Over many years as a journalist, writing for newspapers as well as authoring books, I’ve dealt with a sizeable number of celebs. And believe me, the majority are not exactly likeable. Well, no doubt their chums find them so, but their fame and money and ‘specialness’ tend to imbue them with haughtiness and self-importance, traits they bestow on those they regard as ‘the little people’. Their genial public personas are, I’ve often discovered, merely flimsy facades. The most shining exception to this general rule was Jilly Cooper, whose death at the age of 88 was just announced. I was deeply saddened to learn of it. We never met in person, and yet I feel I knew her well.

Writer of fabulous racy bestsellers, celeb with a heart of gold

Back in the 1990s I was still reasonably young and a newby to the often onerous demands made on Fleet Street journos, one of the most onerous being assigned the task of the ‘celebrity ring-round’. You are given the phone numbers of a wide range of public figures and must call them up out of........

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