The best discussion I've ever read about what it feels like to be famous

This came out a while ago, long enough ago that I can't remember exactly where I saw it (supergee, maybe?). I've been referring to it a lot in conversation recently, and I thought it would be good to have a link to it.

Stephen Fry is a British novelist, essayist, and actor; he was part of the comedy generation which gave also us Rick Mayall, Hugh Laurie, and Rowan Atkinson; was a regular in two of the four seasons of Blackadder; and had eponymous roles in the film Wilde and the BBC Jeeves and Wooster, as well as a very nice turn in V for Vendetta, and many other smaller roles. I'd say he's roughly as famous in the UK as, oh, Richard Dreyfuss is here in the US, now--more than Paul Giamatti, less than Will Smith. He maintains a blog at stephenfry.com. Back in 2007, he posted an essay, "Let Fame", which is the most credible, most evocative description I've ever seen of the day-to-day sensation of being "famous"--as in, famous enough that people will come up to him on the street and introduce themselves. This is the irreducible nut:

Of course, it cuts both ways, plenty of members of the public don’t seem to have the imagination to understand what it’s like to be approached. As with all such social interactions therefore, a little from each is what’s required.

[...]

It’s not about being rude and one of the reasons you’d do the same is SCALE. Scale matters. If you’re accosted on average once a week, it’s charming. You can give a little time to the one who stopped you, be delighted by their knowing who you are and the whole thing can be a most pleasant and mutually satisfying interchange. If you are stopped every ten minutes then it’s a whole different deal. You keep your head down, pretend to be on the phone, wear dark glasses and generally hope to pass unnoticed. Or you get someone else to do your shopping, tube travelling and general street-using for you, sitting in the back of a Lexus most days and never interacting with the rest of the human race except when surrounded by burly security men who place their palms in the faces of anyone who dares to come near. Which is sad and can engender the reputation of being standoffish, grand and all the rest of it, but if the alternative is not being able to move around very easily, who can blame those afflicted with that level of fame? It’s the same with letters. Twenty to fifty a week you can just about keep on top of, reply to personally, strike up friendships, establish cordial relationships and so forth. Ten times that amount and rising and it’s all your secretary can do to filter the ones you might want to see from the ones that threaten to burn down your house and scratch your car. You’re the same person, no ruder, more off-hand or nonchalant than you were, but the scale alters how you can behave. The scale enforces a kind of distance that may be alien to your natural bonhomie.

but the details & elaborations are well worth reading in whole--especially in how ubiquitous computing (in the form of cell phone/cameras/recorders) has made the situation just like it was except more so.