“Prince Charles regards himself as a ‘dissident working against the prevailing political consensus’, who scatters furious letters to ministers on contentious issues and denounces elected leaders of other countries…” The Guardian, 22nd February 2006 The dissident who would be King keeps hoping he’s the real thing, but angry letters from an ivory tower are a far cry from wielding actual power. He may see himself as the Dalai Lama but he lives the high life in a diorama, merely a puppet on the political stage, desperate to break free, to come of age. The dissident born of a line of…

Madonna is believed to have injured herself recently by exercising too much and by contorting herself into unusual positions during dance routines. Take me to my exercise chamber and work me ‘til I’m muscle, skin and bone. Fitness is essential, so don’t be reverential just work me ‘til I’m less than seven stone. Push me through a punishing regime and feed me liquid meals from tiny cans. Food is an addiction, extra weight a dereliction of duty to the cameras and my fans. Take me to my exercise chamber and push me if I start to flag or groan. Work…

Gordon Brown’s leadership song. There’s no reason to be skittish about taking pride in being British. The Empire may be over, but we’re great We’ve faced up to global terror so let me be your standard bearer. I’ll even stop the trains from running late. I want to be your Prime Minister, not the saturnine and sinister chancellor on the fringes of true power. I want to take the reins at number 10 get Labour back on track again and stop the world from thinking that I’m dour. I may be prim and slightly lacking the brutal edge needed when…

Arsenal defender Sol Campbell recently escaped the media storm surrounding him by disappearing to less than glamorous Belgium. I’m going to Belgium to hide from the press. My career is failing, I’m deeply depressed and I don’t want paparazzi camped by my door. So I’m off to Belgium, a place they’ll abhor. I’d initially thought of the Costa del Sol but I knew that the press would just have a ball and then pay for their binges with snaps of my face looking haggard and lonely and quite out of place. A few days in Brussels should give me the…

Britney Spears has been attacked by drunks at a stag party in LA. “They were obviously very drunk and jealous of her success. They were yelling, ‘Give us some of your money’ and lunging at her,” an onlooker said. It comes down to nothing but cash in the end, this bitter success, this absence of friends. It comes to the point where you can’t walk alone without being seen as a walking Dow Jones and the world and it’s wife are jealous as hell of a pop star whose bank account swells and swells. They don’t see a person behind…

Psalm 6 from The Book of Common Celebrity Prayer. I want to be a prophet for the new millennium. I want to be the voice of superstar chic. I want to be the greatest, the coolest, the latest. I want cameras in the toilets when I take a leak. I want to inspire celebrity fatwahs. I want wars in the press every week. I want bigwig pretenders to be ritually humiliated if they look like they’re about to turn the other cheek I want satirical cartoons to expose my foibles. I want to be a prophet, only stylishly dressed. I…

Words of warning for the Arctic Monkeys. You must get into the charts again, keep weaving that uncertain spell that put you for weeks at number one – number two next time would be hell – but you mustn’t get journalists cross by being too clever-by-half. Don’t make the second record too great or they’ll rip you apart for a laugh. You must get into the charts again, just with a second-rate album. Get high on drugs and free alcohol and stick the songs down with cow-gum. It won’t matter a damn if they’re bad as long as the hype…

for Chantelle, winner of Celebrity Big Brother “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Eleanor Roosevelt By all means “live the dream” – whatever it is – just make sure it’s a beautiful one, that you control it, because dreams can be fickle inexplicable, cruel prone to be forgotten the moment reality asserts itself. And dreams will change you. “I don’t know how to change,” you say: be ready to disprove that, to be hammered into new shapes by the unforgiving glare of a million spotlight eyes waiting for the cracks to show. In…

Written after reading that Nicole Kidman is likely to return to Catholicism after a long dalliance with Scientology. If work is thin on the ground and your weight’s increasing, if booze is not helping and your accountant’s been fleecing you dry as a biscuit whilst your partner’s affair makes headline news – or even if Heat’s just been mocking your hair – then why not turn to religion? You could try Scientology, replace your psychiatrist with sci-fi theology. Or, like Madonna, you could toy with the Kabbalah. You could worship Woden and fight in Valhalla. If your career in the…