The actor Tom Hiddleston looks set to be a seasonal hit, but who else should be included in Lost in Showbiz’s Summer Collection?

Do you hear that noise? It is Dame Fortune’s Wheel turning again, heralding the imminent launch of the Lost in Showbiz Summer Collection – wherein we introduce the celebrity lines this column will be carrying in the months to come.

Indeed, it was only the other day that Lost in Showbiz was flicking through the archives of the 2008 Autumn Collection, in which readers were introduced to “a new, slightly recherché celebrity” – a certain Miss Pippa Middleton. Well! This column feels nothing but deliciously misplaced pride to see madam living up to that early promise, and only hopes that emerging talents of similar calibre feature this coming season.

But who will they be? I must say my eye was caught by the actor Tom Hiddleston, who made a powerful case for his inclusion in a recent interview with this very newspaper. Explaining why he didn’t get the lead part in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor movie – instead winning just a supporting role – Tom said: “Ken told me that every actor has something for free. Jack Nicholson has an irreverence for free, Anthony Hopkins has a majesty and gravitas for free. Idris Elba . . . has a watchful gravitas for free. He explained that what I have for free is that I can’t turn off my intelligence.” Sweet of Tom to share that.

Your nominations for other Summer Collection lines are hereby solicited – but do be reassured that Jemima Khan is already being measured up.

Angelina’s latest cinema trip has forced her to have a heavy conversation with the kids

We end with another celebration of Hollywood alchemy: that strange and magical process whereby narcissism becomes altruism.

Once again, our spirit guide is Angelina Jolie, who draws attention to the “pretty heavy lessons” of her latest cinematic outing. It seems that the star was concerned about how her brood of variously sourced children would handle the content of the work. “I wondered how they’d respond to the themes of the film,” she tells an interviewer. “I was nervous at first. I didn’t know if they were going to react to some of the issues – very personal family issues [such as] adoption and inner peace – and was it too heavy?”

The name of the movie?

Kung Fu Panda 2.

There are no words. There literally are no words.

Meet television’s Hippocratic Oafs, the media shrinks who are messing with your minds

Vienna, between the wars, and Sigmund Freud opines: “However much the analyst may become tempted to become a teacher, model and ideal for other people and to create men in his own image, he should not forget that that is not his task in the analytic relationship, and indeed he will be disloyal to his task if he allows himself to be led on by his inclinations.”

Spool forward to ITV2, the present day, as television psychologist Geoffrey Beattie brings his noble discipline to bear on the eponymous heroine of Ghosthunting with Katie Price. His expert diagnosis? “She is somewhat egocentric.”

Or perhaps you prefer the psychotherapeutic stylings of Derek Draper, who remains a high-profile practising mental health professional despite having described attempts by former Gordon Brown aide Damian McBride to falsely smear George Osborne’s wife as “absolutely totally brilliant”.

Or how about Graham Stanier, the psychiatric nurse who has been elevated to “director of aftercare” on The Jeremy Kyle Show. To get a flavour of the man, do YouTube the clip of him analysing a 13-year-old father on Sky News, in which the presenter’s mere mention of The Jeremy Kyle Show causes him to rip out his microphone and terminate the interview. “I’m not prepared to continue this discussion,” fumes Graham. “I’m not going to talk about The Jeremy Kyle Show, that’s not why I’m here.”

Well, quite. It must be horrific to be under the impression that you are on Sky News in your capacity as honorary fellow of the Royal Society, then discover that your caption reads “That Prat Off The Jeremy Kyle Show”.

We mustn’t do Jeremy down, of course – after all, his valuable work has been praised by none other than Dolly Draper himself, who claims that Kyle “projects himself as a strong father figure, setting boundaries and trying to teach responsibility and restraint”. Which was my first thought when ITV released that indignant statement saying they only gave alcohol to guests to counteract their delirium tremens.

This week, we celebrate media shrinks – a rapidly proliferating breed for whom an entirely new circle of hell is currently under construction, after the rest of the damned simply refused to spend eternity bunked up with them. Consider them Hippocratic Oafs, whose willingness to brave charges of intellectual prostitution in the course of explaining that Jordan is faintly self-centred or that Nick Clegg’s body language suggests he is on the defensive has improved humankind’s understanding of psychology and mental health immeasurably.

No doubt Geoffrey Beattie would not desire to be lumped together with Dolly Draper, or indeed with Graham Stanier. But we must ask ourselves how much store we can really set by the conscious desires of a man who takes money to wait in a taxi outside a “haunted” venue, and offer psychological support to whichever fleeing members of Girls Aloud/McFly/the Saturdays are pretending they’ve seen a ghost to promote their single. I’m not a professional – as if that matters these days – but I can’t help feeling that somewhere deep in his subconscious, Geoffrey wants us to call him a phallus.

He is not such a phallus as Dolly, of course, who graduated from the University of Somewhere Quite Near Berkeley – nor indeed as twin-headed a phallus as the Speakmans, the husband-and-wife psychotherapist team to whom you have been so amusingly introduced by Alexis Petridis. That the Speakmans should regard a battered DeLorean as a clinical tool underscores their position as the age’s foremost heirs to the Viennese tradition.

Then you’ve got the likes of Dr Linda Papadopoulos who, to my knowledge, is the only mental health professional to have sublimated her learning into a competitively priced cosmetic range. Skin Therapy (geddit?) is based on something called psychodermatology – so now for what is traditionally referred to as “the science bit”. “Listen to your skin,” instructs Linda. “Its condition and your psyche are closely linked, so your skin will be telling you something if you have acne or dark circles.” So there you have it: acne is less of a skin disease, more the physical manifestation of some message from your psyche. (Encouragingly, Linda was commissioned by the Home Office to write a government report last year, which she somehow managed to juggle with her reality TV commitments.)

Anyway, the list goes on. Only this week, Lost in Showbiz received an email from the tireless publicist for mental health author Robert Ashton, headlined “Celebrity bipolar epidemic could be due to ‘energy and creativity’”. Is it helpful or accurate to refer to mental illness as a “celebrity epidemic”? If only we had a mental health professional on hand to advise. Perhaps we could call upon psychotherapist Jules McClean, whose publicist recently got in touch to tout his services under the subject header “Katie Melua breakdown”. There followed what appears to be a remote diagnosis of the singer, which I will paraphrase as “Blah blah quick fame blah blah price tag blah blah goldfish bowl blah blah feelings of failure blah blah cycle of destruction” (though that flatters it considerably).

The father figure of them all, of course, is telly psychiatrist Raj Persaud, who once gave an interview to the British Medical Journal explaining that criticism of him by other doctors was “largely motivated by jealousy”. “The point is, why does everyone go back and ask Raj Persaud?” he wondered rhetorically. “Is it not because, by and large, what I tend to say makes sense to the public?” I think it’s because your answerphone message says “I’ll do it” – or rather, of course, it was. The GMC found Raj guilty of plagiarism and bringing his profession into disrepute, but most of the above practitioners have nothing to fear. The only body even nominally regulating psychotherapy is the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, which ruled that Dolly Draper deeming a plan to smear someone “absolutely totally brilliant” was in no way a bar to his continuing to practise.

So the good news is, we’re stuck with the likes of Graham Stanier – whose official website, I note, celebrates “his councilling role”. Do let’s consider that a Freudian sic.

Don’t be fooled by Red and Black’s roulette format – the Karaoke Sauron makes his own luck

We end with news of the Karaoke Sauron, as Simon Cowell announces his new gameshow Red or Black, in which contestants try to win £1m by choosing red or black on a roulette wheel. “This show is not about talent or skill,” explains Simon. “It is just down to luck. This has never been done before.”

Hasn’t it, etc. Red or Black does, however, represent the purest expression yet of the Cowell formula – a show that appears to depend on the vagaries of chance, but in which the probability of Simon winning is actually one.

Yet does paring things back to brute luck represent the ultimate iteration of Simon’s TV philosophy? No. Not even close.

In a few years, we will have dispensed with the roulette wheel. Thereafter, we will have dispensed with the Russian roulette equipment that formed the basis for the show’s horrifyingly addictive fifth series. By 2018, the entire nation – and probably the world – will be sitting in slack-jawed thrall before a format in which Simon merely informs a contestant whether or not they may live. (Calls to congratulate him will cost £1.50 from a BT landline, but calls from other networks and mobiles will be considerably more.)

The Fox News presenters declares the ‘brilliant’ show a fearsome enemy of American values

And so to America’s eternal search for enemies it can believe in, as Osama bin Laden’s death creates an exciting vacancy. In the mind of ultra-rational Fox News presenter Glenn Beck, however, the position has already been filled.

As you may know, Glenn’s show has proved such virulent advertiser-bane that he is merely serving out his contract with the network. But his ratings remain high – and so, dare I say it, do his standards.

Mindful that you can judge a man – and a country – by its enemies, Glenn last week revealed that he has finally run up against an American antagonist so fiendish, so sophisticated, that it is essentially unbeatable. And the name of this enemy? Glee.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the TV show Glee,” he wondered of his audience, “but this stands out and stands against almost every value that I have . . . It is a brilliant, brilliant show. Very, very well done. But it is a horror show.” Well, it’s High School Musical for adults who don’t really like or understand telly. But go on.

“Everyone is sleeping with everyone else, there’s no values, it’s all self-gratification – it’s a nightmare. Brilliant songs and performances brilliantly edited and shot. It’s brilliant! Brilliant. I looked at my wife and said, ‘There is no way to beat this. This is propaganda and it’s an anthem. It’s an anthem saying, “Join us”. How can you and I possibly win against that?’”

So there you have it. Glee: the unstoppable foe. I think many of us have fantasised about Glenn Beck finally facing his Waterloo. But when it actually happens, it somehow doesn’t seem like a time for triumphalism, or even an Abba mashup.

Meet Claire Powell of Can Associates, a multimedia celebrity PR phenomenon

What links Peter Andre, Kerry Katona, weirdo life coaches the Speakmans, Frank Lampard’s ex, and the vajazzler off The Only Way is Essex? If you answered “manacles, preferably”, then prepare for disappointment. They are all managed by Claire Powell, boss of Can Associates (hereafter: “the organ grinder”).

Perhaps the best way to give you a flavour of Claire’s work would be to sketch a typical scenario from her professional life. We’d begin with Can Associates client Peter Andre discussing his breakup with Frank Lampard’s ex – another Can Associates client – on ITV2 show Peter Andre: The Next Chapter (producer: Can TV), while he’s filmed flicking through OK! magazine’s pap shots of Can Associates client Kerry Katona out on on the town with Can Associates client Amy Childs, off The Only Way is Essex, and Can Associates client and glamma model Nicola McLean. Peter might then be driven in a people carrier to a WORLD EXCLUSIVE photoshoot with Kerry, which would see them stage a cupcake fight, beneath the WORLD EXCLUSIVE headline “Peter: I can’t believe what Kerry said about me on her ITV2 show Kerry: The Next Chapter!” Meanwhile, in her exclusive OK! magazine column, Kerry would comment approvingly on the fact that Can Associates clients the Speakmans were giving therapy to Nicola McLean, who was recently paid handsomely for a WORLD EXCLUSIVE OK! magazine interview in which she discussed her eating disorder (pictures ideally shot at the launch of Peter Andre’s latest fragrance).

So there you have it – Can Associates, an end-of-days repertory company whose limitless actions, interactions, and reactions to each other’s actions will soon be classified as a discrete sector of the UK economy. Make no mistake: the demise of Can Associates would cause the immediate collapse of six celebrity magazines, ITV2, and the Ugg futures market.

As for Claire, I imagine she ends each day plotting the next one – hunched over her homemade shoebox diorama, and using marionettes of her clients to game various scenarios in which even their bowel movements can be monetised, or at the very least used as a discussion point in another client’s TV show. Wooden, Ronsealed, and with someone else pulling the strings – Peter Andre is basically Pinocchio with better hair products.

So too, for the moment, is erstwhile trainwreck Kerry Katona, whose signing to Can Associates was announced last year following her split from husband Mark.

“Kerry knows this is her last chance,” intoned Claire to the nation. “There will be no drugs and no Mark. She has signed a legal document agreeing to that.” How peculiar. I’m sure the drugs thing is standard, but don’t you just adore the idea of the lawyer who drafted an agreement in which Kerry is promised the keys to the publicity kingdom, but only if she signs away the father of two of her children? Presumably ITV2 already has Faust: The Next Chapter in development.

That said, Claire probably prefers to see herself as less of a Mephistopheles, and more of a Henry Higgins. So allow me to summarise My Fair Kerry. Within minutes of signing Claire’s agreement, Kerry and kids were plucked from the family home in Warrington, its drive still littered with whichever Porsches and superbikes the HP company had yet to repossess. Kerry Doo-Very-Little was promptly installed in a Surrey barn conversion of such parodically bucolic charm that it actually overlooked a duck pond. There followed the sensational news that Kerry had signed a comeback TV deal – to make a TV show about her comeback. Please don’t ask me which came first, the comeback or the show about the comeback. That’s a causality dilemma to rival the chicken or the egg. All you need to know is that Kerry Katona: The Next Chapter was being made by Can TV. And as convenient paparazzi shots of her feeding the ducks found their way into the press, Claire’s message to the world was clear: Kerry is happy and healthy in her Arcadian idyll.

Or as Kerry put it in a recent scene from the ITV2 show, where she was shown marooned in her unused kitchen: “I. Am. Bored. Shitless.” (Speak for England, Kerry . . .)

Still, that wasn’t going to interfere with the culmination of this story arc. Just as Henry managed to pass off Eliza as a duchess at an embassy ball, so Claire somehow managed to get Kerry invited to Elton John’s White Tie and Tiara Ball – an event easily as exclusive as a Nigerian email scam – and was filmed bussing her in to the party. In a people carrier, obviously. And with Peter Andre as her date. Obviously.

Landmark television it is not, unless the landmark in question is Beachy Head or the Clifton suspension bridge. But the shtick endures, with approximately 37 minutes of every Can TV show comprising footage shot in a people carrier, presumably to imply motion, when in fact the format is the triumph of stasis. Nothing happens, at all, ever – yet the ability to roll out it and monetise it across every platform from TV to newsstand to fragrance must mark some critical point in humanity’s evolution.

How people can despair that this country doesn’t manufacture anything any more is quite beyond Lost in Showbiz. This is what we make. And we are able to do this because of who we are: one nation, under Claire Powell, with vajazzles and people carriers for all.

The Rocketman singer is pals with Lady Gaga and the Beckhams. Now the Windsors expect him to rub shoulders with Joss Stone

“I always thought,” Sir Elton John has observed of Princess Di, “that the people that really felt for her and were really true to her, she just was a bit airy-fairy towards in the end.” And no doubt that is to Diana’s eternal regret. What a relief, though, that Elton has been restored to his rightful place, and will take his seat in the Abbey along with various Johnny-come-lately monarchs and presidents of this and that.

The only possible disappointment for Sir Elt could be the guestlist’s celebrity count, which is somewhat thin on the ground, even if you count Joss Stone (and I don’t think one does).

Admittedly, the Beckhams are there – but having already been made godfather to their firstborn son Brooklyn, that networking opportunity may be considered fully exhausted.

Despite having been a celebrity for decades, you see, Elton is still one of earth’s most fanatical starhumpers. Or as he prefers to put it, he has just made Lady Gaga godmother to his own son for no other reason than the fact she’s “a very simple New York girl who loves her parents”. You do have to slightly adore him, for being able to deliver that line with a straight face, and we wish him the most amusing of days.

The socialite is ready for the royal wedding, thanks to some last-minute work on her conk

For now, forget the wedding as a state-of-the-nation event – and concentrate instead on the important insight it offers into the state of the nation’s rhinoplasty. According to what sounds like a very non-scientific survey of plastic surgeons, Kate Middleton’s nose is currently the most requested style, with one in five patients demanding to have their own nose remodelled along its lines.

Elsewhere in royal wedding-related nasal surgery news, there is relief for those who have found themselves affected by the saga of Tara Palmer-Tomkinson’s nose, which has been played out across various media in recent weeks. Some years ago, the former cocaine addict was nasally reconstructed to correct the ravages of drug use, and is now a sort of . . . well, TV presenter, is it? She is also invited to the wedding, being a close family friend of Prince Charles – so imagine the horror when her nose should choose this very moment to loose its moorings.

“I’ll tell you exactly what’s happening with my nose,” Tara obliged recently. “When I originally had it fixed I was asked by my surgeon where I wanted him to go shopping for the cartilage. I was told it could be taken from my ear or from my ribs and I chose my ear. But the trouble with cartilage from the ear is that, although you get a really nice shape, it’s delicate and easily damaged. It doesn’t stand up well to general wear-and-tear. The other day I was shaking my duvet and the TV remote control flew up and hit me in the face . . . If I can get my nose fixed for the wedding that would be ideal,” she concluded wistfully. “I’m not sure it’s going to be possible but hopefully something can be done in time.”

As I say, there is happy news. Tara was this week reported to have had £650 worth of fillers injected into her nose to improve the line – a development which means that fairytales do come true, and she now conforms to Westminster Abbey’s strict proboscis code.

Could Prince William and Kate Middleton steal the celebrity crown from David and Victoria? Of course not

At this pivotal time for our nation, there are certain questions I am asked more than any others in my formal capacity as Sometime Writer of a Page Designed To Be Taken Desperately Seriously. Perhaps the most common one: “Is Alex Reid still a celebrity?” (The short answer: it’s complicated. We’re going to have to deal with it in full next week.) Second only to that inquiry, however, is the question: “What does the royal wedding mean for the Beckhams?”

Not for them personally, you understand – thanks to some of David’s typically empty public utterances, we know it’s nice for them to be invited, but that Victoria’s a bit concerned about how she’ll look because she’s pregnant. No, the question is what the royal wedding means for the Beckhams as a concept. Are they up or down on the great media barometer, that instrument that harnesses journalism’s most abundant commodity – laziness – and uses it to rate whether or not someone is worth giving a few column inches of toss about? What are the implications for the celebrity community of which the Beckhams are emblematic? And are Prince William and Kate Middleton celebrities?

We shall deal with the latter first: of course they aren’t. Only if their marriage starts going wrong, and Kate acquires Princess Di’s world-class – galaxy-class – media skills, could they develop the type of plotlines that would elevate them into celebrities (and it would be an elevation). Otherwise, a fevered interest in them will remain the preserve of those people who lack the imagination to mind about celebrity Scientologists or a fracturing Middle East – people in whose company no one interesting would care to spend any time.

Now, as millions get caught up in the pageantry and pissups on the Big Day, you will very likely hear some declare that a new royal dawn has broken, and that something fundamental has changed – and they will very likely be the same people who, after Diana’s death, wept in the streets, and on the whole behaved in a very Southern European manner and then got frightfully embarrassed about it afterwards.

Indeed, over the past few weeks you may have heard the loftily touted view that the royal marriage will result in celebrities having their triple-A ratings downgraded. Consider royal author and “constitutional expert” Hugo Vickers, who declared: “I think there’s a very good opportunity for William and Catherine to replace people like the Beckhams as the focus of young Britain.”

To which I’m afraid the only seemly response is: DO. ME. A. FAVOUR.

I have no idea whether Hugo, like those high court judges of yesteryear, has never heard of the Beatles, but he will certainly be familiar with Oscar Wilde – a man who truly understood celebrity. So I must ask Hugo to turn to Lost in Showbiz set text The Picture of Dorian Gray, specifically the moment at which Lord Henry declares of the eponymous antihero: “You are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found.”

This column has always felt that the test to determine if someone is – however fleetingly – a celebrity is to ask oneself whether one can imagine these words being spoken of them. “You are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found.” Now, can you possibly imagine anyone ever breathing such a thing at Prince William? Well of course you can’t. It is, however, eminently possible to imagine it being whispered, spellbound, at David Beckham (perhaps by his enthralled dandy friend, Mr Tom Cruise, but it doesn’t especially matter).

Hang on, some might say, only a few paragraphs ago you were making unfavourable reference to David’s empty public utterances. But you see, none of that matters either. David Beckham can appear as empty as he likes – indeed, Dorian Gray as a character is marginally less developed than supporting members of Brentwood-based repertory company The Only Way Is Essex. That is precisely the point. As Lord Henry continues of Dorian: “I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art.”

And so with our Beckhams, who have never done anything more meaningful than simply be the Beckhams (please don’t bring up David’s “heroics” in the Greece game; it is hysterically undignified to apotheosise qualifying matches). But they are proper celebrities, upon those whom Hugo calls “young Britain” are properly focused – and that’s before we get on to big hitters like your Britneys, your Gagas, and others to whom the world belongs for a season.

Set next to those malfunctioning, mega-watted personages, I’m afraid there is precisely nothing to intrigue us yet in a balding air-sea rescue drone and a neo-Sloane in sensible LK Bennett heels. Harsh? Certainly. But that, my darlings, is showbiz – and long may it reign over us.

Never mind the tedious Muslims Against Crusades and English Defence League, the real problem is the Met’s citizen policing

• We begin with security news, specifically the fear that the happy couple’s carriage might have to run the gauntlet of tedious little chaps waving placards like “Death to those who insult the peace of Islam”. Muslims Against Crusades claimed they’re calling off their protest, but did so under a banner reading “Wanted: Prince William … Modern Day Nazi” – so they may still be in play.

I know what you’re thinking – why don’t these dullards just bore off and enjoy the bank holiday? – but apparently it’s not that simple. Indeed, in a massive dullard-off, any homicidal pacifists may have to contend with those tedious little chaps from the English Defence League, whose leader Tommy Robinson – the one who runs a tanning salon, if you can picture anything so coeur de lion – has announced that a crack team of his idiots will be risking prosecution to form “a ring of steel round that wedding”. (Tommy himself will be away on his holidays, probably defending England somewhere overseas.)

Ever the victims, the Metropolitan police have declined to rise above such posturing, instead persisting in their brilliant strategy of dividing the entire nation into people who are either for them or against them, as opposed to merely stuck with them. Thus they appear to have decided that the royal wedding marks the official launch of citizen policing – which is a bit like citizen journalism, but with the ability to park in a disabled bay whilst buying a pasty.

“We really need you to be our eyes and our ears,” Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens implored the nation at an outreach press conference. “If you see anything or anyone in the crowd who is acting suspiciously, please bring it to the earliest attention of our officers.”

Lynne offers no advice on what to do if that person acting suspiciously is a police officer, but the obvious answer would be to bring it to the earliest attention of no one at all. Furthermore, citizen police who believe that putting in 40 minutes of half-arsed vigilance on the day will entitle them to claim endless overtime then go on the sick for two years are likely to be disappointed. That concludes your briefing, officers. And hey – let’s be careful out there.

• Once again, the royal wedding presents a chance to assess Where We’re At as a nation, as fifth-tier celebrity mag New quizzes the cast of ITV2′s apocalypse-hastening reality format The Only Way Is Essex about their plans for Friday. It was in Downton Abbey, you might recall, that Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess was moved witheringly to ask: “What is a weekend?” Now, in New magazine, we find the inquiry’s modern equivalent. “What’s a bank holiday?” inquires bemused The Only Way Is Essex star Joey Essex. “A day off? But we don’t work anyway!”

• To Australia, that fabled young country, where a TV comedy troupe perceives itself to have been personally insulted by the Queen, Clarence House, and the BBC. The Chaser team are contracted to the ABC network, and had hoped to layer droll commentary on top of the live BBC coverage being provided to foreign rights holders. Alas, the fairly standard broadcast agreement forbids this – which senior executives have taken as some kind of international diplomatic insult.

“Clearly, the BBC and Clarence House have decided The Chaser aren’t acceptable,” fumes ABC director Kim Dalton, rather sweetly imagining that either of the above has the remotest idea who The Chaser are. As for the Aussie satirists themselves, they say: “The Chaser team accepts that the ABC has been put in an impossible position by people acting on behalf of the royal family.”

Well quite – and it does seem wildly short sighted of the BBC, who seem to have forgotten that the boot will one day be on the other foot. After all, at some point in the future, tragic Steve Irwin’s daughter Binky is going to get married, and the Beeb has just condemned British viewers to an unleavened four-hour state ceremony from the Crocosseum. Another spectacular cock-up by the cultural relativism department, all told, and we can only offer Australia our sincerest apologies.