As six of the finest writers in the British Isles gathered in adverb-defying anticipation of a free meal at the Man Booker prize-giving that would make or break their careers, a far more powerful writer was lying in bed with the dishy, hard-muscled husband she met on a reality TV show in the jungl, writes Kate Holmquist
"Ooh, I'm so bored. What'll we watch?" "Here's one - ehm, the Hooker prize." "Dahling, I'm so tired of Five. I'm always on it. Let's watch something educational. Like BBC2. I need to work on my vocabulary." "Oh, scrumptious muffin." His golden, gym-toned pecs heaved with excitement. "The Man Hooker prize. You'll probably win it. Again." "Dahling, move just a little to the right, would you?," she crooned as her full, radioactively glowing breasts took her husband's eyes off the TV schedule. "That's a B, not a H. The Booker Prize." He gazed up at her with a mixture of longing and appreciation. What had he done to deserve this literary goddess who could tell a B from a H? He bent to kiss the silicone-inflatables that floated his beloved to the top of any list she chose to take aim at.
Turning off the bedside flatscreen with her toe, while simultaneously remembering that she was having sex with her husband, the goddess demanded, "Why didn't my agent mention it? What's it worth? Why aren't I there?" Jungle boy wound a blond hair extension around his muscled forearm. "You're everywhere, muffin. No need to hang out with impoverished librarians. It's your turn to be on top." Could she trust him? Speed-dialling her agent, the goddess enjoyed a 10-second call that had her entire gym-toned body vibrating with pleasure. "My agent says I've outsold all six of those Man Booker nominees already. Who's on top, now?" But her husband had fallen asleep.
And then there's Katie Price, aka Jordan. The scene described above is entirely fictional. It's not her at all. No resemblance to actual people, etc. It's novelised, you see. That's what celebrities such as Jordan and Nicole Richie and Kerry "Oh my God, I'm pregnant again" Katona do. They work from their imaginations. When Nicole Richie wrote The Truth About Diamonds, she could describe her main character as "inarticulate to the point of incompetence" without any fear of implicating her pal and former TV co-host Paris Hilton, who Nicole absolutely was not writing about, no way.
Kerry Katona has signed a huge deal with a publishing house, which regards her not as a writer, but as a brand. Her novels, starting with Tough Love, will be targeted at the sort of reader who browses Heat and OK! and believes it's all true. The ex-Atomic Kitten has an agent who knows that celebrities have truly weird (sorry, dramatic and inspiring) lives that are impossible to write in autobiographical form - all those libel considerations. Far better to dish the dirt creatively, with the help of an Oxford graduate with his or her own literary aspirations, which haven't yet earned them enough to buy an Underground ticket.
Potential Booker Prize winners lay aside their dignity and set about "intensive editing" or "co-writing" with a celebrity. These are euphemisms for ghosting the book, since - as any publishing house will tell you - celebrities such as Katie Price are multi-talented individuals who actually do write the books themselves. (Price has done it twice; the success of her first novel has been repeated by her second, Crystal, this year.)
Having met one or two of these ghosts, I can tell you that this involves working a book out of a few impressions scribbled on a napkin by an agent fresh from lunch with the celebrity at whatever rehab they happen to be in. Sometimes a digital voice-recorder is employed, which means that the ghost has to listen to hundreds of hours of rumination, usually with the noise of a restaurant or airport in the background.
Because, you see, it doesn't matter if you can write like an angel if you don't look like one. And real writers have such boring lives compared to the material that celebrities can offer. How can anyone who's never been on reality TV write realism? So when the Booker Prize is announced on October 16th, we novelists who are disabled by the need to write our own books can basically eat our hair in frustration, because it doesn't matter who wins. The real winners are the people with Heat-magazine lives who can become literary brands.
Expect to find these in the airport bookshop soon:
Colour Me Innocent - a successful beauty business entrepreneur is in crisis when her past life as the devoted girlfriend of a European head of state with an unorthodox lifestyle catches up with her.
How Green Was My Vote? - an idealistic politician has a nervous breakdown when he sells out for power (soon to be a major motion picture starring George Clooney).
Cellblock H(ilton) - the first in the exciting new "it-girls behind bars" series, also featuring Lindsay Lohan penning the story of a child star gone bad, whose life is changed by 28 minutes in prison.
A Place Called Fear - a Booker Prize winner is forced by starvation to co-write a novel with the posh wife of a sex-god footballer. When the Wag ends up dead, the protagonist finds herself under suspicion.
