Rooney nuptials: Wedding of the century or mindless self-indulgence?

As a big fan of the British royal family with all its pomp and ceremony, I was naturally drawn to the “wedding of the century”, that of Wayne and Coleen Rooney. It’s the Italian Riviera, yachts and castle time as football upstages Hollywood with all the glitz and glamour of the fare.

Sportsmen and women from football to cricket are becoming major celebrities with ugly amounts of money being earned in terms of enormous pay packages and hefty endorsements. Think of the English Premier League, the Indian Premier League in cricket, and all the major American sports, and it’s just a mountain of money rolling in.

Yet, lest we forget, right now we have a global economic crisis, the United Nations warning of food shortages with prices continuing to soar, Sudan, Zimbabwe and any number of other conflicts, earthquakes in China, Burma half under water and so on and so forth.

A backdrop of doom and gloom set off against the lives of the rich and famous.

Which leaves roughly two main schools of thought.

The first believes that in the midst of all the hunger and strife on the planet right now, it is insensitive, if not reckless, for sportsmen and other celebrities to be earning this kind of money in the first place, and a total disgrace that they flaunt it on things like a wedding when so many people are starving and dying.

The second are those, including me, who believe that events such as this offer a light in the darkness and lift our spirits amid the struggle that day-to-day living brings. Something to enjoy while watching all the rest of the awful news that is our daily offering from umpteen news channels around the world.

If you are from those who are indifferent to it all, then you don’t constitute a school of thought. (If you are wondering why I make mention of this, I have a highly educated team of deep thinkers who leave comments on this site and I try to avoid leaving too many gaps for them).

In so far as the doom-and-gloom-no-time-for-frivolity merchants go, I’ll leave plenty of room in the comments section for them to set out the basis for life being too serious to have fun. Far be it for me to spoil their “fun”.

I would rather confirm why I believe that royalty and celebrities play a material role in uplifting us all. Why their presence enriches our lives and makes the rest almost bearable.

In terms of my own life, I spend a great deal of every day reading about, watching or listening to sport. Whether this is early morning, just after work, early evening or on the weekends, I am chasing up on football, rugby and cricket.

While I’m at the office or at home I’m always fighting with Man United or Sharks fans about their teams, or trading transfer information and the like. It is not only a great hobby but a way of life. If you take that away and leave a void that is work and sleep to meet the needs, then where does the drive to get up and go come from?

And if you take away from the vast earnings that drive sportsmen and women, which of them will be prepared to sacrifice the greater part of their youth following the strict discipline that is a modern sportsman’s lot.

It might look glamorous and fun from where you are sitting, but that leaves out the fact that training comprises the bulk of their existence, while going out and about is strictly regulated to avoid fatigue and, more often nowadays, getting into hot water which will hit the headlines the minute the paparazzi pick up on it.

By removing the incentives to achieve sporting greatness, you effectively kill off people’s desire to spend the time in getting there. This will in turn reduce sport back to the amateur days, which in these days of television, TV games and DVDs means the odd game of football in your backyard. Of course, without sport on television to encourage youngsters, most games will die out.

No great loss?

The same thing could apply to acting, writing or anything else. Why should people strive to achieve anything, with the slog that goes with that, if there are no great rewards?

And if there are great rewards but you cannot splash out and enjoy them, then that is tantamount to no rewards. The fact is that knowing that if we try harder, we may enjoy a better and more rewarding life is what drives us. Remove that and where are we?

(No, not communists)

This desire to do better for ourselves, which in turn may benefit humanity, is where part of the solution to the world’s problems lie. It is from people wanting more for themselves and their loved ones that the greater good may be served. Not by closing down everything that does not directly relate to solving some world crisis.

Anyway that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.

Not a word to the government (Mrs Traps) — she’ll want her channel back.