I had been invited to join a panel judging a literary prize. It was a serious opportunity for the writers who entered and had been created, like most literary prizes, to provide a publicity vehicle for the careers of those we judged the winners. Tired of meeting in offices and one another’s houses, we decided to have our final judges’ meeting in a traditional little French restaurant which happened, by coincidence, to be opposite the entrance to the hotel where I had spent a merry week with the reality show winner just a few months before.
Since one of our party was a regular at the restaurant we were given a table in the window. As the meal progressed and we debated the relative strengths of the competition entries, I noticed that people were gathering in the street outside the hotel.
As our discussion continued the crowd swelled and I saw that many of them knew each other and were carrying cameras. They were chatting amongst themselves with apparent casualness. Curious members of the public paused to see what was about to happen and it was beginning to be hard for the traffic to pass.
The moment Paris Hilton, the ‘It Girl’ of the day, stepped out of the hotel entrance the relatively tranquil scene boiled up as the photographers elbowed one another and the tourists out the way, clambering over the bonnets and roofs of parked cars in their attempts to snatch their pictures.
A few hours later, as I made my way home through Victoria Station, I saw the star’s face shining out from the front page of the evening paper. If only we could conjure up such feats of publicity for the young writers hoping that we were going to make them famous.