[ndnichols]

That's funny, I was just thinking, "I would love to be well-known enough one day that my switching employers would make the front page of HN."

I hear you, though. To me, it matters a lot what I think about the "celebrity." Christopher Hitchen's becoming an American citizen, for example, felt like news to me because he's a thoughtful, worldly person who presumably considered his decision. If Russell Brand became a citizen, though, I wouldn't care and would just presume it was for tax reasons, or a joke, or whatever.

Considering that I haven't heard of Tim Van Damme before, I'm inclined to agree with you and consider this gossip.

[rplacd]

Apropos of not too much that's healthy for discourse, but I'm inclined to give Russell Brand a token amount of redemption: he is, at the very least, articulate to a very finely sharpened "t" - that's the impression I've gotten from his writing in the Grauniad [1]; and while I'm not wading into the debate on whether he's simply just looking deeper into the usual tropes it indicates a broader awareness than a vox no-so-pop.

[1] Here's his version of the bog-standard "Thatcher's dead: this is what I remember of her years" sketch - he raises it from the dead by tossing the tread-lightlies around The Classes and makes it about what Thatcherite individualism meant for him as a prime target. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand...