Imagine the following scenario. You have gone on a shopping trip to London or Manchester. You have found the street with all the designer shops and you are just admiring a set of exorbitantly priced outfits in one window, when out of the shop comes a woman you recognise. In fact, she looks extremely familiar. Your first thought is that it is someone you know: one of your big sister’s friends, a neighbour or a teacher at school. But none of these people would be able to afford several bags’ worth of clothes from the shop in question. And surely none of them would be accompanied by a personal chauffeur, who opens the rear door of the gleaming Jaguar parked nonchalantly on a double yellow line outside. As this familiar-looking woman gets into the car, you make brief eye contact, but she looks straight through you, as if she has never seen you before in her life.
This is because she has never seen you before. But you have seen her face hundreds of times — on television, on DVD, in magazines, newspapers and on websites. In fact, you have probably seen and studied the contours of her face more times than those of the people who live in the house next-door to you. As the car drives away, you realise who it is: a famous singer, whose recent single topped the download chart. In fact, you know more about her than just her face. She recently split with her long-term boyfriend...or at least that is what it said in the magazine article you read. Apparently, she has been having problems with alcohol too. Actually, come to that, you probably know more about her than you know about your neighbours. But until that brief glance, you have never come face to face with her before, and you will probably never do so again.
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