Oh to be a celebrity.

Oh to be a celebrity.

Oh for the trials and tribulations of being a celebrity. How to explain the tragic death of reality TV star Caroline Flack? One day the host of ITV's Love Island next the appalling victim of a celebrity culture that can often be ruthless and uncompromising, a world where anybody in the public eye finds themselves exposed to the harsh glare of the media and social media camera. For those on the outside looking on it often has the feel of the cattle market where only the fittest survive. How cliched the world must seen to those who permanently put themselves up onto the parapet.

For Caroline Flack that world came crumbling down when the headlines portrayed her in quite the most brutal and damaging light. Accused rightly or wrongly of attacking her boyfriend, Flack found herself facing the full force of the judiciary when the slanderous accusations made life almost unbearable. The natural reactions are one of overwhelming sympathy and overflowing condolences to both her family and friends. The questions though may never cease.

Fifty two years ago the great but horribly tormented funnyman Tony Hancock committed suicide in a lonely Australian hotel bedroom. During the 1950s, in one of the most savage grillings by TV, a BBC interviewer in a popular Face to Face programme had relentlessly peppered Hancock with a series of awkward and embarrassing questions designed to leave the helpless comedian with nowhere to go. Hancock spent the whole interview smoking heavily, nervously shifting from side to side and then surrendering  himself to another barrage of interrogation.

But this was trial by TV, a seemingly cruel exposure of the cult of celebrity, a world inhabited by reality TV wannabes who seek instant gratification and  heartfelt approval wherever they go. Theirs is a world of transient fame, a world where front cover pictures on constantly inquisitive gossip magazines can so frequently lead to the kind of tragedy that led to Caroline Flack's death.

It would be unfair though to point the finger of blame at the illustrious likes of British gossip mags such as OK and Hello since theirs is an agenda that could be considered completely at odds with such sleazy revelations. Flack was simply in the wrong place, the wrong mindset and the wrong circumstances. What we have here is simply a case of a bright woman with a considerable talent who fell dramatically into the blackest of holes because the whispers and the unending scrutiny of her private life became too much for her.

Examples of the downfall and decline of the celebrity are both innumerable and sobering. Towards the end of the 1980s the openly gay and effeminate comedian Kenneth Williams also took his life when the media lens was firmly focused on him. Williams of course was a comic genius, a man with a joyously eloquent turn of phrase, a man with a passionate love of saucy innuendo and a continuous repertoire of showbiz stories from Second World War anecdotes to those richly intelligent gags. But when Williams was on his own and the dressing room seemed such a painfully isolated place to be, Williams would become a loner, recluse, an introspective doubter who never thought he was good enough.

Eventually Williams woke up one day and found that for all of his vast comic gifts, the world was still hostile and viciously vitriolic. The diaries may have been written and his place in TV and radio history had been assured. He may have been surrounded by those who genuinely cared and loved him for who he was, but Williams was the perfectionist, self critical and unreasonably demanding of himself.

And so it is that we return to the case of Caroline Flack. In the cold light of day it still feels as though the world has been deprived of a decent woman just trying to get on with the every day business of life. Her crime it seems was to listen to the sniping critics. In an age where everybody from the Royal Family to our inimitable politicians are always on the verge of a media meltdown, it may be advisable to remember how volatile and dysfunctional the world of celebrity can be. Sadly, none of us will ever know what was going through the mind of Caroline Flack. And perhaps that's the terrible pity.