September 2010 - "The real heroes I meet aren't famous at all"
Heroes are those people who
perform acts that are truly amazing, through bravery or simple
devotion. A true hero is selfless - a very different creature to 99
per cent of the celebrities I've come across. Yet 21st century
celebs are often heralded as heroes in these star-driven times. In
my experience, most celebrities are neither selfless nor heroic at
all - they're driven by their overblown egos. I believe a real
hero is driven by something else - the desire to serve.
And I think the heroes we choose to admire say a lot about us. Take my boyhood hero, footballer Johnny Haynes. He played for Fulham and captained England in the 1960s, and had tremendous vision and control. He dominated every game by creating openings for everyone else, so that others in the team could score goals and shine. I admired that as a boy, and I still do. As I've got older and more reflective, I like to think that is what I have tried to do for others - create openings, help them to shine.
You could argue, of course, that by creating and promoting these stars, I have played a part in our modern-day lauding of them. But our desire to make heroes out of celebrities was there a long time before I arrived on the scene. Wasn't Sinatra a hero to many? Yet he was as vulnerable and insecure as the rest of us. And in the early days of my career, I helped to promote a little-known band called The Beatles who were boys next door one day, gods the next. Because, even 50 years ago, the trend for worshipping celebrity was there.
As humans, we need to have someone to look up to. And the dawn of television during the 60s - and then video and the internet since then - has made it very easy to worship celebs, because they were suddenly so accessible.
And yet, the real, modern heroes that I meet aren't famous at all. They're the people that I come across through my charity work with Children's Hospices UK (CHUK), The Royal Marsden Hospital and the Rhys Daniels Trust - volunteers and families who care for others, even when there's nothing in it for them.
These are ordinary people who do extraordinary things - like the lady I met at the Pride of Britain Awards who had turned her neighbourhood around. It had been a dangerous place in which to live, and was rife with drugs and knife crime. But she had organised the local kids into playing football instead, and even managed to get local gang leaders involved. She was threatened for her work and she put herself at terrible risk, yet she kept on going because she simply wanted to make things better in her area. And eventually it worked - the neighbourhood cleaned itself up and local crime rates fell dramatically. People like her - they're the true heroes.
To read more of this article turn to page 32 of your September issue or please join
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