Celebrity Redemption

It's a cliché now that when celebs get caught with their hand in the cookie jar, or their nose in the sherbet, they go to rehab. (People like me, who can take stuff or leave it, outrage the prevailing orthodoxy with our refusal to make an addiction out of an amusement.) But sadly, just as all junkies are one atom of the same vast (dishonest, self-pitying, boring) entity – a bit like the Borg – so Reformed Characters are identically dull. From Kerry Katona to Will Self, from Russell Brand to Tara P-T, Not Doing Drugs becomes as central and boastful in their lives as Doing Drugs once was; they still can't bear not to be stage-centre, but now they expect respect for their abstinence rather than their indulgence.

Julie Burchill
Celebrity redemption is even more sickening than celebrity excess
The Independent, Thursday, 14 April 2011