Greg Jenner, British self-styled 'public historian' and historical consultant to BBC's award winning series Horrible Histories, with nearly 100,000 followers on Twitter, could be termed a minor celebrity. In Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity, he says he thought he knew what celebrity was, "but trying to formally define it was like wrestling an octopus".

The many octopus arms of celebrity led Jenner to analyse celebrity's historical roots, concluding his overview in 1950 when TV and pop music created a plethora of celebrities. While he, therefore, avoids tackling the impact of the likes of the Kardashians, or the latest YouTube sensations, he reflects on the interlocked nature of celebrity, the media and the public.

He notes, "how we chart celebrity careers against our own ambitions; how we devour the gossip with a mix of ironic detachment and zealous emotional investment; and how useful it is as a social glue that binds us together in voyeuristic fascination". He is careful, however, to separate celebrity from fame and renown. Sir David Attenborough is omitted from comment, being termed "renowned".

Jenner writes, "Celebrities could be heroes or villains; warriors or murderers; brilliant talents, or fraudsters with a flair for fibbing; trendsetters, wilful provocateurs, or tragic victims marketed as freaks of nature ... But uniting them all is the shared origin point: since the early 1700s, celebrity has been one of the most emphatic driving forces in popular culture".

Jenner argues that popular celebrity culture only emerged with the increase of print outlets in the early 18th century. The first daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, was published in March 1702. Jenner begins with Tory clergyman Henry Sacheverell, who in 1709 caused widespread public reaction after delivering a sermon that attacked large parts of the church, and by implication the Whig government.

His speech sold over 100,000 copies and he went on a national speaking tour. Jenner says Sacheverell was "commercialised into a lucrative brand, his name and face appearing on plates, cards, fans, tobacco pipes, buttons, cards and even bread rolls".

Jenner then moves onto 1726 with Mary Toft, who convinced doctors, including the Royal physician, that she had given birth to rabbits and Clara, a 5,000lbs Indian rhino, who Jenner terms the biggest European celebrity of the 1740s. Clara became a fashion icon and inspired women to wear their hair gathered up in the front as a horn.

In 1759, the renowned courtesan Kitty Fisher fell off her horse, revealing, as was the norm, a lack of underwear. Jenner calls this "a tactically brilliant 'wardrobe malfunction' that saw her dominate the gossip sheets for months thereafter".

Jenner revels in illuminating now little-known celebrities such as Fisher and Sara Baartman, a South African Khoikhoi woman, publicised as the "Hottentot Venus" in the early 1800s. She may even have been the inspiration for Jan Austen's West Indian character Miss Lambe in Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon.

Jenner's thematic chapters make it difficult to follow the full careers of some of his main characters, such as Edmund Kean, the celebrated, notorious Shakespearean actor, and Gertrude Stein, the American avant-garde novelist, who strangely, but perhaps appropriately in Jenner's framework, is compared to "the modernist Miley Cyrus, minus the twerking".

Readers can see the Horrible Histories influence throughout, for example, Mick Jagger described as a "narrow-hipped, geriatric strut machine". The first celebrity couple with a compound name were the 21-year-old ballet dancer and nude model Cléo de Mérode, the alleged lover of 61-year-old Leopold II of Belgium. They became known as "Cleopold", leading Jenner to term them the "Brangelina" of the Belle Epoque.

The commercial nature of celebrity is well covered by Jenner in his chapter, "Show Me the Money". Babe Ruth promoted a brand of underpants, Mark Twain his own brand of tobacco and whisky, W. G. Grace lent his name to Coca water, an alleged medicinal stimulant, while Gertrude Stein lent her name to endorsing Ford cars. "The Fandom Menace" reveals that mass hysteria for celebrities existed well before the 20^th century, citing Lord Byron's female followers and Franz Liszt, who after the success of his 1824 tour of Britain saw fans fighting over his abandoned cigar butts and handkerchiefs.

Dead Famous is essentially a light-hearted and engaging exploration, full of one-liners and vivid anecdotes, of how celebrity developed over the centuries in public consciousness.