No doubt every simian tribe of hunter-gatherers had their local celebrities: the woman who gave birth to quintuplets, the boy who swallowed a porcupine and survived, the man who wrestled with a tyrannosaurus and... well, he probably would have died, but celebrity status would have been applied posthumously.

 If, however, the man wrestling with a Tyrannosaurus was a modern Hollywood celebrity, not only would he have lived, he would have pocketed something like $20 million for his efforts, and earned the adulation of several billion people.

The global celebration of modern celebrity is partly a product of our pre-historic need for heroes. In a world where philosophers keep telling us that God is dead, the modern Hollywood celebrity also serves as a brittle substitute for both the post-Christian and pre-Christian need for deities. If, as is often claimed, Hollywood...