"The most infamous was Billy Connolly with the National Lottery. I believe Camelot's sales have steadily increased since that stopped."Advertising agencies thought they could get round the growing disenchantment by recruiting real people and making them stars. Howard Brown, a clerk from the Sheldon branch of the Halifax, increased the building society's market share considerably when he was chosen to sing an adapted version of "Sex Bomb" by Tom Jones in an ad, inspiring imitations from companies like B&Q. But when Howard started to become a celebrity, familiar problems emerged.
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Half a century ago, the film actress Ethel Barrymore spread herself languorously across a billboard ad for air conditioning and revealed: "Nothing cools me off like a Carrier". "Our research shows a high level of apathy, disinterest and even scepticism towards these products," says Claire Hatcher, a senior market analyst.The occasional backlash is nothing new, of course. There are far more endorsements than there were five years ago but the proportion of shoppers buying them has not gone up. I think advertisers are going to become a lot more choosy."Sharon Osbourne has just become the face of Asda supermarkets for £7m, but Mintel research shows that a growing number of people think celebs sign such deals simply for the money That reduces the impact of the ads.
Meanwhile, Closer, the celebrity magazine that appears to hate celebs, has been a great success, selling 480,187 copies a week only two years after its launch. It outsells its fawning, old-fashioned cousin Hello! by miles, not least by printing embarrassing pictures of stars with spots and cellulite.Gone are the days when a famous name could expect adulation to greet her every sneeze. "The whole meaning of celebrity has changed in the past few years because of reality TV. Anyone can now go from being a nobody to endorsing a product and getting paid loads for it, and people are getting bored with that. Minnie Driver, actress-turned-chanteuse, launched her first album to a chorus of boos from the critics It is not in the charts.