Celebrity ‘politicians’ have just as much right to pontificate as real ones

It’s 1 January, 2026 and Home Secretary Benedict Cumberbatch, Foreign Secretary Michael Sheen and Environment Secretary Charlotte Church are congratulating themselves on bringing peace to the Middle East, rehousing all of the refugees and reversing climate change. International Development Secretary Chris Martin suggests celebrating a job well done with a song – any excuse, Chris! - and Health Secretary Jamie Oliver has whizzed up one of his pukka, low-GI traybakes. 2025 was a good year.

It could never happen, or could it? Celebrity and politics like to rub shoulders and, while an actor crossing from the red carpet to the Commons is still rare, stars using their profile to make political points is really not. When Marlon Brando sent the Native American actress Sacheen Littlefeather to decline his Oscar for him in 1973 (in protest at Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans) it was a rather eccentric act. Now if an actor doesn’t declaim on policy from the victory dais – or the closest platform - that’s considered odd, a dereliction of duty, almost. And because no-one ever really holds these imitation politicians to account, because they never actually have to win votes or deliver change, they tend to act like they have the answer to all of the world’s problems.

Should they just shut up? Nick Timothy, former Chief of Staff to Theresa May – he’s never appeared in Sherlock, but do read on - has written a bracing blog urging stars like Cumberbatch – who used his Hamlet curtain call to criticise the government’s response to the refugee crisis –Church, Martin and other “pompous, hypocritical, self-obsessed political celebrities” to “take a vow of silence.” Their ill-researched interjections lower the quality of political debate, he says, and do not “reflect the full complexity of the problems we face.”

Similarly, the Today Programme’s festive tradition of Guest Editors was criticised this week when the actor Michael Sheen used the platform to dismiss calls to divert some of the £12 billlion foreign aid budget to help those affected by the floods as a “false argument”. “I’m completely sick… of ideological agendas, using very real issues that affect ordinary people in this country and abroad, as a political football,” he said. At which a soggy nation wondered how a millionaire actor living in LA could be completely sick of anything.

It’s tempting to say that actors should stick to their lines and stop pontificating on politics. No-one likes to be lectured, especially not by a half-knowledgeable zillionaire ex-pat with an entourage. But then stars are constantly asked to share their views in interviews and to sign up as ambassadors for this or that, because people are interested in what they think. For good or bad, a two-minute speech from Sherlock can deliver a message further and faster than most political campaigns.

Does it matter? Arguably celebrities are just as in touch with the people as politicians who spend their lives in the lobby, many of them having glided there effortlessly from Eton and Oxbridge. People listen to the views of actors, just as they listen to parents, friends, colleagues, cab drivers, even journalists. We all get a view, we all get a vote and we can probably all work out who is really going to solve the world’s problems and who is just feeding us a line.

Time to frame your train tickets, they could soon become collectors’ items. Plans to make the railways “paperless” are under way, and in 2016 passengers will be able to travel carrying just the contactless bank card they used to pay for their tickets online, tapping them on barriers, as on the London Underground. Terrific news, and not before time.

While the buying of railway tickets has moved into the 21st century, embracing the internet and apps, the train station experience is still very last century. The euphoria of booking ahead online and getting a cheap deal is matched only by the deep despair of arriving on the concourse and finding a queue at the machine to pick up the ticket that snakes around Pret, Boots and Millie’s Cookies and back again. Then there is the fiddling around with the complex code, being fleeced for a top-price ticket if you turn up without a pre-booking, and, obviously, losing the return portion before you get the train home. The distinctive orange-and-green design will be missed, but some enterprising company probably already has plans for a retro range of coasters and cushions inspired by it. In the meantime, the journey to ticketless won’t be smooth,nor will it be cheap – so even as they disappear from our wallets, tickets will rise in price. Reassuring, I suppose, that some things never change.

How was your New Year’s Eve? If it was a little disappointing (of course it was) then consider this: it could have been a lot worse. You might, for example, have fallen for a certain soft drinks company’s attempt to kick off 2016 by going viral. “Got no one to kiss at midnight?” it asked on Twitter yesterday, before making the bleak suggestion that people should share a picture of themselves kissing a bottle of the drink on social media for a chance to win a crate of it “for a refreshing 2016”. If anyone found themselves slobbering over a bottle at midnight, I doubt it contained Summer Fruits cordial. If it did, then today should be the day they think long and hard about their life choices. For everyone else, here’s a new year’s resolution: For everyone else, here’s a new year’s resolution – let’s make 2016 the year everyone stops falling for viral marketing, stops doing big companies’ advertising for them, and maybe the silly stunts will go away for good.