Why buy what celebs tell us to?

I avoid the inferior Scottish and American stuff, but I’ll allow myself the odd glass of Bushmills Irish whiskey.

And it’s the very odd glass indeed. There’s a half-full bottle in a kitchen cupboard but I can’t remember the last time I drank any of it. It won’t have been this year. If whiskey had a use-by date it would long since have gone off.

I suppose you could say that I enjoy whiskey responsibly. However Bob Dylan is trying to persuade me to drink more of it.

He has just launched his own brand of whiskey called “Heaven’s Door”. The name of course comes from his 1973 hit Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door . Now he wants us to be knockin’ back Heaven’s Door.

It could be that Mr Dylan is onto a money-spinner - as if he needs to spin more money, on top of the cash he received for the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature.

For last year American whiskey became the UK’s fastest growing alcoholic drink. The Scotch varieties were in decline but sales of the US versions topped more than £1 billion for the first time.

It lowers him in my estimation. Bob Dylan is supposed to be a protest singer, and complained in his songs about the evils of consumerism, exploitation, capitalism and the inequality that inevitably comes with it.

Take The Ballad Of Hollis Brown . It tells of a poor farmer pushed into inescapable poverty, who shoots his starving family and then himself.

And it ends with the haunting lines: “There are seven people dead on a South Dakota farm. Somewhere in the distance there are seven new people born.”

Those lyrics would sit awkwardly with: “Still, I hope you’ll buy my whiskey.”

What also annoys me is this belief that we should want to eat, drink, drive, wear or buy anything because some famous person does.

Celebrity endorsements are another side of our hateful celebrity culture. Fame and celebrity have always existed, but it’s only in recent decades that they have had such a powerful influence on taste, morality and public opinion - and our spending.

I remember reading the back of Kellogg’s cereal boxes as a child when I should have been eating my breakfast, and being impressed by the royal coat of arms and the boast: “By appointment to Her Majesty The Queen”.

Did that mean, I wondered, that Prince Philip ate Coco Pops?

Still at least you might assume that the royals get the best groceries.

But why would you buy a variety of butter because Johnny Rotten endorses it or use a certain insurance company because Iggy Pop tells you to?

Perhaps Messr Rotten and Pop need the money, in which case you have to sympathise. The woman who sang: “You do the shake and vac and put the freshness back” must surely have needed it too.

I only hope she didn’t have children at school. They’d have been mercilessly teased and would never have forgiven her.

I’ll excuse those celebs who use their ad fees to do some good. Geneticist Prof Steve Jones used his to help fund his university department and George Clooney used his Nespresso fee to help Darfur.

Alan Sugar donated his fee from promoting National Savings to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital - as he told everyone.

But does any man believe that drinking Nespresso will make him more like George Clooney?

Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, to use her most recent surname, was back on TV this week extolling the virtues of L’Oreal shampoo.

“My hurr shaynes,” she declares, swinging it behind her. “It’s full of layfe.”

You can use the same stuff as much as you like, but it won’t leave you looking like her.

I suppose I’m a victim of celebrity endorsement myself. When I first discovered I needed glasses at the age of 19, I opted for a pair with round lenses, of the style once favoured by John Lennon.

Perhaps it wasn’t just records that the Beatles managed to sell. But I never supposed they would imbue me with his songwriting talents.

In recent weeks it’s been pleasing to dig out the sunglasses again.

Mine look a bit like Tom Cruise’s in Rain Man . I doubt whether they’ll increase my chances of marrying Nicole Kidman or Katie Holmes.