DID normal people once go on Family Fortunes?

I was watching a documentary about TV quiz shows with my daughter, who was interested to see ‘normal’ families on the original format of the show, which ran from 1980 to 2002.

Aged four when it ended, she is accustomed to the ‘all star’ version, featuring celebrity families, which began in 2006.

“Wasn’t it boring?” she asked, with a disgruntled look.

Nowadays everything is about celebrity. We follow their every move – literally. We monitor their posts on Twitter and Facebook, taking an active interest in what they had for breakfast, how long they spent at the hair salon and what they are wearing for tonight’s party.

Kim Kardashian has 34.7 million followers on Instagram and more than 32 million Twitter followers. Katy Perry has more than 70million followers on Twitter – that’s almost five million more than the population of the UK.

It’s not surprising, then, that four in 10 people in Britain say they probably know more about celebrity families than their own.

Over half of the 2000 people interviewed in a survey knew nothing about their immediate family history. Sixty per cent couldn’t give their grandmother’s full name, yet almost a quarter could easily list the names of all David Beckham’s children.

More than half had no idea where their parents met and struggled to say when or where they got married, but three-quarters knew the name of Kerry Katona’s first husband.

Many people don’t know the dates of their siblings’ birthdays or their ages, yet many could reel off these facts about their favourite celebrities.

It’s as if celebrities have, for some people, taken the place of family. Genuine, caring, loving relationships are being replaced by semi-obsessive attachments to people we are unlikely to meet.

My youngest daughter follows a host of celebrities on Twitter, including Kim Kardashian, Ed Sheeran, Rita Ora and – disturbingly – most of the people from Made in Chelsea. For the purposes of this column I asked her what she hopes to learn from them, but received the usual “what’s it to you?” in return.

What also amazes me is that people find the time. I can barely keep track of my own life let alone involve myself with what Jennifer Lawrence or Justin Bieber is doing.