Weekly News: Celebs Christmas Shopping

It’s that time of year. The streets are thronged with these people, spending money so fast their credit cards are a melted blur, with so many bags hooked over their arms that they’re waddling like the Michelin Man.

The celebs are shopping so hard in London this Christmas, I don’t believe anyone else can get to the tills.

And if an ordinary, unfamous, last-minute shopper does manage to squeeze through the doors of Selfridge’s, there probably won’t be anything left to buy anyway. Graham Norton has bought it all. I was having a cappuccino with my daughter, Nat, in the department store’s cafe when the Irish chat show host staggered past with a young male
friend and twelve shiny yellow bags.

I waved at him, but he shook his head. “If I sit down now,” he called out, “I’ll never get up again.”
“How are you going to get all those pressies under the tree?” I wanted to know.
He rolled his eyes. “How am I going to get them all in the taxi, even?”
“You see everybody in Selfridges,” I told Nat. She shrugged — when she’s between acting jobs she works on one of the counters in Harrods, and naturally Harrods people think Selfridges is the poor relation.
“Rod Stewart came right up to me yesterday, and just started a conversation,” she said. I scowled — Rod’s just become a father again, and he shouldn’t be flirting with girls in Harrods.
“What did he say to you,” I demanded, but the answer was a bit of an anti-climax... apparently he just wanted to find his way to the toy department.

I walked Nat back to the superstore, pointing out a poster of José Mourinho on the way. Harrods is in Chelsea country, even though the store’s owner, my friend Mo Al-Fayed, is the chairman of Fulham. Mourinho’s poster implied that he couldn’t manage the Premiership champions without his mobile phone. “That man was born to be a model,” I remarked.

Two minutes later, we saw him, browsing by the Rolexes. There’s no reason to imagine he wasn’t enjoying himself — who wouldn’t enjoy spending half a million of Roman’s roubles on a diamond-encrusted watch? — but his face wore the Saturnine sneer that television viewers know so well. He has what the commentators call a “brooding presence”. The young man on the counter looked as white as a goalie about to face a penalty from Frank Lampard.

I stopped into the bank before grabbing a taxi, and saw Ken Russell, the movie director who once made a film of my life. It’s called MindBender, and it’s vintage Russell, full of melting clocks and bizarre cuts to deserts and abandoned pianos. He was talking animatedly into his mobile, so I just waved. When I bumped into BBC weathergirl Sian Lloyd moments later, of course I stopped to natter, and it was about 20 minutes before I found a taxi.

Sian has become a good friend since we rehearsed together for Celebrity Stars In The Eyes. We chatted about the latest jungle extravaganza — she was as surprised as me that Carol Thatcher survived so well. Maybe a lifetime in journalism, with parents in big business and politics, is the closest thing to life in the wild. But neither of us was too shocked that David Dickinson had fared so badly. I said at the start of the series that it was a bad career move for him, and I still believe it.

Half an hour later I stepped out of a cab and almost walked into Ben Shepherd from GMTV. “Can’t stop,” he shouted, “Christmas shopping. You know what it’s like.”
I don’t, of course. I’m Jewish and we don’t do Christmas, even though it’s a tradition started by a Jew. (I’m not being irreligious, just stating a fact — and if you don’t believe me, ask Mel Gibson!)