The last time Europe was stable and prosperous, had a single trading market and a single currency was nearly 2,000 years ago. The central government was in Rome and the common currency was the sestercius. It was a time of stability and prosperity, which is of course why the empire survived for so long. This time around Ireland is sharing in the af fluence and wealth of the new Europe.

The fall of the Roman Empire is one of the great enigmas of history. Edward Gibbon took ten volumes to come the conclusion eventually that it was precipitated by the advent of Christianity. The Italian historian Santo Mazzarino concluded that it was an enforced reversion to serfdom for the masses that made it inevitable, since their economic depri vation meant that they welcomed the barbarian invaders. Perhaps the only certainty is that empires, like a living organism, have an allotted span - from inception, to maturity, to senility. And it's in those latter stages of senility that we see most clearly the faults of youth, exaggerated and exacerbated, that are the symptoms, if not the causes , of its ultimate demise. Sometimes, for the sake of simplicity, we call it decadence.

In the luxurious stage of empire, when the conquests of territory have been made, when trade is protected and expanding, then the imperial society has money to spend and time to enjoy its benefits. Philosophy, literature, arts and hedonism flourish since the essentials of existence - security, food and shelter, are no longer a source of daily conc ern. The traditional religion that was the cement for the old, hard times, is abandoned and newer, more exciting ways of seeing the world are sought. Petronius, a Roman senator writing in the first century AD, casts a wonderfully cold and satirical eye over his contemporaries. In his 'Satyricon' he describes a sumptuous meal at the house of a rich merchant called Trimalchio, where each course not only delights the palate, but is in itself a piece of theatre. The dinner is the centre-piece of the Satyricon because it encapsulates much of what Petronius found unpalatable in the society of his day. The argument is straightforward: when food is no longer simply a necessity for survival and bec omes elevated to an art form, then society has become decadent.

It's worth looking at this point a little closer. What the individual who eats like this is saying in subtext is 'I'm really not hungry, I'm so far away from starvation, that I'll only eat if the food also amuses my palate, if it titillates my imagination and if it pleases my eye to look upon it.' You could call that a liberation from the daily gr ind of a simple peasant existence, and in a way it is a freedom, but it's a freedom that's based solely upon economic success and prosperity. It's the same freedom that allows us in the Western world to decide exactly what our diet will comprise. In most parts of the world today people don't have a choice of whether they will be vegetarians or not , they eat what little there is without any criterion other than its availability. Scarcity means that there are no choices.

The parallels between the Rome of Petronius and the Ireland of today are many. It was then that the government began to be augmented by a permanent civil service, that the great public works like aqueducts and new roads were built. There was a huge expansion in the housing market and building trade with rich Romans buying and building summer villa s in Capri, Terracina and Pompeii. Artists like sculptors, playwrights, painters, musicians, poets and actors found themselves in employment as an entertainment industry was born of disposable income. Jaded palates needed new and exciting stimuli and the excesses of the Circus were only one manifestation of keeping the boredom of comfort at bay. B ut whereas all these artists came from a long tradition - if not always as well paid - this was also the era of a new form of artistry; that of gastronomy. The great chefs of Imperial Rome were feted, lionised and turned into celebrities, almost on a par with the great charioteers. Rich families would try to poach them from others, so much at a pr emium were their skills. It was the very extent of the empire, which covered so many different societies and cultures from Scotland to Parthia, that allowed these cooks access to different traditions and enabled their creativity to fruit.

I won't labour the point, but that could almost be a description of the Ireland of today. Almost by pulling up on its own bootstraps, Ireland has come from a gastronomic tradition based on poverty of ingredients, to one where the shops have produce from all over the globe. It's not just television and mass media that have created this marketing ph enomenon, it's also the fact that now there is an interest in food as a lifestyle accessory. What you eat says as much about you as where you live, or the car that you drive. It's a statement of coming of age in a pan-European culture of sophistication and prosperity. Only in a society like this could Ireland ever have produced its own glossy Food and Wine magazine. We expect, and can find, strawberries throughout the year; we use olive oil and eat pasta; we are no longer strangers to Sushi; we are adventurous as never before in our eating habits. Dining out in restaurants is no longer a once a year treat confined to anniversaries and birthdays, but is a commonplace part of daily life. The new outward-looking Ireland is in this regard no different from any other European country, and now we have come into line with something else as well - we have celebrity chefs.

The celebrity chef can only exist where there's a demand for his services and today that demand exists. What we want now is not only good food, but the knowledge that this food is fashionable, that it carries with it a kudos that reflects on us; that somehow it will confer upon us, its consumers, some of its perceived sophistication. Planet Hollyw ood exploits this idea rather cleverly by making children believe that by going there and eating burgers, that somehow they have come into the ambit of celebrity. It's as though celebrity itself might be contagious, that their presence there alone is enough to touch the hem of greatness.

In a world where every day we are confronted with a myriad choices from the important to the trivial, the great gift of the celebrity chef is that we are spared another decision. It's already been made for us. The presumption is that celebrity can only be conferred upon the great, and that therefore its existence means that greatness must be prese nt as well. It means that we don't have to exercise our own judgement and trust it, we need only take a received opinion from the media's arbiters of taste and make it part of our own opinion set. When things change with an alarming rapidity, it's handy to have someone else keep us abreast of those changes and, if necessary, make a précis of them that keeps it simple.

The cult of celebrity is hardly new, but it's come to Ireland with a vengeance. It's so obvious a development that it's been spotted as another marketing opportunity and we're about to get our own celebrity-based magazine, VIP. It says a lot about a society in flux that we look in the most unlikely of places to find our mirrors. What we want to se e reflected is a new self-confidence and above all else, we need to find new icons to revere. When you look back thirty years and see the mainstays of what was held up to the populace as the great and the good - church, big business and politics - you realise how perceptions have changed. All three of these bodies corporate have been shown to be v enal and corrupt, and it has left a vacuum that is still to be filled. If these bodies have let us down where should we look now? The young can adulate boy bands and girl bands, but for the older among us where are the heroes? Perhaps someone who can show us how to be suave and cosmopolitan is as good an idol as any another. Re-defining your life- style is fast becoming the new religion.

A celebrity chef must be more than just a competent cook; a celebrity chef must be, above all else, a communicator. Television has become today's pulpit of authority and mastery of the medium is the key to turning a celebrity chef into an industry. Next time you're in a supermarket check out how many foodstuffs have the branding of a celebrity nam e. Without trying too hard I can list you Linda McCartney's veggie burgers, Paul Newman's tomato sauce, Darina Allen's ice-cream and Anton Mossiman's mayonnaise. What you're buying here isn't just a product, it's a lifestyle accessory that's branded and that says something about the refined tastes of the purchaser.

In America, where marketing opportunities tend to be exploited with a vigour that still surprises us, the simple addition of a celebrity name to a tomato sauce is now old hat. The Martha Stewart phenomenon shows us where it can lead. She doesn't just show Americans how to cook, but she shows them how to lay the table, how to choose the cutlery, ho w to make sure your dining room curtains won't brand you as a tasteless fool. Martha will invade your entire lifestyle and ensure that it has no unseemly bits to let you down. She can show you how to choose your friends, how to place them at table, how to make amusing conversation and how to master the social skills that have always eluded you. Al l you have to do is trust in her superior judgement as to what is tasteful, and then send in your cheque.

We have no Martha as yet, and it's possible that wilful Irish individualism will ensure that we never will, but now, as never before, we too have our own celebrity chefs. Perhaps they're not as vocal as some across the water, but they're there, and they're cooking. The first necessary ingredient is exposure. There are various routes to getting thi s - Paul Newman and Linda McCartney found fame in other spheres before turning their attention to food products - but for people whose background is food the answer has to be in the mass media. First you need a book. This is probably the easiest thing to arrange as the market for cookery books seems to have no saturation point. If the book somehow manages to get its head over the parapet and gets noticed amidst the thousands of others, perhaps a television show will follow. If that's successful then you can capitalise on that exposure and get into the endorsement market, where the real money is to be found.

It's a path that's becoming increasingly trodden. Darina Allen, the Rankins and Conrad Gallagher are all firmly set in the public eye as celebrity chefs - all of them have books published, and two have television shows as well. There are plenty of cooks around the country with as many skills and possibly more, but the route to celebrity is one tha t only a few can follow. Being a well-known chef in the industry, like Kevin Thornton or Patrick Guilbaud, isn't the same thing at all. Celebrity comes only with mass media exposure. Apart from anything else, it needs time. If you're busy building up a restaurant's reputation then you won't have time to take off for making TV shows or writing book s. And like any other investment of time it needs a pay-off. If it took you three months to write a book and it didn't sell, then you've not only lost your time, but the potential spin-offs as well.

So where does all this lead? The first effect of economic prosperity is more disposable income. It's that disposable income that fuels our fast changing society. People like to know that they're spending their money if not wisely, then at least stylishly. Every day some new food guide pops through my letterbox, so presumably someone somewhere has an insatiable appetite for finding out where precisely is the smart place to be seen eating. And it's the job of the manipulators of public perceptions to tell you exactly that. Wherever their client has opened a new eating house, then it's there that we are told all of Ireland's top celebrities like to eat. As a marketing ploy it must work, or it wouldn't be used so much, but can I really be the only one who asks himself 'Just because Bruce Springstein ate here on a recent visit, does that mean it's good?'

Fame and celebrity confer on their holder a kind of infallibility. It's why famous musicians when interviewed are asked for their political opinions as well as their musical ones. The opinions of the famous are there to be shared out amongst us, like manna. Easy as it is to assume that an opinion gathered this way needs no further thought or consi deration, perhaps the only certain way of finding a path through the labyrinth is through our own experience. It may be a little harder, but there's not a day that passes that I don't thank the fates for letting me live in such exciting times of change. The pace of change in Ireland shows no sign of abating, and I have to confess it's a roller-coa ster ride that still gives me a thrill.