In the Guardian Books Blog, Linda Jones has suggested that Steffi
McBride, whose rise to fame I have chronicled in The Overnight Fame of Steffi
McBride, is a "D-list" celebrity – but Steffi is an A-lister from head to toe,
as anyone who has seen her YouTube performance on the Steffi McBride
website can see with their own eyes. She makes daily appearances in everyone’s homes on The Towers soap
opera and on the covers of all our favourite newspapers and magazines; she won a
Bafta for goodness sake and had a Christmas number one – would Ms Jones call
Kylie "D-list"? 
Last week, an article in the Guardian cast aspersions on the celebrity of a book character, Steffi McBride's. Steffi's creator, Andrew Crofts, wasn't best pleased! Over to Andrew...
Just because Steffi has had so many lurid and revelational stories
written about and by her obviously dysfunctional friends and family, that should
not in any way reflect on her status in the celebrity listings. Having spent so much time with her myself I believe passionately that Ms
McBride is without question an icon of our times and the story of her rise to
fame is a fable of mythic proportions. She is a national treasure and I implore
people to visit her website, see her talking for themselves and make their own
judgements. So why, people ask me, did I decide to encourage Steffi to have her own
website, talk to the camera and put the result on YouTube, organise writing
competitions and a celebrity quiz and then to twitter and chat on Facebook? The
answer is simple – I thought it would be fun. A book like Steffi’s may have
serious lessons in it about how to become famous as well as heart-breaking
examples of some of the pains and perils that go along with being a much-loved
household name, but above all else I wanted the book to be enjoyable for
her to work on and enjoyable for readers to discover. The vast majority of people buy books that they have heard of through
“word-of-mouth”, but “electronic word-of mouth” vehicles like Trashionista are
an even more powerful way of spreading the message to the most important people;
the ones who want to know the truth about what it actually feels like to be
Steffi McBride. I wanted as many people as possible to hear about Steffi’s story as
quickly as possible – and that means I have to ask her to network in any way she
can – something, fortunately, that she is very good at. Look out for a competition to win copies of The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride - coming soon!
