In Rod’s video there’s nothing going on that wasn’t going on in our own kitchen at the weekend, or the one before that. It rings true down to the choice of music: his pride in his family; his respect for his kids for being able to handle glassware at this late stage in the proceedings; his gratitude to Penny for being a generous mother/stepmum and for not being the sort of wife who has their husband on a zero sugar and alcohol diet. (Not that there’s anything wrong with keeping an eye on an old rocker’s’ health, but what we have here is arguably healthier: a complete absence of virtue signalling that makes you realise just how much of it there is about.) Boy are we bored of being told how normal the lives of the rich, famous and royal in name only are when we can see for ourselves they’re as normal as the Kardashians.
As of now the slightly sloshed washing-up scene is a mark of the celebrity we can respect.
Here are the other five tests of a celebrity Normal
The wardrobe malfunction
When Adele announced during ITV’s Audience with Adele that her tights were “baggy round the crotch” and she could hardly breathe in her Louis Vuitton gown, it didn’t matter whether it was true. She was speaking directly to the women in the audience, giving them the We’re All In This Together Babes wink. I might look like I’ve got it together, is Adele’s shtick, but I’m still a bit of a mess just like you. And we believe her.
The Normal with kids moment
Sophie Ellis-Bextor could equally win the prize for top celebrity trooper (she raised £1 million for Children in Need with her 24-hour danceathon), but we prefer to put her in the “fun mum” category. Having tuned in during lockdown for her Friday night kitchen discos, we ended up enjoying the kids, their silly costumes, the baby falling over, the one who wasn’t interested. SEB’s happy family management skills were as much of a draw as the music (this was lockdown) and there wasn’t a single faux-cute moment.
The Take Me As I Am moment
In the past we have had issues with Kate Winslet’s determination to come across as more down to earth than regular Normals (remember her saying she would be “disgusted” to find out she came from money when she signed up for Who Do You Think You Are?). But KW was thrillingly un-scrubbed up in Mare of Easttown – insisting her “bulgy bit of belly” was not edited out of a sex scene – and now scores pretty high on our keeping-it-real-o-meter (or at least not fake).
