EDINBURGH, Scotland – Reality TV turns nobodies into stars. Spoof Internet music videos garner millions of viewers.

Television executives and program makers faced up to an uncomfortable truth Saturday at the Edinburgh International Television Festival: In the age of interactive television and user-generated online content, just about anyone can be a star.

The phenomenon is especially pronounced in Britain, where the fiercely competitive tabloid press requires a constant supply of celebrities – A-list, B-list, C-list and below.

“We don’t really care how they became famous,” said Boyd Hilton, television editor of Heat, the country’s top celebrity magazine.

The rise of the instant star and the increasingly ephemeral nature of celebrity pose a challenge to television’s traditional measures of talent. So it’s no surprise that one of the most popular sessions at the Edinburgh festival was a panel discussion – titled “Don’t You Know Who I am?” – that examined the changing nature of celebrity.

Hundreds of producers and programmers from around the world, from Danish TV to Disney to the BBC, packed an auditorium to hear from panelists including Rebecca Loos – a “celebrity” famous for her alleged affair with soccer star David Beckham – and “Lottery Lout” Michael Carroll, a multimillion-dollar winner with big tattoos and an extensive criminal record.

The fame of Loos and Carroll clearly irked some “traditional” celebrities, who resented the success of people with no discernible talent.

“I think I got known to the public for having a talent,” said actress and singer Michelle Gayle, another panelist. “The things ‘celebrities’ are doing are not the things I want to do.”

Gayle said she despaired “when you’re speaking to kids and their ambition is to be a footballer’s wife.”

Loos – who garnered headlines, and a small fortune, when she sold the story of her alleged romance with the married Beckham – was unrepentant.

“My view is: You take from it what you can,” said Loos, who has appeared on several reality-TV shows and says she is now developing her own TV projects.

“It has given me opportunities, certain doors that are interesting … You have to take the good and the bad,” she said.

Psychologist Marisa Peer said there had been a fundamental change in the nature of celebrity.

“The public used to like iconic celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor that they could never be like … People now like celebrities who are like them,” she said.

Panelist Jeremy Beadle, a once-ubiquitous British game show host now rarely sighted on TV, had a warning for aspiring celebs: fame is fleeting.

“I don’t think the people who chase fame understand what it really is, because they will be crucified,” he said. This program should be called ‘Don’t You Know Who I Was?'”

An even greater challenge to TV and its notions of celebrity may come from technology. Video-sharing sites like YouTube and Google Video mean that homemade clips can be seen by millions, creating instant global phenomena.

“In this type of world, everyone is a celebrity,” Marissa Mayer, Google Inc.’s vice president of search products and user experience, told delegates during another session Saturday.

“You can thank us for it or not, but it does cause things like a David Hasselhoff video to be the biggest video in the world.”