‘People are just passive victims of media manipulation.’ Jean Baubrillard.

When I was six I had a friend who kissed her Mark Owen poster before she went to sleep every night. When Robbie left, along with the majority of females in the country she was inconsolable.

Personally I was never that fussed about Take That, I preferred East 17 and their lead singer Brian with his bad attitude and disregard for common courtesy. Then he went on TV drugged-up and was rude to David Seaman, who was goalkeeper for my favourite football team. After that I didn’t listen to my East 17 tape anymore.

At fourteen I got teased for liking Sum-41, a girl in my year informed me her eleven-year-old brother listened to them and I should grow-up. I ignored her advice.

At seventeen I had a life-size Spike off Buffy the Vampire poster on my bedroom door. This was firstly because he is definitely the hottest vampire and secondly I never got tired of people freaking out and thinking it was a real person.

Now as an adult I have outgrown cheesy boy bands and really despise football, but still love Sum-41 and regret that I no longer have my Spike poster. I have made up for this with glow-in-the-dark bats, a vampire girl poster by Victoria Frances and surrounding my bed with bat lights.

We are told who we should like through the media and we don’t even realise what’s going on. Everyone does it. I’m yet to meet anyone who hasn’t at some point had a crush on someone famous. They are idolised to a superior level and it’s easy to forget that they are still human. I’ve agreed to liking famous men before just so that people didn’t look at me odd when I declared that no, I didn’t fancy David Beckham. Although these days I’d just stay quiet and let them have crushes on men they don’t know. I do it too, I like Gerard Way off My Chemical Romance, especially when he has red hair .I’m also still recovering from Frank Carter’s transition from hard-core punk, tattooed genius, to wearing a suit, actually singing and switching from the craziest mosh-pits I’ve ever been in for a relaxed audience who threw pink balloons.

Celebrities break our hearts, influence the way we act and think and get inside our heads to such a degree we feel like we know them. After all we are all just victims of media manipulation.