Amy Winehouse’s contemporary iconography (part self-created, part media-inflicted) encompassed, all at the same time, a drive toward an idealised image which would grant her immortality in name and a constant reminder of her frailty, her mortality in body.

“The more insecure I get, the bigger my beehive gets,” she was once quoted as saying. Her image, an archetypal representation of Rock ‘n’ Roll and all it encompasses, took her far away from the Amy of whom the papers are constantly reminding us – healthily full-figured, straight haired, blandly smiling. As it did so, it at once elevated her from being simply a talented girl to an icon, destined for some measure of immortality, and reminded us of the physical cost involved in the process: dangerous weight loss and a mournful expression. She was, on one level, a human sacrifice, her progress towards that sacrifice acted out through the medium of publicity.

I spoke yesterday to Tom Payne, the author of the seminal work Fame: from the Bronze Age to Britney which, truth be told, is a book I wish I’d written. Tom is an expert on the history of fame’s toxicity, on which he writes in the book but also in blogs for the Huffington Post and elsewhere, so I thought I’d ask him for his take on the affair.

He immediately brought up the historic link between fame and the inevitability of death. “James Fraser writes that very primitive peoples had no idea that death was inevitable, that they thought each death they witnessed was an unfortunate accident”, he says. “It follows that the realisation of death’s inevitability required some consolation”. He cites the example of Achilles (a kind of proto-James Dean in a skirt and sandals) as someone whose demand from his admirers was linked inextricably with an awareness that he wouldn’t long be around to satisfy that demand.

But this inevitability racket maybe takes away a little too much responsibility from the media and the public that drives it. Leo Braudy argues in his book The Frenzy of Renown (which I used as research tool for The Fame Formula) that, while fame has always existed, the changes in the mechanics of fame have morphed it into something much more dangerous than it once was.

Partly as a result of Reality TV, rolling media and all the other hyperactive platforms of the 21st century, and partly as a result of the general postmodern mindset, we’re increasingly aware of the process by which someone becomes famous. As a result, we’re increasingly conscious of the gap between image and reality, and the tensions therein. It surely follows that we feel increasingly able to take possession of that image and discard any personal effect or accountability. Where an historic figure like Alexander the Great was, in the eyes of his citizens, a seamless combination of brand and reality, a figure like Amy Winehouse was separately a brand and a person.

I’ve constantly stated that the life of the modern day celebrity, thanks to their highly visual ubiquity, is followed by their public as a soap opera narrative which is simultaneously idealised and throwaway. The life of a celebrity is highly stylised in the eyes of a public at once eager to absorb it and conscious of its emptiness, its ephemeral quality.

A series of clichéd motifs – the now de rigeur flower shrines which began at Diana’s funeral, for instance – colour and define these stories. These are reinforced on a practical level by the media looking for established means of obtaining their perfect photo op, but also on a different level by an audience seeking the familiarity of the stock images by which they define the celebrity narrative.

The notion of the ’27 club’ is a good example. What began as a shortcut to a catchy headline after the death of Jim Morrison has become a full-blown myth. The public have written it into their sought-after fiction. If there is an inevitability about the tragedy of fame, it is audience-created: the modern day famous person finds themselves publicly warped by a narrative set in stone before they were born. For the less robust mind, this is a recipe for disaster.

Though it comes from a somewhat biased position, there might be something to the Gaga comment. Fame and image has the potential to nurture the artist if it is carefully integrated with her personal reality. It is when we subscribe wholly to the artist’s brand as a concept and a narrative that we sign up to the shameful inevitability of death in art. We didn’t ‘kill the superstar’, but the way we thought of her also meant we weren’t really in a rush to help her out.

Read my book and understand that the causalities of fame are littered across the history of the genre. And be prepaed: until we help and support those snared in the trap that is modern fame, we can expect more victims.

Last year’s top-earning dead celebrities, according to Forbes magazine’s forthcoming report, are Elvis Presley, Charles M. Schulz, Heath Ledger, Albert Einstein, Aaron Spelling, Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel), John Lennon, Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, James Dean, and Marvin Gaye, who earned a combined $194 million in 2008.

It’s a revealing article, and it makes me think I may not have gone far enough with my predictions of the exploitations of dead stars that are to come.

To read my original blog, click here. To read the CNN report in full, click here.

Take Michael Jackson, whose death has seen the worst elements of him shorn away, with only the adulation left; there’s now a competition to design a fitting memorial for him. And of the entries, there’s not one but three suggestions to build a Jackson-shaped island off Dubai, next to the other man made islands. The proposals would, of course, all have theme-parks on them – a home for Neverland ranch, if the new owner feels the need to sell it.

It’s astonishingly gauche, but somehow hardly surprising. I half expect one of the entries to win and then we’ll be able to see a Jackson-shaped landmass from space. What an alien visitor would make of this is another question.

An alien visitor’s reaction to the relentless plundering of Jackson’s brand in the months since his death would make for interesting reading, too. The family started it, with Jackson’s father launching a record label in the wake of his son’s death. The only way from here is to plunder more, until all the contrary mystery that Jackson maintained is gone.

Not that you have to be dead for your brand to be plundered: licensing firm CKX Inc recently bought an 80% stake in the image rights to the great boxer Muhammed Ali, paying around $50 million to use his name, image and likeness of the boxing champ, as he was at the height of his powers, as they see fit. Ali retains 20% of himself in the deal (more, I suspect, than is actually left of the iconic boxing champion in him) as well as taking the money upfront, a shrewd deal for a man who was so badly damaged by boxing, one which guarantees his survival in the collective consciousness.

The same plunder is happening with all sorts of iconic figures of the 20th century, from Marilyn Monroe to Elvis to Che Guevara. Their images have been in use for years, generating awesome amounts of money for the license holders and for the estates of the dead stars, but it will be interesting to see where new technology takes their images – we’ve already seen Laurence Olivier resurrected for theatre and film, but as the technology advances, so will the scope for looting the brands of dead stars. Whole films carried by computer-generated versions of James Dean? A new romcom starring Elvis and Marilyn with a supporting role for Che? The possibilities are terrifyingly endless.

What fun the brand looters could have with Peter Mandelson, who stood up at the Labour conference the other day and completed his resurrection. As Quentin Letts pointed out in the Mail: “There were self-puncturing jokes, swishes of kitten claw and a series of exaggerated waist swivels, arm gesticulations and eye flashes worthy of a Michael Jackson impersonator.”

It leaves me wondering what we would be left with if Mandelson were to shuffle, untimely, off this mortal coil. Preserve him in aspic now and we would have the new, pantomime Machiavelli, the glamorous manipulator, the ultimate in Lazarene politician-kind.

Simply, he is the current brand apotheosis of this type of politics and the standing ovation he received at the Labour conference is as good as any baptism in waves of spin. Now he is free to fight his way to the leadership of the Labour party. I wonder which way the Sun would turn if he was in charge?

That said, I doubt anyone would consider building an island in his honour, should he pass on suddenly. A scale model of the Millennium Dome in a model village somewhere, perhaps, but that’s about it. Which is more than can be said for Gordon Brown, mind you, who, despite a rousing speech at the conference yesterday, has yet to shake off Steve Bell’s branding of him as a rain-cloud. His only hope for long-term brand management is his wife…