Microscopic fish in a small pond

PresentTense:If you watched the Meteor awards, broadcast on RTÉ2 on Sunday night, you might have seen that one prize was announced by a pleasant woman by the name of Nadia Cameron-Blakey. You may also have noticed that she was introduced as a former Bond girl and star of Batman Begins.

That information might have caused the briefest of queries to flutter across your mind, as your subconscious flared momentarily in answer to the question: Nadia Cameron-Who? Only for that to fade, and be replaced once again by the forlorn wish that the audience would stop screaming mindlessly for every nominee.

Thankfully, at least one viewer held onto his curiosity. Blogger and 2FM DJ Rick O'Shea went to the bother of looking Nadia Cameron-Blakey up on the Internet Movie Database.

Bond girl? She is listed as 39th in the cast list of Tomorrow Never Dies.

This is just under "Staff Officer #2", and perilously close to the person who was the voice of James Bond's talking car.

Star of Batman Begins? She played the not-entirely-pivotal part of "Additional Restaurant Guest #1". Her credit comes 13 places below "African Boy in Rags".

The thing is, it's likely that hardly anyone at the Meteors or watching on the box was too bothered. In the dimly lit world of Irish celebrity, anyone above non-speaking extra has the star wattage to shine like a really angry supernova.

This is Ireland. Where VIP Magazine's title is a cheerfully ironic joke not always shared by its cover stars. Where Lorraine Keane earned her celebrity largely by telling you that you were going to be in that traffic jam for hours yet. Where the standard of "star" can be gauged by how many weathermen are in the running for our TV Personality of the Year award.

This year there were two.

The winner will have been announced at last night's Iftas, meaning that this morning - and for the rest of the weekend - you'll open your newspapers to be greeted by pictures and backstage gossip about "stars" and "legends".

Even if the event's collective star power would hardly be enough to light a single spotlight at the Oscars.

When a small national awards ceremony apes the bona fide glamour of ceremonies in London and Hollywood it can't help but carry an unmistakable sense of silliness. Any local actor who turns up is greeted as a "screen legend". And any foreign actor who happens to be filming here is grabbed, tagged as a "Hollywood star" and publicised as proof of the all-round greatnesss of the event. This year, Lara Flynn Boyle had that honour. She's probably been at more star-studded christenings.

There has been much fretting in the UK of late over how "stars" just aren't what they used to be: that no talent is required; that it takes nothing but a failed appearance on a failing reality TV show to become famous. They should come here. At least in the UK there is the occasional chance that a C-lister turning up on a celebrity reality TV show might have at one point worked their way up the alphabet from Z- to A-list. In Ireland, we're lucky if they've ever made it as far as the lower vowels.

But because our media is as voracious as any other country's for celebrity, there's a need to pretend that it's otherwise. Any minor personality is described as a celebrity, any minor celebrity a star. And the ladder is not only easy to get on, but almost impossible to fall off. A minor actor who appeared in a big movie 20 years ago is still considered worthy of a major newspaper profile. The ex-fiancée of a genuine global star becomes a Sunday newspaper fixation. When you become something in Ireland, you stay something. We can't be picky.

Becoming something in Britain is even more impressive. And if you slide down that list, there will always be a place for you on the pages of the tabloids here. Nothing speaks more of our parochiality than how the only thing better than making it on Irish television is failing on British television.

Yet, it could be worse. We do not quite have the utter desperation of Northern Ireland, where passing soap stars are feted like minor deities.

Where May McFettridge is the closest thing they have to Madonna. Gerry Kelly was also up for last night's TV personality gong. There's a man who has spent a career doing his professional and dignified best to pretend that the person he's interviewing is actually interesting on some level other than as an example of just how uninteresting you can be and still be booked on a Northern Irish chat show.

But the South cannot afford to act superior. This week, a model's love life spilled off the Sunday pages and onto Liveline. Irish models used to stick to fulfilling their role of appearing in ridiculously-themed photoshoots; now they exemplify an exaggerated need for "celebrity".

So, in a media hungry for celebrity, every detail of their lives is expected to be of endless fascination to readers - even if you previously wouldn't have recognised the model if she were standing beside a junior health minister dressed as a giant lettuce.