Celebrity poverty, that's the hidden scandal in Blair's Britain. You can't help but worry for them. A girl I knew developed X-ray eyes for celebrity sorrows. She taught me to read the subtext of the down-market celebrity interview, she knew all the Hollywood codes, and followed the deep backgrounds.

London clubland divides itself between the St James's refuge for toffs, and the Conquest of Cool, for the arts and media.

This may sound insulting to some of my cult studies friends, but there's a lot of cult studies people who ignore, shall we say, the wider canvas - because they simply don't know about its existence or they don't know how it operates.

Advertising has always been a huge unrecognised source of outdoor relief for the arts.

Eponymous brands aren't that popular with analysts and investors now. You can only take an eponymous brand with a living figurehead so far, they argue. What happens when they grow old and die? What happens when they misbehave and go seriously off-brand?

If beauty isn't genius it usually signals at least a high level of animal cunning.

Kate Middleton's a pretty girl who sounds nice.