In writing for the public domain, I pride myself on resisting the urge to cheaply drop names for their own sake. As I said to Prince William this morning. He keeps stealing the sheets.

This week – brushes with the world of gossip reportage and tabloid newspapers. And it is A world. Not THE world. One story – entirely untrue, as it turns out – about a rock star apparently dating a person who once dated someone from the band Orlando. Described by The Sun as “a minor band”. Stop chuckling at the back. I’ll have you know I still get emails about Orlando lyrics from tender mixed-up souls in lands I’ve never been to.

And then a few days later I leaf through a tabloid in a café over breakfast, and see that a private event I was involved in has also been – incredibly – written about as a whole so-called story, just because it was attended by a few famous names.

My first thought on reading such stories is ‘Who on earth are their sources?’. Quickly replaced by ‘Why aren’t they writing about ME?’

I detest that whole world. And yet I want to be written about. Albeit on my own terms. And I suppose for that, one has to get a Good Agent. Well, it’s on the To Do list.

The stories in question were examples of a current media obsession. The seemingly desperate need to cover impossibly ordinary, even mundane events in the lives of those who happen to be famous. There exist – at a level seemingly exclusive to the English popular media – people whose entire income comes from the reporting of such ‘celebrity surveillance’ drivel, day in, day out.

It’s one thing to say to your friends in person or in correspondence, “Oh, we were at the same Finnish jazz concert as Eustace Thing from that famous band.” Even my mother, who brought me up to look down on tabloid newspapers (always reminding me of their single-figure reading age), happily mentioned the time she saw Dame Maggie Smith in the same restaurant the other day. But it’s another matter entirely to publicly report such utterly unedifying non-events. Or to make a living from their perpetuation. The only justification is if there’s a decent anecdote attached.

London Party Girl: Oh, guess what! We were at this club last night, and Samantha Morton was there!
Me: Aha. What did she say?
LPG: I don’t know. I didn’t speak to her or anything. She was just there. You’re meant to be impressed.
Me: Well, I’m not. That’s palpably not good enough for an anecdote. That’s only an illusion of an anecdote. A kind of Anecdote Vapour.
LPG: Well, tell that to Heat Magazine.

So, someone somewhere has given my mobile phone number to the News Of The World. It certainly wasn’t me.

I feel initially a little frightened, even violated. And then the fear gives way to drama-queen rants of narcissistic outrage. Why isn’t it ME they want to write about? How DARE they. Don’t they know who I AM? I’m not just ANYONE, you know. Despite what my therapist says. And so on.

My rule is, and I’d like to think this goes without saying, I’d never knowingly speak to a journalist about anyone other than myself. Unless it’s about the lives of dead authors. Partly because it’s grotesquely bad form, but mostly because I’d much rather talk entirely about myself. Or the life of E Nesbit. Or the brand new DVD that dropped through my letterbox that day: Patrick Keiller’s superb, unique films London and Robinson In Space. A typically gorgeous BFI package including a booklet with essays by Mike Hodges and Iain Sinclair. My eternal gratitude to a kind friend at the BFI press dept. Seek it out at once, Dear Reader. Your mind will thank you for it.

A certain amount of careful, polite side-stepping when it comes to the lives of others has to extend to this diary, too. In the past, I’ve been naive enough to think that any use of my diary as a source for another publication must be cleared with me first. It was a notion of the most staggering optimism. Hurtful parasites posing as human beings lurk at every corner. A depressing thought, but one that must be addressed.

There have been times when people have politely asked if I could I remove a reference to them in my diary. Fair enough – I’m happy to oblige quickly. As I said in my lecture on the art of public diary writing the other night, one must be one’s own editor, sub-editor and libel lawyer rolled into one. Indeed, rolling lawyers onto sub-editors would do both of them an awful lot of good. I really must make that suggestion to the Olympic committee.

Note to tabloid hacks and the people who contact them: the worse possible thing you can do when phoning a self-confessed narcissist is to ask them about Someone Else.

When the woman from the News Of The World phoned, I was Politely Unhelpful, and quite proud of myself for being so. I gave out no names, no details, and refused to confirm or deny that I may or may not know what she was on about. In order to quickly end this uneasy conversation, I asked for the hack’s name and phone number and said I may get back to her. I won’t, of course, but that seemed to be the well-mannered thing to do. One friend says you should just tell them to sod off, but for me that would be entirely out of character.

In fact, I felt a little sorry I couldn’t help her with her story, and resisted the urge to ask her how it feels to ruin the lives of people like Mr Deayton. I’m sure even tabloid journalists have feelings. They’re just temporarily mislaid.

So, in case such newspapers are reading this – or worse, people who contact such rags for profit (and who really should stop and take a good long look at their own lives), I can officially confirm that I am not the mystery blond in Eustace Thing’s life.