If the world has a problem, if no one else is famous enough, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The A-Listers. *cue music*

So, generic infamous celebrity female #1 (yes, you with the perky breasts that you whipped out before your blockbuster days- but not, heaven forbid, to get attention from movie bosses), how would you go about solving this here earthquake/ flood/ genocide/ tidal wave/ bout of diptheria? Arrive, wear a shawl and pout? Good answer, but no cigar/ African baby for you this time.

Ah Angelina Jolie. You had a little respect from my corner. How misguided can you be that you feel your mere presence will begin events to solve a crisis?

I know, the few people who read gossip mags and still retain a soul, if any of us have one to begin with, will be the ones who are now drawn to the news items now that the latest copy of Cool! has invited Paris Hilton to comment on the style of shihab you wore, and whether the colour drained you. Fair enough, you've made a grand total of three hundred new people aware enough of there being a problem in a specific country that they now know about it.

But it is not news worthy for the millions of people who watch the news and, presumably, haven't fallen victim to a peculiar irrepresible nap at exactly the right three-seven minute segment of news for the last three weeks where the events were displayed. You watch the news, you won't miss it. Yet somehow Angelina Jolie needs to make people see that there is a problem. Which then gets shown on the news. That you've watched and that, having watched, you will have been informed of the disaster by. Preaching to the converted?

Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm cynically veiwing this as a publicity thing, and not giving enough credit to Jolie as an ambassador for Good Things. She probably is doing a good thing. I just don't see why we need a celebrity to tell us things are bad. It's the side-effect of the 80s charity gigs and the U2 culture, perhaps. It's definitely American-ised, where nothing it seems makes the new unless a baseball player, (American) football player or the is-he-Muslim-or-not-second-coming-of President Jesus Barack Christ Obama himself (who moonlights as the son of Krypton saving all-American babies) has something to say about it.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I still, perhaps irrationally, believe that the vast majority of people aren't stupid. At least not to that degree. And certainly not over here, where it'd be nice if, for a change, the news stopped being swayed towards a glitzy, studio based walk and talk Fox-lite and pulled itself back to the things that really mattered, and the things people really give a shit about. In short, natural distasters where we can help= yes. Celebrities who belong in Alright! mag flying in to said areas to pose with one armed orphans= no, thank you very much.