WHO ARE THEY? The people who bought the Vera Lynn record and made it a number one hit. I'm 71 years old and I'm too young to remember Ms. Lynn in her heyday. Though she still featured on the radio in the days of my gilded youth, and sold records, she was to me and my coevals a relic of a bygone age. So who are these massed ranks of record buyers? When did they last buy a Vera Lynn record?
Are they the same people who were buying up Beatles records at some or other recent anniversary? Are they the same discriminating samplers of culture who hoovered up the Michael Jackson oeuvre after he slipped off the hook?

I bet they are.
And then there are the book sales. Apparently the biggest selling author in the country is Ms Katie Price, or the person who writes her books for her. Someone else provides plot and text and she provides her name. Who buys them? After buying do they read them? Or is it enough to possess the artefact, like people who never pray, don't believe in much, but have religious images about their living space?
Come to think of it, have the people who bought the Vera Lynn records listened to them?