Once the famous just fronted charity appeals. Now an increasing number are putting their weight behind political causes. Leo Benedictus investigates the rise of the celebrity activist
These are early days, of course, but it is possible Hugh Grant has changed the world. It was only at the last minute that his former partner, Jemima Khan, recruited him to write for The New Statesman, but now his article turning the tables on the phone hackers has created a sensation around the world, crashing the magazine's website, and being tweeted nearly 10,000 times.
What Grant did was not, in itself, extraordinary. Following a chance encounter with Paul McMullan, a former News of the World journalist and self-confessed phone-hacker, the actor arranged to visit him again in the pub he now owns. What McMullan did not realise was that Grant, himself a victim of the phone-hackers, planned to record their conversation secretly. Though mildly brave, this would not be an unusual day's work for most investigative journalists. Nor, as observers such as Roy Greenslade have pointed out, were all the revelations that Grant gleaned so very revelatory. Many of McMullan's allegations ? that Coulson and the Daily Mail were involved in phone-hacking, for example ? have been made before.
What was extraordinary about it was that Hugh Grant should be the man to do the showing. His involvement was no mere novelty. You would expect a seasoned hack like McMullan to be among the hardest people to make drop their guard, but he did. The reason, surely, was the sheer fantastical unlikeliness that Hugh Grant (Hugh Grant!) might have concealed a tape recorder somewhere on his person before driving down to Dover to entrap him.
We can relive this moment in the transcript. "You're not taping, are you?" McMullan asks at one point, after Grant has less-than-subtlety wedged Rebekah Brooks into the conversation. "No," Grant says, in what the transcript describes as a "slightly shrill voice". Among all the many embarrassments for McMullan, I'll bet that this is the one that makes him wince the hardest.
"Originally, I wanted Hugh to write a book review," Jemima Khan admits. "He was unforthcoming so I gave up. Then on the Monday before we went to press, I got a text from Hugh. 'OK. How many words do you want, you monumental pain in the arse?' And then as an afterthought he texted to say, 'Or what about I secretly tape McMullan instead?'"
With little time to spare, Khan acted. "Worried he would change his mind, I drove to the spy shop and bought two recording devices ? a pen and a Dictaphone ? and he set off for McMullan's pub in Kent an hour later. The Dictaphone was useless, but Hugh got his friend to pretend to be doing a crossword with the pen, and that recorded their entire conversation." While Khan had the interview transcribed, Grant wrote the accompanying piece himself.
His actions, and their ecstatic reception, are proof of something that has been growing for a few years. Celebrities who use direct methods to support causes are not the oddballs they used to be. For a long time the received wisdom, particularly for stars such as Grant, was that one's public image should be only slightly to the left of bland.
There have been exceptions ? Paul and Linda McCartney's animal rights work, or Sinead O'Connor's denunciation of the Catholic church ? but on the whole, the words of the legendary Hollywood publicist Pat Kingsley have been followed wisely. "Boring is good," she once said. "New information is usually controversial. I don't need that." (Tom Cruise sacked Kingsley in 2004, and went on to prove exactly how wise she was.)
But today, in Britain at least, it is now acceptable for famous people to get personally involved in causes that they care about. Thus we have seen Joanna Lumley's lobbying for the Gurkhas; Emma Thompson and Alistair McGowan buying land to block the third runway at Heathrow; Billy Nighy and Richard Curtis making a film to promote a Robin Hood Tax on banks; and right now you can also hear Philip Pullman and Zadie Smith campaign to save the libraries, or Patrick Stewart and Sam West lobby Downing Street to protect the arts.
In the alternative vote referendum, you will be able to choose between a team of Eddie Izzard, Colin Firth, Armando Iannucci and Stephen Fry, in favour, or James Cracknell, Rik Mayall, Lord Winston, David Gower and Peter Stringfellow, who are against.
More than mere endorsement, these causes call for mucking in and building networks. McGowan, for instance, who is a long-time supporter of Greenpeace, also instigated a "Green Screen" initiative in 2008, to improve the environmental record of the film industry, holding meetings with Ken Livingstone's advisers to develop it.
Some do succeed, but these can be costly stands to take. You can set yourself up for accusations of hypocrisy. "I was offered a big campaign about five years ago for a supermarket," says McGowan, by way of example. "I was very tempted. It was a lot of money. But I checked with Greenpeace, who said, 'They are the worst-performing supermarket, in environmental terms. We advise you not to push them, if you want to keep your green credentials.'"
Social media has also played a crucial part in increasing famous people's influence ? even if they do not use it. Pullman's emergence as a figurehead in the defence of libraries, for instance, came about quite fortuitously. "It still puzzles me," he admits, when I speak to him. "Some of the people who were concerned about the closure of Oxfordshire's libraries asked if I'd speak at a public meeting, and I said yes I would, because I feel strongly about this." This small event went viral, as a transcript of Pullman's words was linked more than 25,000 times on Facebook and Twitter. "I didn't think it was a particularly good speech," he says, bemused. "But suddenly people were quoting it."
Pullman comes from a tradition of social conscience, having marched to ban the bomb in his younger days. For him, speaking up for a cause is just a matter of being "a citizen". "I'm not conscious of using well-known-ness at all," he says. Nonetheless, it is being used ? by the campaigners who contacted him, and by the people who are interested to read his views online.
Besides its capacity to amplify a message, social media has also effected a more profound change in the relationship between celebrities and the public. Once, a fan of, say, David Beckham might have had a quarterly newsletter from his fanclub, and little else, to look forward to. Today, on Facebook, his 9 million followers can feel almost permanently connected to him by looking at the new photographs, messages and videos from him (or, ahem, from his assistant) uploaded almost daily.
Twitter has made an even bigger difference. Tweets grant unprecedented intimacy with the world's most famous people. After years of having their privacy invaded by others, famous people have started to invade it for themselves. In that sense, Hugh Grant has done in the New Statesman what Twitter is threatening to do to all news media: he has come here, and he has taken our jobs. Celebrities have become more human in their appearance; in their influence, ever more like gods.
If this seems to be overstating things, consider Stephen Fry. With 2.45 million followers, his tweets are now read by more people than the printed copies of the Times, the Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Guardian and the Independent combined. The guidelines on his website read like something you'd see stencilled on a reactor. "WARNING: When Stephen tweets a URL to a given website, up to 500,000 people will attempt to visit that website within one hour. Very few websites can manage that intense traffic ? There are three waves of capacity within that hour, with the 2nd wave of retweeting generally as strong as the first original Tweet."
It can be difficult to hold power without wielding it. This can go well or badly, but it does tend to increase the powerful person's sense of conscience. Or, among those like Khan (49,173 followers) whose conscience was already strong, it can become a hustings they find difficult to leave. Her first impressions, she once wrote, were that Twitter "seemed like a place that gave monomaniacs a Tannoy." Within a year, however, she became "a promiscuous twitterer", using it to spread news, jokes, and generally let off steam. "I would add that I use it to bring attention to issues that are important," she tells me, "but I'm aware that sounds revoltingly worthy."
Similarly, Josie Long (32,214 followers), a stand-up comedian who supports the UK Uncut movement, finds Twitter an essential forum for debate. "I do feel chuffed that I've got that many people on my Twitter, and I can disseminate things," she says. "I feel quite proud that I'm letting people know about protests and actions and things like that."
Long's politicisation, after the militant niceness of her early career, was not, she says, a result of becoming famous. But it was through her fame, and through talking about wanting to do something, that she came into contact with causes she now supports. "It was weird having a show which actually would offend and upset people, because I'm not used to that," she says. "It probably will lose me some fans, but I don't know what else to do, and I like to think the people who admire me will at least think I'm passionate and I'm trying to be honest."
Long is marvellously free of grandeur ? she conducts our interview on the bus. In the future of celebrity culture, this may more often be the way of things. Certainly, the most casually momentous aspect of Grant's article is how very down-to-earth he is. He begins it, for example, with the words: "When I broke down in my midlife crisis car in remotest Kent ?" Later, even as he defends his privacy against McMullan, he shows himself to be enchantingly relaxed about what other's might think of him, saying at one point, for example, "They [the public] don't give a shit [about my image]. I got arrested with a hooker and they still came to my films. They don't give a fuck about your public image."
To speak about his fans so brusquely, and to choose to publish it ? well, it does not feel like a very calculated risk. And in being so uncalculating, and willing to get his hands dirty, he has brought a surge of public attention to an important but convoluted story about tabloid journalism. Only a famous person could have done that. After all, it has never been enough to shed light on a subject. People also have to look.
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