Too much information has destroyed the mystique which once made the famous such compulsive viewing.
NEVER MIND the property market, the signs are that the celebrity binge is at an end. It's not that there is any shortage of news about how Angelina got so big (pregnant) and how Jordan got so small (had her implants downsized from a G to an F). It's not that there is any shortage of photographs of Lily Allen's new hair colour (blonde) or of Pixie Geldof's clothes, which have excited universal approval so far. Last week heat magazine ran an article which speculated on the question of whether Sara Jessica Parker had become Jennifer Aniston (SJP had grabbed the hair straighteners). This last item confirmed what some of us have been suspecting for some time: the celebrity binge has started to eat itself.
If you don't recognise any of the names in the above paragraph then it is probably best that you proceed straight to the horoscope page. Ooops, I mean the crossword. Go in peace. But for those of us who haunt the metaphorical watercooler these people are more than familiar, we feel that we know them. Despite the fact that, as with the nation's food, we import 80 per cent of the celebrities that we consume, we love them with great intimacy. We've invested a lot of time in worrying about Naomi's anger, Nigella's weight (going up) and Nadine from Girls Aloud's weight (going down, down, down).
And then there is that Olsen twin. Celebrity watching involves spending a lot of time worrying about everybody's weight but our own, and, if we are to be honest about it, this is probably one of the reasons that it has been such a popular pastime in recent years.
Of course anxiety displacement is a feature of quite a lot of modern pastimes, but when you are a celebrity watcher you do not have the gratification achieved by the Munster fans when their team beat the Ospreys at the weekend. For us there are no defining moments, only defining photographs.
Actually celebrity watching is quite tiring. Will Jennifer Aniston ever find love and is she really going to adopt a little boy called Alex? Is it a good idea for Nicole Richie to wear boot-cut jeans? Can it really be true that Angelina has gestational diabetes? Madonna alone is enough to keep you awake at night. Once you reach a certain age it's difficult to decide whether you're furious with Madonna for persisting with the leather corsets, jealous of her because she looks so fantastic in them, or contemptuous of her because her favourite accessory is the air-brush. However, it is not difficult to decide that the people at U Magazine are little brats for having Madonna as their cover girl and then printing the words "Old Lady" over her picture. Take it handy, kids.
Of course, hate has always been just as much a part of celebrity watching as love, envy or even sex. Fortunes have been made by catering to the female obsession with Posh's body. Jordan (also known as Katie Price) has outsold just about every other living writer, and the third volume of her autobiography, Pushed To The Limit, is another bestseller. Jordan is 29. She started her career as a topless model and has become not so much a role model as an international heroine. Personally, I am fond of her. I don't expect her to feel the same way about me. But lately I'm beginning to wonder about our relationship.
Since it began, oh, way back in the twentieth century, celebrity watching has been a globalised version of the schoolgirl crush on an older, more glamorous girl. Schoolgirl crushes are part of growing up, so it's kind of strange to find yourself buying Grazia in late middle age.
Celebrity watchers are not a community, we're a gang. And the signs are that the gang may be moving on.
You know, we don't want to see Tony Curtis without his toupee. We wish he hadn't opened the exhibition of his paintings at Harrods looking - this has to be said - like Gary Glitter's dad. I thought that Tony Curtis had passed on to that big retirement home in, if not the sky, then Florida. I want him sitting in a rocking chair, just like all those millionaires in Some Like It Hot. But the nearest thing that journalism has to a celebrity, Julie Burchill, is right: celebrities have started stalking the general public. Why won't they leave us alone? We've been given too much information. Whereas once it might have been thrilling to learn that Paris Hilton has a bunion on her left foot (heat magazine, page 65), these days it seems kind of dumb.
Madonna, the poster girl of the celebrity movement, recently announced that her husband had gone off sex because he had been eating too many cookies. The desperation of this remark was palpable to any teenager - the feelings of Madonna's husband are obviously irrelevant.
It is like the downturn in property. We stopped building new celebrities some time ago, and we haven't got the emotional capital to construct them now. Female curiosity is not dead, but sleeping.
We can only hope that Jordan, at least, has enough money put by.