in ten, twenty, fifty year’s time? There aren’t many Shakespeares, Van Goghs, or Nelson Mandelas around; not when you consider all of the billions of people on the planet. And will even their names be lost to memory some day? The world is changing fast, new famous people come into view all the time and others fade out of it. Who remembers Edmund Crispin these days? I thought not.

Perhaps if you get your chance of a little fame, even fifteen minutes, you should grab it and run with it? Why not?

Yes, why not?