Stars in their Bed

EACH FRIDAY’S London Evening Standard newspaper hits the streets containing a free lifestyle supplement, much of which makes for grim but compelling reading. Like most magazines of its ilk, LES has little truck with the style of life most of us mere proles have had foisted upon us, preferring instead to cater for that rare breed of Londoner who regularly uses words like "proles" and thinks nothing of shelling out a combined total of £319 for an emetic red and white striped Paul Smith shirt and gray Jil Sander trousers, as modeled by some anonymous, grinning yahoo on the front cover of the most recent issue. £170 for a pair of trousers? In the blissfully untrendy world I inhabit, that’s three pairs of 501s, with a score left over for beer and peanuts.

While there are usually no shortage of genuinely well-written and occasionally witty delights on offer to readers tempted to delve between the covers of ES Magazine – this week an always-entertaining Nick Hornby interview and an article about bikini lines (forget the Brazilian go-faster stripe girls, the biggest news on the bush-whacking front is the Thumbprint) – LES is best known for its obsession with and slavish devotion to the cult of celebrity, and appears to employ an army of self-aggrandising social diarist and gossipmongers whose job it is to infiltrate assorted A-list launches, premieres and parties peopled by the kind of celebrities and patricians most Irish hacks could only dream of being ignored by.

Aided and abetted by a battery of paparazzi, their brief is simple: maintain the high profiles of all present by putting them in the papers, thereby keeping readers guessing as to what it is exactly that women like Lady Victoria Hervey, Meg Mathews and Jordan actually do for a living.

Once they have stepped past the rope, the scurvies stand in close proximity to and diligently record the veritable alphabet of assembled "talent" (A is for Appleton sisters, B is for Ball, C is for Cat, D is for Deeley, E is for Elizabeth Hurley, F is for Fatboy, G is for Goldie …), before leaving us with the distinct impression that everyone present got on so, eh, famously that they all repaired en masse to somebody’s Belgravia mansion to enjoy much filthier, kinkier and more acrobatic sex than mere mortals like us ever will.

For proof, if proof is needed, that this is not necessarily true, bear in mind that a very famous comedian of my acquaintance once told me of the time he bedded a famous British actress - then in the Top 5 of the famous FHM hot totty list - in the wake of one such celebrity soiree. Much to his annoyance, the thespian in question proved such a disappointment between the sheets that he spent the ensuing less-than-steamy romp fantasising that she was a particularly sexy check-out girl from his local branch of Sainsbury's. When I enquired why he didn’t just ask the Sainsbury’s check-out girl out on a date instead, he wistfully replied that he already had. She’d said no.

As someone who attended more than their fair share of Dublin ligs as a wet-behind-the-ears cub reporter with hotpress (before the novelty of getting drunk free of charge four nights a week quickly wore off) (After about eight years - Ed), I can only marvel at the stamina of these London guest-list staples who seem content to spend `every single night of their adult lives nibbling on canapés, guzzling wine and posing for photographs with each other. Actually, that’s not strictly true. As someone who attended more than their fair share of ligs in Dublin as a wet-behind-the-ears cub reporter with hotpress, I have a pretty good idea what the source of this stamina is and could probably steer you in the right direction if you wanted to buy a gram of it, but I digress.

Celebrity hob-nobbing might sound like fun, but for the freeloading journalist it’s depressing: lots of standing around telling people how great they are, observing how small people like Bono and Andrea Corr are in real life and being ignored by the event’s photographer, who seems to have decided you’re far too ugly and obscure to appear on the second last page of next month’s U magazine with your arm around some model-with-a-hectic-schedule you recognise from last week’s Sunday Independent.

When things get really bad, you find yourself looking towards the door over the shoulder of whoever’s been boring the arse of you for the last 20 minutes and the thought: "Oh excellent, here’s Olaf Tyaransen!" suddenly crosses your mind. It’s at that precise moment you know you’re in trouble because you’ve obviously gone a lig too far.

Just to be on the safe side, you move to London and stop getting invited to glitzy bashes because PR companies in England have no idea who you are and couldn’t care less whether or not their up market product gets "the mention" in a pervy Irish pop mag. So, while everyone else is out having fun, you’re left sitting at home staring wistfully at the social pages of LES, ruminating over how wonderful it would be to get invited to Chinawhite for the launch of a new brand of aftershave. After all, once you enter the forbidden city wearing an arresting Paul Smith/Jil Sander ensemble, you’re bound to end up mingling with people like Jamie Theakston and, and then picking up a famous British actress for some filthy, kinky acrobatic sex would be a mere formality.

In the meantime, you settle for struggling into your new 501s before nipping out to Sainsbury’s for a pint of milk and ogling the talent at the check-out.