I'd suggest that he's not famous ... merely (currently) popular.

Never heard of him either. I suspect it's a "teen" thing, and I tend not to talk to teenagers if I can help it. I have heard of Twilight, though.

...he was in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire a few years back. But I think you can blame Twilight for the accelerated media interest since then.

I doubt I would have heard of him were it not for the fact that my son likes Harry Potter and my daughter likes Twilight (the book, she would hasten to add: not the film).

I think it's only possible to know a subset of all the famous people now.

Do your offspring know who Daniel Vettori is, for example? Or Bob Ainsworth?

You're the only other male I know? that subscribes to VF.You were not alone in exclaiming who's Robert Pattinson??? (I said to myself)

I'm 43 years old and I too take modest pride in being au courant, but that threw me for a loop.I imagine that VF is attempting to attract new readership(Grow their business as it were).So I'm over it now.Phew!

talent shows again one of the reasons I avoid CCD is when watching the teasers ads I only recognised a few of the celebrities and 50% of these were professional dancers.
I think this problem will get worse due to the narrow cast nature of the internet and the targeted audiences of films etc.

I know ALL about 'R-Patz'

just looked him up and he's English born well there you go, not seen any of the Potter films and or Twighlight.
I think this mirrors why I stopped getting the NME as I realised I read about a number of bands entire careers and yet not heard a note of their music.

but that may be more to do with my girlfriend being a "fan of his work". I don't think it's escaped her attention that he's not exactly uneasy on the eye.

I thought I was pretty down with the kids until about a year ago when I realised I knew hardly any of the songs in the top 40 and had only heard of around half the acts in it. I reckon even two years ago I'd have been able to (badly) hum the melody of anything that was in TOTP territory

either, but then I had never heard of Steve Redgrave when he got knighted, so what do I know.

that everyone's talking about recently, anyway?

I bought NME for the first time in 3 years on Sat. They had a band called Panamour on the cover?? Never heard of them and I'm not anti religion in any way but I was fairly shocked that they were a sort of Christian rock band. On the cover of the NME? Not in my day etc?

hearing the name Blake Lively bandied about and guessed it was someone fairly famous. Imagine my surprise on finally seeing my picture of Blake and discovering... Blake is a woman... and a rather attractive one at that.

(I've since found out she's in something called Gossip Girl, a program which is fairly unlikely to find its way onto the Christmas list of too many of the massive)

I know him because he's all over Entertainment Weekly, which makes me think he's much more famous over there than he is over here. Has the Twilight saga caught on here at all? Not being around teenagers I couldn't say, but I did see a girl literally screaming over his poster in HMV, so he's obviously on the radar.

It depends which branch of famous you follow. I don't know footballers and couldn't point out anyone except perhaps John Terry and Renaldo in a crowd, but I know who everyone from Emmerdale is.

a time while I was at a useless college, I had a part time job at a convenience store where I obliviously served an extremely famous Sportsman. He looked at me Like I was from Mars! It took everything from him to not spit out "Don't you know who I am? It was only after he'd left that my fellow worker said " You don't know who that was,do you?" I like to think I did his ego good that day.He was, after all, only buying Milk?

'Who could tell me about Robert Pattinson?' and the reaction was extraordinary. Even the chaps seemed excited.

when I received an email from Forbidden Planet which led me to a bewildering array of Twilight action figures, bags, books, posters, coffee mugs... you name it. So much *stuff* concerned with something that had completely passed me by.

Huge pop stars, apparently. I've never knowingly heard any of their records. And I'm 33 so I'm not that much of a fogey.

Oh, and I never seem to know what the Number 1 single is any more.

But I do think there are now things officially "not for me" and I deliberately avoid them. Mr Chipmunk and Ndubz definately fall into that category.

I will say I am 35, I have tried to be vaguely au courant as someone said up there ^^^^^^^ but the Twilight books are just beyond me. I managed three pages of the first one and the whining of the main character just annoyed me so much I couldn't physically read the thing. I am only really aware of them because Mrs Ganglesprocket works in publishing so I tend to get early heads up about this stuff when it takes off.

It's all Radio 4, rioja and rocket with me these days. And Isn't that Unthanks album marvelous? And why isn't James Yorkston racing up the hit parade?

I'm off now to buy a tweed jacket...

my young daughter the above VF cover shot and asked her if she knew who he was.
Whilst the resultant look didn't exactly kill, it did carry with it several tons of pity, exasperation and just a hint of superiority.
She gets no pocket money for a month as a result.

...but only because a young person of my acquaintance was in a film with him - a half decent indie thing called How to Be. Not entirely sure who Miley Cyrus is, though.

I parted company with NME, Q etc when members of grunge bands were referred to without any helpful brackets - Thingy (Pearl Jam). I think I'd only not bought anything for a month or 2 but I'd been left behind. It felt a little troubling at first. Then I heard the music and saw the shirts I decided I didn't want to catch up any more. I know that Cobain chap, the rest are a mystery.

Now I'm surprised if I have heard of anyone. There does seem to be too many famous or nearly famous people out there.

and I know everybody mentioned as 'who are they?' in this thread. I'm not quite sure how, but I seem to be a sponge for that kind of stuff. My wife, who is still in her 20s and an avid reader of Heat amongst other things, doesn't keep up with this kind of stuff as well as I do.

I'm surprised Robert Pattinson has passed you by though. He is in comparison for instance to the X Factor peeps, in a whole different league of celebrity. He's way up 'there' and they are down over 'there'.

... why is he "famous"? Is he a very good actor; is he very talented?

Or is he just another pretty boy?

And, yes, there are too many famous people.

Did the VF article about the famous Mr Pattinson struggle to say in 4,500 words what The Word or most other British mags can express in about 1,000 ?

Very - very - occasionally I have read an article in VF that benefits from this meandering style but usually I have lost the will to live by about a third of the way in.

he probably has no idea who David Hepworth is either :)

I am of course not quite in Robert's target demographic, being neither a teenage girl, the mother of a teenage girl nor a gay man. However, I am aware of his impressive "body of work", and am currently making plans with friends to see the film the weekend it comes out. I think I am aware of him because apart from this site my main online reading is the feminist blogosphere (ooh that's a terrible word), and the Twilight series is much discussed there - primarily for giving terrible messages to young girls about it being OK for creepy boys to stalk you, and the weird abstinence message that you should never have sex for fear you will die a horrible and painful death.

...

It's nice that yer man Pattinson is famous, at least amongst 'da kids' for actually doing something i.e. he can act, as opposed to being 'famous' for just having his face plastered across the media for no adequately plausible reason ike, oh, Peaches f-ing Geldof, for example.

Both chaps Of A Certain age with kids Of A Certain Age, Simon reported that his teenaged daughter actually decided that her dad was quite sort of a little bit cool because he took her along to the Twilight premiere, thereby earning the jealosy of every other teenaged girl in her school and, probably, The World. There was, I seem to remember, a lengthy and grumpy discussion of all the matters detailed above.

Anyway. I thought Mr Hepworth and team always listened to the K&M show?

Perhaps they do. Mayhaps David's memory grows more selective with age.

Over in Dubai this week - found out that Echo and the Bunnymen were playing, and thought I might go along. One of the other tutors here (my age) said "who are they then? Are they new?"

The Bunnymen didn't turn up by the way.

...it's just that the part of you that's g*tting *ld has stopped caring without your permission.

I also had to ask who he was. (Admittedly a few months ago)

And I'm 23. At least you have age as an excuse...

I also like to use the category of fame.

For example:
A-list = Brad Pitt, The Queen, etc.
B-list = most other film actors
C-list = pop musicians of a certain ilk - i.e. Akon, etc
D-list = celebrities who are really famous within own country

right the way down to
Z-list = the Hollyoaks cast

...I have very little idea who anyone is when eyeballing the covers at the supermarket. I assume they are sportsmen/women or soapstars of some description.

I've given this example before, but I worked with a guy, perhaps 2 years older than me who, at the height of their TV-presenting ubiquity, was surprised to find that "Anton Dec" was actually *two* people.

so perhaps it is time to cancel my subscription to The Word. I only buy it to keep well in with the kids, up to speed on the latest pop chart botherers and like, er, wicked daddio.

I'm off to Saga Magazine.

when their 15 minutes of fame seems to be literally that. But when we were youngsters that same period of fame (maybe a year?) seemed like a whole career.

Another sign of age is not bothering to read the whole thread, so if someone has made exactly the same point I apologise.

Who cares about these Z-list slebs? Life's too short and it's going to be dark for a very long time. I think it was Matmus who said that in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 people.

@ bricameron - going off-message here, but regarding not recognising celebrities; I got off a plane in Florence airport, distracted by the naked fear of the flight, the heat and the scrum of people not forming an orderly queue for a taxi when a woman said if she could get a taxi, did we want to share it into the city. Having spent the journey trying to recover while my partner talked to the other passenger, she - the passenger - generously offered to pay the fare. We got out first and my partner asked why I hadn't recognised Helena Bonham-Carter...

Once upon a time, celebrity was generally a by-product of some kind of achievment. Today, celebrity is an objective in itself and we see see thousands of wannabee slebs who don't really care how they get there but who want to be on the red carpet or go to the right party etc etc. And of course the media loves it because it gives them a constant source of material (= £revenue) as they discuss who's in, out, up, down or shaken all about.

I figure that if a film, book, record, sportsman etc catches my attention, I'll decide whether to investigate further. I feel no desire or pressure to keep up with the latest sleb gossip.

that the glut started a while back, which is why it now appears that barely a week goes by without someone we knew and loved (but had completely forgotten about 90% of the time) turning up their toes.

if we slim the ranks back down, will we reach a point where the obit section of any given mag will reach over 50% of total content?

As mentioned above, it has long since reached the point that arriving at the supermarket checkout and scanning the covers of the 'magazines' reveals I have no clue whatsoever. But hey, if they're just celebs like Paris Hilton why should we care anyway.

But I thought at least I'm keeping up with music. I was wrong. Sadly deluded even.... Number one son became infatuated with the movie Cars, got the video, the books, and the CD, which got played to death. It's got a cover of a song I liked back in the day, Life Is A Highway. Ooooh, Tom Cochrane says I, and who the hell are Rascal Flatts, only to find they're the biggest live draw in the US at that point in time. It still bugs me, and I don't know how I missed that entirely, even though they're country and I'd run a mile ordinarily.