Yet as humanity becomes ever more trivial, cruel and self-loathing, the urge to ridicule celebrities bulges. If celebrity is Catholicism for the third millennium, Nigel Dempster is surely His Holiness the Pope, or at least a dirty-minded priest.Today, even broadsheets put Posh Spice's knickers on the news pages, while section editors intermittently shout: "We want knockers!" at the picture desk. So the diarist, usually an ambitious, scruffy lad or a corseted girl wearing too much lipstick and a desperate expression, is on the front line of reportage. We inhabit the blurry world of the photographic party pages at the back of Harpers & Queen; we ravenously seek out trivia; we fall, rampantly, on freebies; our friends (if we have any left) are envious because we have met Brad Pitt.The greatest trial of the diarist beyond self-forgiveness, remembering your pencil, forging expenses plausibly and evading alcoholism is the lecherous celebrity Reader, a Labour peer once licked yes, licked me. During an interview at the parliamentary palace of varieties Michael Ancram plays the guitar very well, actually my hand was kissed, and I momentarily sensed a tongue creeping up between the Biro stains.
That the particular tongue had been instrumental in the foundation of the European Union brought no comfort. A royal duke once stared, utterly unabashed, long and lustfully, down my cleavage I have had telephone sex with a celebrity chef I have beaten off a Max Clifford impersonator. Damien Hirst said, "Do you like filthy, coked-out sex?" to me; Des Lynam told me to "always be a good girl".At such moments of crisis, it is easy to perceive one's treasured career as merely giving old men a final thrill on the way to the grave. Would Charlotte Bront?r Jane Austen have endured ancient buffers lingeringly pinching their bums in the clubs of Pall Mall for £45? I sense they would have preferred marriage to Karenin, incarceration in the workhouse, or consumption. Despite the pleas of one fabulously sleazy editor, I have never slept with a celebrity to get a story Yet my femininity is, for now, an asset.
Sheikh Omar Bakri, a London-based Islamic fundamentalist wary of the press, revealed that his favourite chocolate bar is a Galaxy Ripple and his preferred crisps are cheese and onion only because I am superficially small and unthreatening.The second affliction of the diarist is the haughty celebrity. An example: "Miss Collins, did you enjoy making this film?""Yes.""Is there any incident from filming you particularly recall?""No."Or, "Miss Greer, may I have a word with you?""I have my own newspaper column," the legend spat, and retreated, leaving me mouthing, "How can an iconic feminist be so dismissive of another woman in public?" Loudly, I learn.I happily bounced up to Tracey Emin at an awards ceremony "Stop being so fucking sycophantic," she shrieked. After I had apologised profusely for my unctuous toadying, she told me she had adopted a baby turtle called Tracey Emin. "I couldn't think of another name," the human Emin explained.I innocently asked the historian Andrew Roberts for a word at his own book launch "I won't speak to you," he said. "Your newspaper calls me 'Pinkie'." "I'm sure they meant 'eminent modernist'," I pleaded, but he was gone.The third scourge is the humourless celebrity.
