Paris Hilton

Are you ready for your close-ups, my darlinks? It's time to take refuge in the twilight world of a fading diva, as Lost in Showbiz is forced to confront the theory that we may not always have Paris.

For now, my subject today needs no introduction, as Melvyn Bragg's South Bank Show tribute to her will doubtless run. At her peak, she bestrode the internet and cable primetime like a colossus, the star of nightvision classic One Night in Paris, and the celebrated author of post-rationalist catchphrase "that's hot". She is, of course, Paris Hilton – and we shall come shortly to the growing whispers that her star is on the wane.

But first, a reminder of her many and storied achievements. After all, where were we – as a civilisation – before Paris was catapulted into our consciousness, revolutionising everything from entertainment jurisprudence to how we thought about velour? Wherever it was, it certainly wasn't a very happy place. But then came Paris – and a society searching for heroines it could believe in took this indolent celebutante to its furred, arrhythmic heart. In her Swarovski-encrusted nihilism it found the perfect expression of its unacknowledged self-loathing, and in her cavalcade of $2,000 handbags it found an army of un-housebroken chihuahuas.

In the Who's Who of international statespeople, Paris doubtless lists her interests as "whatever", but don't let that deceive you. Paris Hilton may be a new-generation mogul, but she is a mogul nonetheless. Indeed, she revolutionised the role. It is no surprise that people have suddenly begun to ask precisely the same questions of old-world CEO Rupert Murdoch that they have long been asking of Paris. Such as: is he really this clueless? Or is it all just a pose carefully cultivated for financial gain? And why has he been allowed to amass so many lapdogs?

And so to the suggestion that Paris's full-spectrum dominance is faltering, as evidenced by a troubling encounter with the news media who once fed upon her every DUI conviction. We lay our scene in the heiress's Hollywood mansion – I'm not sure if it's literally on Sunset Boulevard – where this week an interviewer came calling. ABC News's Dan Harris was duly admitted to madam's inner sanctum – and that seems to be where the trouble started, as he promptly suggested to Paris that she is now just a downgraded version of her former self. A sort of Gatwick Hilton, if you will.

"Do you worry at times that people who have followed in your footsteps, like Kim Kardashian, are overshadowing you?" was his first casually delivered hammerblow. "No, not at all," replied Paris, appearing to mind very much indeed.

Alas, Harris wasn't done. "Do you worry about your moment having passed?" he pressed.

I'm afraid Paris resisted the opportunity to retort: "I am big. It was the sex tapes that got small."

She did, however, take the opportunity to storm out of the interview. Out of shot, but with the cameras still rolling, she could be heard saying "I don't want all this used" – presumably to her publicist, but for the purposes of this well-worn metaphor you may assume the command to have been directed at her loyal German butler, who has secretly created all the 4.3m Twitter accounts that follow Paris.

Either way, I think you'll agree the interviewer was lucky not to have ended up floating face down in Paris's swimming pool, inadvertently providing the opening title shot of The Simple Life VIII: Swansong. The poor dope – he always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool.

After much anguished to-ing and fro-ing, Paris eventually returned to camera, to deliver a carefully prepared rejoinder. "I've been doing this for 15 years now," she stated, giving no ground to those of us still wondering what the hell "this" is. "So it's been a long time. So just like any other business person or person in this industry," she concluded icily, "it is always important to reinvent yourself and come up with new projects."

Ain't that the truth. And I wish her luck interesting reality TV's Cecil B DeMille in whatever these new projects may be.

But in the event Paris's spell has been broken, what next for her? Well, in retrospect, it seems clear that the old girl has been preparing for a Hollywood twilight in typically convention-busting fashion. Where the stars of yesteryear typically waited for the studios to terminate their contracts before amassing legions of cats, Paris was assembling a menagerie even at the height of her powers. At this column's last audit, it boasted 17 chihuahuas, a monkey, an unquantified number of ferrets (one of whom she took on a red carpet) and a goat (whom she was once banned from carrying on to a plane). But its ranks will doubtless have swollen exponentially. Thus the standard Hollywood has-been demise – surrounded by 97 animal dependants and ceiling-high piles of every edition of Variety published since the phone went quiet – was foreshadowed even in Paris's good years.

So for revolutionising the form in this and so many other ways, we can only hope Paris is still treasured by those wonderful people out there in the dark. And God, they are totally benighted, aren't they?


Posted by
Marina Hyde Thursday 21 July 2011 19.59 BST
The Guardian
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