One of the joys of living in our celebrity-obsessed world is that all events, some of them vital to the survival of mankind, are often commented on by movie stars. "What do you think of our finance minister's new budget?" one celebrity, whose claim to fame is the amount of clothes she doesn't wear in a song-and-dance sequence in a Bollywood film, was asked the other day.

"We have a finance minister?" she responded, shocked that no one had told her this before. Assured that such a gent did indeed exist, she wanted to know: "Why does he have a new budget? What was wrong with the old one?"

Then someone must have pointed out that she was wasting the public's time because this was what she finally said: "He has done a good job. It is not easy to get so many things right. Deficit financing is an interesting concept and I will tell you what I think about it as soon as I find out what it is."

Such a ringing endorsement keeps everybody happy - the finance minister, his critics, and especially the public at large.

Climate change, the experiments on sub-atomic particles at Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, cultural debates, media responsibility - there is no topic beyond (or beneath) the celebrity-of-the-moment. "I am all for climate change, experiments on sub-atomic particles at Cern, cultural debates and media responsibility," a starlet declared on Twitter recently - and was praised for her good sense.

There was a time - and I know such an admission screams of my age and bias - when pundits spoke out on areas of their punditry. So there would be an economist who tore the finance minister's budget, both old and new, to pieces or a scientist who gave us his insights into DNA match-making.

Such things would be considered quaint and old-fashioned now. The well-placed banality by a well-placed Bollywood star is all the rage.

India has exploded a nuclear device? What does Shahrukh Khan have to say about it? Sachin Tendulkar has made another century? Has Amitabh Bachchan responded to it? In the old days, philosophers argued over whether a tree falling in a forest without anyone there to see it could count as an event. Today's philosophers wonder if they exist unless a Bollywood star acknowledges them. Which is why you see a lot of philosophers in various forests trying to knock trees down and carry them to Bollywood star Amir Khan's house to be endorsed on his Twitter.

You might be a Nobel Prize winner or a cabinet minister but until you feature in a Twitter by a celeb, you do not exist. If you don't believe me, ask actor Salman Khan.