Jennifer Horgan: Our 'relationships' with celebrities are weird — we don't know them 

Celebrities are not close friends. Their woes are not ours to manage. It’s time our attention, our emotional energy, turned away from them to our own personal friends, writes Jennifer Horgan

(Left to right) Taylor Swift, Cillian Murphy, Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith, Domhnall Gleeson, and Lewis Capaldi with host Graham Norton last year. Graham Norton makes us feel like we know people we really, really don’t know at all. File picture: Matt Crossick/PA Media Assignments/PA

I’m not a celebrity. Get me out of here. Get me out of this weird concoction of a reality where I’m surrounded by celebrities pretending to be ordinary, and by ordinary people pretending celebrities are their friends. It’s unbearable.

I watched a 1990s Oscars red carpet reel recently. Jodie Foster, Daniel Day Lewis, Julia Roberts… they all shine like deities. Tom Hanks arrives with an adorable bed head, Morgan Freeman wrapped in purple. The music is jaunty – old Hollywood. Crowds wave; celebrities wave back from a curated distance. It’s showbiz, baby.