Rooney Calling The World

The readers' editor on… Celebrities in a serious newspaper

, You will have noticed, is not immune to celebrity culture. While hardly drenched in photographs of film stars, models, footballers and TV personalities, the paper recognises that their presence provides some necessary light relief amid sometimes heavy politics, economics and foreign affairs. Mass media invented the idea of celebrity and no publication, however high-minded, can entirely resist the temptation to broaden its appeal in its desire to reach a wider audience.

You had to wait until page 15 for the first picture of a celebrity in the news section last week, unless you count the piece on page three on brilliant actor Mark Rylance, but I'm not sure he counts as truly glitzy. David Walliams and Matt Lucas definitely do, but they featured in a piece that was hardly celebratory: "Farewell and good riddance to Little Britain magazine.

The New Review and Sport sections deal in all manner of celebrity, of course, but that is the nature of their calling; they report on the day jobs of these individuals. True celebrity coverage, in the tabloid sense, is obsessed with them after hours: their love lives; their social lives; falling down stairs; falling out with each other. (See page eight of today's Review for a clever dissection of the celebrity holiday photograph.) Personally, I think the Observer 's decision to feature Wayne Rooney as its 'Crush of the Week'," wrote a reader recently, who rightly believes that "unthinking use of celebrities is lazy, patronising and cynical".

For those who missed it, Rooney appeared in the 12 June issue at the foot of an unsigned page called The Lust List, where the magazine details "Things we fancy this week". These curiosities can be anything from lip balm to jackets lined with coffee grounds. A small photograph of the footballer was accompanied by this text: "Crush of the Week – Wayne Rooney. By posting photos of his raw-hair-implanted head on Twitter, he leapt to the top of our 'would' list. It's like anti-vanity. We love it."

"This is a man who allegedly paid for sex while his wife was pregnant with their son," wrote the reader. "I was shocked and appalled when I read that Mr Rooney had "leapt to the top of [your] 'would list' and I would like an explanation as to what kind of message the Observer Magazine editor, who responded: "If we banished every unfaithful public figure from the magazine then we might have empty pages. But more pertinently, as a liberal paper we are not censorious.