STRANGE isn’t it how quickly we can make up our minds about someone – often someone we have never even met.

We do it all the time with celebrities.

We know the ones we love (Kate Middleton, Victoria Beckham), the ones we don’t (Peter Andre, Justin Bieber) and the ones we can’t stop peeking at even though we know we shouldn’t (Simon Cowell’s and his ‘hareem’).

The reason, of course, is the well-oiled PR machine which powers the world of celebrity.

Sometimes, however, a real-life person comes on to our radar and it’s difficult not to respond in the same way.

This week images of 19-year-old Melissa Reid and Michelle McCollum Connolly, aged 20, were beamed across our television sets after they were caught trying to smuggle £1.5m of cocaine out of Peru.

Their story took some time to break, but within hours we were treated to a never-ending stream of pictures of them dressed up to the nines.

All seemingly identical – peering out from under their false eyelashes, finger to lips, pouting for England – and presumably plundered from their Facebook accounts.

All pretty harmless, and certainly nothing every other teenage girl hasn’t taken, but they invited us to form an opinion of them. Were they vain? Materialistic? Hedonistic?

Who knows. I certainly don’t, but I confess these thoughts sprang to mind.

Posing for pictures is nothing new.

For generations we have had pictures taken at weddings and parties – when we’re looking our best.

But in recent years there seems to have been an obsession with taking photos of ourselves.

According to mobile phone company HTC, three quarters of 18 to 24-year-olds admit taking ‘selfies’ and we – as a nation – are responsible for 35 million of the things every month.

Harmless fun? Or a symptom of a vain, shallow, society that has become obsessed by looks? Time will tell.

In the meantime Ms Reid and McCollum Connolly languish in a Peruvian prison – the stuff nightmares are made of.

Forced at gun-point, coerced or lured by the chance of a meal ticket to a celebrity lifestyle, who knows.

What is sure though is that they were not the brains behind the outfit. They didn’t conjure up the plan themselves, and they probably don’t deserve to be punished for the rest of their lives.

Interestingly that same mobile phone survey found that 35 per cent of people who take ‘selfies’ later regret it.

Could it be that suddenly those pouts are for real?