From now: possibly Amy

Globally she just did Miss Universe (which, outside the UK, is enormous and viewed by 100s of millions worldwide) .. and in the UK she's on the biggest reality TV show, central to the biggest story, and has more pieces printed about her than the rest of them put together

As far as the media's concerned: it's been Amy since day one - interestingly

Not Everyone - they could stand in front of me and I would not have a Clue - that Kian does come over as a nice bloke but I would not recognise a Westlife song nor do I have a clue if they are still going.

For me I had no clue who Alfonso was or what he did and the same goes for all the rest apart from Rebecca and Steve { and Matthew Wright when he was still in it }

I knew who David Emanuel was but only for that dress.

So as you can see I would be rubbish trying to list them - if you don't know them ' then you don't know them '

I'd never heard of Kian either, not being into boy band music the only person I know from them Irish boy bands is Ronan Keating

for the most famous in UK would be Steve, everyone over 40 knows him bar none, and that's about 30 million people

But, from your post, I have to assume you know a lot of people who do know who he is.

As an American, I've never heard of a single one of the British "celebrities." From my perspective, their fame doesn't really extend beyond the borders of the UK.

So ... who's more famous? I'd have to say Alfonso is. And that's not being big-headed, though I know the preconception is to always think that of Americans. His show has been airing continuously since the 1990s throughout the North American continent, in Spain, in the UK. And his connections to huge stars like Will Smith and Michael Jackson just can't be overlooked.

I've known Al for a long time due to his Carlton character. However I'm sure that there are a lot of people probably more than who know him as Carlton, knew him from this but ,like me didn't know that this was him. This was a very famous ad at the time.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po0jY4WvCIc




Totally agree. He could have been modest, but he was just telling the truth. Even though Rebecca won 4 Olympic gold medals or was it 3? unless you're into swimming or British, you wouldn't have a clue who she is.

Probably Alfonso or Kian would be known by most if you did an international poll. As for most of the others, its mostly down to your interests. If you don't watch Eastenders, you won't know Mo. If you love snooker you'll probably have heard of Steve Davis nomatter where you are in the world etc etc. I don't think Joey would do well internationally and his appeal is mostly with the younger generation. Would you know him if you didn't watch TOWIE?

So she has certainly appeared in one show once with the highest/second highest viewership of them all (I expect the Olympics is higher), but the discussion here's not really about by how many people they've been seen. Does appearing for one evening (I presume) as one of, what, 20 contestants probably introduced by your title rather than your name actually mean you are known to more people? I suspect that the fact is that more people know Rebecca, Steve, Kian, Al and even David on an international level, and Mo, Lucy, Matthew and even Joey on a national level.

I don't mean to be rude but just because a celeb isn't famous in the US doesn't mean their fame doesn't extend outside of the UK. Westlife were absolutely massive internationally, especially in Asia. Rebecca is also a huge name in swimming and I imaging a lot of Aussies and other competitive swimming countries will remember her from the Olympics. If we're talking about being famous for connections then I think David wins that hands down with the dress for the princess. Kian has also collaborated with very famous people (including American stars) and I'm sure there's others out there who have strong connections.

Regarding Alonso, I didn't actually recognise him from the off, I think he has a similar thing to Kian in which the thing they were part off is very very famous, but the general public may find it hard to pinpoint the individuals at first. If it's worldwide I'd probably stick him at #1 but it'd be very close between him, Kian, David & the sports stars.

Whichever way you look at it though I don't think Joey should have been at the front before the show started, he's pretty much the most famous now though along with Amy, which is quite ironic.

I'm pretty sure if you'd shown a picture of all the celebrities to 100 random people in street (or 'Pointless' style) prior to the show and asked for their full names Kian and Alfonso would have been near the bottom. I actually think Rebecca would have been the most recognised person, even Steve would be nearer top than bottom - someone like Joey is very famous within a certain age group but a majority of people would not have a clue who he is I think.

I don't agree with all the people who said Kian. Almost everyone, I should think, has heard of Westlife, but there is a big gap between that and naming all the members. It is actually relatively uncommon for every individual member of a band to be well known as a name: how many of us could name the non-Gallaghers in Oasis, or all of One Direction? Only big fans, I should think.

Surely it was other people who kept trying to push Joey up the list, not Joey himself?

It is barely watched in the UK, and unlikely that many of those 1 billion people could name Amy though.

From now, eh? You do have big hopes for her. The tabloids always have a fondness for the pretty model in IAC, but it rarely translates into big work. It is absurd to count on her becoming more famous than Rebecca, Steve or Lucy.

Yes, I agree with Rebecca. She got massive publicity over her olympic wins, and sadly got massive publicity again when Boyle kept laying into her. And I think she is the most likely to get what you might call new work out of this: she has said she is interested in sports tv, and there she is: likeable, pretty and articulate. Alfonso's problem is that his fame rests entirely on one show, and you either watched it or you didn't. I can see why some of them insisted that Joey is the most famous: he is the biggest celebrity, and the young ones did not realize that that is a quite different thing.

If you go by google hits its

Steve 290 million
David 63.7 million
Amy 31.8 million
Joey 29.3 million
Alfonso 10.4 million
Lucy 8.9 million
Kian 7.80 million
Rebecca 5.7 million

My point was not to make it seem that Amy is the best and or well known ; it was in response to the poster who thought that not many people watched the beauty pageants.

If you go by average google searches every month (worldwide) then the list is

Alfonso Ribeiro 110,000
Joey Essex 110,000
Steve Davis 22,200
Rebecca Adlington 22,200
Lucy Pargeter 14,800
Vincent Simone 12,100
Kian Egan 12,100
Matthew Wright 6,600
Laila Morse 5,400
Amy Willerton 3,600
Annabel Giles 1,600
David Emanuel 1,600

Monthly Google searches in the United Kingdom is

Joey Essex 90,500
Alfonso Ribeiro 14,800
Rebecca Adlington 14,800
Lucy Pargeter 12,100
Vincent Simone 9,900
Steve Davis 8,100
Matthew Wright 5,400
Laila Morse 4,400
Kian Egan 2,900
Amy Willerton 1,600
Annabel Giles 1,000
David Emanuel 880

Quite the opposite for me. Never heard of Kian, Alf, Lucy and Joey before this series started. But then, never watched Fresh Prince of Bel Air, never watched Emmerdale, never watched TOWIE and don't know anything about Westlife except that they were the Irish boy band that Ronan Keating wasn't in - but he did have something to do with them didn't he?

Don't know anything about Amy or the Italian dancing bloke either.

Steve and Rebecca were the only two who I really knew of. I knew who Annabel Giles, David Emanuel and Matthew Wright were - but wouldn't have been able to tell you what they looked like until I saw them on the TV programme a couple of weeks ago. And I recognised that old woman as being in Eastenders, but didn't know what her name was (either the actress or the part she plays in Eastenders).

jimmya1 - Your google 'hits' results. I think you search for the number of pages google find for each name. The results you show are confusing and Steve Davis if search just like that gives many results of pages not to do with him.

I use exact search (like search for "steve davis" ) and google says:

Joey Essex 4,810,000 results
Amy Willerton 2,270,000 results
Matthew Wright 1,150,000 results
Rebecca Adlington 1,040,000 results
Steve Davis 1,040,000 results
David Emanuel 731,000 results
Kian Egan 680,000
Alfonso Ribeiro 607,000 results
Annabel Giles 493,000 results
Vincent Simone 438,000 results
Lucy Pargeter 342,000 results
Laila Morse 304,000 results

Of course this is not so true if some people have popular names so more than one person has the name. Example - Steve Davis there is an artist, an Oxford professor, a reporter from Boston Herald.... I do not know which name is popular and which is not.

Twitter Followers

Joey Essex 2,286,077
Rebecca Adlington 378,809
Kian Egan 269,820
Amy Willerton 172,654
Lucy Pargeter 171,236
Alfonso Ribeiro 58,932
Steve Davis 57,951
Annabel Giles 10,898
Matthew Wright 7,977
David Emanuel 6,760
Laila Morse 5,639
Vincent Simone 1,203

To be fair the only ones I recognised on day one were

Kian
Mo
Steve
Rebecca

Id heard of but couldnt pick them out of a line up

David
Joey
Matthew

Never Heard Of

Alfonso
Lucy
Amy

This seems like a fair fair reflection of how I would expect it to be.


I'm surprised Al was so high up in the UK.

Well am not from the UK and had never heard of Joey. To be honest the only ones I "knew"were Carlton, Rebecca and I had watched Steve on telly.

Lucy? who is she?
Amy? just a girl who wants to be famous


On the other hand, I would not know Al's name. Only Carlton but that is also the case with Kian and Westlife. To b fair I would not even have recognized Kian so I do think Al is most famous.


O I also knew Vincent because I used to watch Strictly.

International Joey is not known at all.

Is that averaged over a period of years or just this month?

In a strange way a lot of Google 'hits' might mean that people don't know who you are and want to find out more about you. For instance I did google Alfonso but that was because I hadn't a clue who he was!

Completely unquantifiable and subjective.

It is just this month. You can get the number for each month before. For example in United Kingdom searches Alfonso Ribeiro had 60,500 in May 2013. For the whole world Alfonso had 301,000 in May 2013. Why this is high on this month I not know - maybe a new show of Fresh Prince of Bel Air show on TV.

For highest searches in United Kingdom in 2013 the result is different.

Joey Essex 165,000 (July 2013)
Alfonso Ribeiro 60,500 (May 2013)
Vincent Simone 49,500 December 2012)
Rebecca Adlington 40,500 (February 2013)
Lucy Pargeter 27,100 (October 2013)
Steve Davis 27,100 (May 2013)
Matthew Wright 8,100 (October 2013)
Laila Morse 8,100 (February & August 2013)
Kian Egan 6,600 (february 2013)
Amy Willerton 2,900 (February 2013)
Annabel Giles 2,400 (April 2013)
David Emanuel 1,300 (July 2013)