On Saturday night the shy Scotswoman Susan Boyle sang her last song on the ITV show Britain’s Got Talent, and didn’t quite win. She was beaten by the street-dance group Diversity, and it was probably for the best. Not because of Miss Boyle’s alleged emotional “fragility”, ghoulishly talked up by observers in the past few days: to a dispassionate observer she was confident in performance and graceful in defeat. I was just glad because the dance ensemble of ten includes three sets of brothers, aged from 12 to 25. Their imminent fame, adulation, analysis and spiteful debunking will thus be nicely diluted, and the lads will have each other to come home to.

Maybe this time, the fame-dragon will be cheated of its human sacrifice, tamed and bridled and taught its place. Susan Boyle can continue to prosper in a lower wattage of spotlight. The most poignant moment of the evening came as she smilingly conceded to the dancers and — pressed for her feelings — looked out at the audience and said: “I’m among friends . . . am I not?”

The last three words cut deep. Those who feed off the apparent love of audiences always hope that they are among friends. But deep down, they doubt it. And there is real danger in a storm of applause and attention: it can wash the soul away unless it is anchored by the solidity of family and friends, who do not clap or adore but merely hug and gently mock. Ask any performer on a long, lonely tour, any famous author staggering from one reading to the next, any roving reporter or stand-up comic. Most will admit to tearful, lonely or drunken times in hotels and dressing-rooms where they wonder if anybody will ever want them again for themselves, not just their public shtick.

Of course, moderate doses of applause and recognition are necessary to artists. They need both the sense of public communication, and the money. Yet overdoses of fame can be lethal: they often douse the creative spark and drive the artist into noisy self-parody and consequent self-hate. In a way, the new phenomenon of empty celebrity unbacked by original talent is less destructive: any amount of fame can’t do much harm to the oeuvre of Piers Morgan or Paris Hilton.

I was musing on all this yesterday because I came back from the Hay Festival literary frenzy to news of the writer J. D. Salinger, who has lived as a recluse for 50 years. He is apparently consulting lawyers over a cheeky unauthorised sequel to his The Catcher in the Rye. The original teenage hero Holden Caulfield, who goes on the run from college, is now portrayed as a pensioner going on the run from his nursing home. It’s an amusing idea; but Salinger himself, at 91, seems unamused. He has spent half a century hiding from his public and impeding biographers; though reportedly writing, he has published nothing since his slim wonderful works of the Sixties. In 1974 he gave his last public comments in The New York Times, saying there is “marvellous peace in not publishing . . . all I’m doing is trying to protect myself and my view”.

I love Salinger — not the Catcher, which I find strangely annoying, but his short stories and Zen-mystical accounts of Franny and Zooey and Seymour and Buddy and Esmé and the rest. They enthralled me in my teens and fascinate me still. His rejection of everything “phoney” borders on the crazy but he manages to be, in both senses of the word, precious. And if he wants to lie low, fine. He has given us much, and may let us have the unpublished stuff when he goes. If he feels that publicity abrades his talent, he is right to protect it. Journalists naturally disagree: ten years ago a BBC documentary-maker doing a profile spoke in the language of rights: not his, but hers: “He is a professional author, he has made a great deal of money, and in doing that, he must recognise that giving some biographical information is part of the package that happens when you publish . . . we have a right to satisfy our curiosity”. A very modern belief, that.

Salinger is an extreme, slightly potty manifestation of the need for creative people to carve out and defend their own space, but he is worth contemplating in an age when the pitiless glare of celebrity can beat down on even the tenderest shoots of talent, shrivel them in its heat and then abruptly move on, leaving them blighted in chilly darkness. Of course, artists and performers need recognition, to validate the weary hours spent alone writing or practising; but the form in which it comes can be toxic, especially in an age of global celebrity and global spite.

The lucky ones rapidly get a name and income solid enough to ration public appearances to those they feel comfortable with (like John le Carré or Alan Bennett). Some bow out entirely (like Stanley Kubrick or the later Garbo). Lesser lights — even the best — more often feel compelled to answer every impertinent question, pose for photographs at home, answer the phone to Ross and Brand, and go on every TV show that asks them. Sometimes, that in itself becomes a separate career, invariably a far less creative one.

As for actors and singers, especially women, fame rapidly brings them to a stage when they daren’t walk the dog to the letter-box without full hairdressing and make-up. A few strong spirits (think Emma Thompson) ignore this and carry on as normal. More uncertain souls are bullied and crushed by it, then crushed again when the interest fades and nobody seems to care, and then humiliated a third time when nasty media snap them looking stout and dishevelled and crow “Whatever happened to . . .?” alongside an airbrushed glamour-shot from the past.

The trouble is that none of it feeds actual creative talent, or the steely courage of live performance. Yet in a commercial world, the roving spotlight pays the bills. And precisely because fame pays, people like that documentary-maker assume they have a “right” to slake their curiosity because the artist has “made a lot of money”. And round it goes.

And no, I have no idea what can be done about it. Except to advise anyone young who writes, sings, acts, or composes to be careful what they wish for. And to hang on very tight to their real friends.

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