Life on Lockdown - APRIL
CELEBRITIES... Don’t just show me your abs. Do something.
During this Coronavirus lockdown most celebrities are having to admit what ordinary folks already know. Real life is sitting at home when you want to be out. It’s thinking about what you are going to have for dinner based on what you got in the fridge. It's cooking dinner and cleaning up after yourself and it's hoovering your own damn carpet. It's sitting on the couch at 6pm and wondering, 'now what am I going to do?'.
It’s pacing up and down the room with nothing else to do but that. It’s thinking who can I call and realising that outside of your bestie and your family you haven’t been nurturing your friendship circle because you’ve been too busy. Or worse you don’t have a friendship circle outside of the people you work with and now that there is no work because of the lockdown you really don’t have anyone to talk to and if you do make a call to your work circle, you really don’t want to have to talk about work.
Some celebs are realising that a world exists outside of the one that has been created for them and Covid doesn’t care about your privileged bubble. You cannot velvet rope it off. You cannot buy, spend your way out of, or island isolate yourself out of this pandemic. Some celebs are realising that outside of their ‘job’ they really aren’t much. They really have no life and nothing to say and so they continue to up load selfies of themselves in their bikinis with their abs on show because that’s all they have.
While our loved ones are breathing through ventilators or trying to magic up our next months rent a lot of celebs in the month of Covid are desperate that we don’t forget about them and thus continue to throw selfies at us. Notice how many celebrities are not using this time to just chill. They have to be in front of the camera. They have to be on.
Why don’t they write something poignant. Share something heartwarming. Anything, just stop performing. Just be still for a minute. Better still do something worth while. Give back to your local community. Don’t remind me to wash my hands. Donate a box of hand sanitiser to every household in your local area or low income area or women’s shelter. Maybe they are doing that, you say, maybe there are some celebs doing good silent work out there. Well good I hope so. But while many people are stuck in houses with no back yard, no view, no income, lots of kids or family or battling this quarantine alone give us a break on your sun tan. Just for a couple of months, yes I’m speaking to you Rita Ora. When people are suffering and losing their lives, spare me a moment from pics of your regrowth.
Come up with a comedy sketch, make us laugh, make us feel good. Consider those who are struggling and would love to sunbathe in a garden, eat scrambled eggs off a china plate or just spend ten minutes with silence.
John Krasinski has lightened the Covid load with Some Good News and Victoria Derbyshire has reached out to those who need help by printing the National Domestic Abuse Helpline on her hand. That actually made me cry. She has perspective. She knows we are not all at home bored sick of sunbathing. She understands that some women, men or children during this lockdown are living in danger. In her own way she is educating us to the fact that two women a week are killed by their partner or an ex, and that during this lockdown there was a 25% increase in calls and requests for help and a 150% increase of online contact.
That's what I'm talking about. Celebs doing something. Thank you.
Victoria Derbyshire National Domestic Abuse Hotline: 0808 2000 247
Victoria Derbyshire (BBC)