Being Wimbledon fortnight, it seems appropriate to eye up Bjorn Borg’s accounts. Well, rather the public underwear and fashion company that bears the legendary tennis player’s name. It is a successful business with profits of £10 million last year but 30 years after the greatest triumphs of the most famous sweatband in the game, it is hard to imagine that so many of us would be wearing anything bearing his name under our trousers.

Such is the 21st century, at least so far, that traditional brands have seen their power eaten away by celebrity — perhaps the category of people who best understand how to work the modern mass media. No doubt, 25 years from now, there will be a line of Andy Murray underwear, assuming he can match some of Borg’s, or even Fred Perry’s achievements.

There’s no shortage of celebrity around to talk about this week — the death of Michael Jackson has been accompanied by the biggest spike in sales for a deceased artist. An analysis of his posthumous sales shows total album sales rose from 10,000 in the week to June 21 to 422,000 in the seven days following. That one week represents two thirds of the entire catalogue album sales (635,000) that Jackson managed in all of 2007.

It is easy to dismiss the emotion following Jackson’s death as another outburst of mawkish, synthetic Diana-style grieving. But the intensity of these events, their meaning for ordinary people who might not spend too much time battling to get to grips with the latest bit of education policy, never mind whether it is worth “topslicing” the BBC licence fee, is very real.

So, with all this “celebonomics” in mind, perhaps there could be something to Simon Cowell’s plan to go into business with Sir Philip Green — even if, at first glance, the early excitement about the venture seems to be based on no more than the fact that two famous businessmen getting together, accompanied by a picture of them both topless sunning themselves somewhere near the exclusive Sandy Lane hotel in Barbados.

Here’s the bull case. The problem with the Cowell business at the moment is that it is too much based on, er, Cowell. His problem, as he readily admits, is that he is spending so much time on screen, with the X-Factor and American Idol in particular, that there is little time to develop the rest of the SyCo business, beyond the already considerable sums of cash that he generates from phone-ins relating to the shows and the royalties on the records sold by the acts that emerge.

What Sir Philip needs to do is get hold of some ideas from Simon Fuller, Cowell’s rival impresario, who controls the format rights to American Idol; Cowell is merely a fantastically well paid employee.

What Fuller does is take talent such as Andy Murray, and of course David Beckham, and sell them as brand sponsors, and occasionally as brand owners (think Beckham fragrances). That kind of thing is where Sir Philip ought to be looking — although it has to be conceded from a merchandise point of view that it is not obvious that the public are clamouring to wear Susan Boyle eau de cologne. Solving that problem might require Cowell to come up with some other celebrity-heavy television formats.

Amid all of this, the networks — ITV and Idol’s broadcaster Fox — look like hapless bystanders, except that they make so much money from advertising around the programmes. Fox is reckoned to have made $900 million (£550 million) from American Idol. As long as they get a share of the extras, it doesn’t matter too much if programme producers snaffle most of the rest.

ITV has historically been more constrained in its ability to jack up advertising rates for programmes such as Britain’s Got Talent but if complex restrictions are removed by the Competition Commission, you can be sure its income in that area will increase hugely.

All of which suggests that the trend to ever more celebrity-based brands is unlikely to go away. After all, ITV’s cash constraints mean that it is cutting back on drama, while secretly wishing it could run more £1 million-an-episode celebrity talent shows, which alongside sports, are what advertisers want. Even over at Wimbledon, having the roof on and letting matches run into the night, means more peak-time exposure for the likes of Andy Murray.

All the cash, in other words, is behind the television star machine. The challenge for any combination of Cowell and Green is to harness enough of it. Remember, too, that at some point Britain’s Got Talent will fade from popularity (think of Big Brother) and not every X Factor produces a talent as marketable as Leona Lewis.

In the age of tears for Michael Jackson and, of course, Bjorn Borg pants, there is consumer demand for any famous name — although, when one starts to think about it, that is enough to make one wonder when the next episode of Gardeners’ World is on.

dan.sabbagh@thetimes.co.uk

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