Cause Celeb by Helen Fielding

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
Available for the first time in the United States, Cause Celeb is the hilarious debut novel by British literary sensation Helen Fielding. With the same wit and candor that shot Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason to the top of bestseller lists and forever altered the vocabulary of dating, Fielding executes a remarkable spoof on the altruistic endeavors of commoners and celebrities alike as they unite to combat the horror of famine and neglect in Africa. Populated by larger-than-life characters from London's West End and the unsung heroes toiling anonymously on the Continent, Cause Celeb is a cunning and poignant tale that discloses the romantic underpinnings of life and love in the 21st century.

Rosie Richardson, a frothy young woman trapped in the cauldron of the publishing world, finds herself involved in a dysfunctional relationship with TV personality Oliver Marchant, a Teflon-coated Romeo who slips in and out of her life with greater frequency than she'd like. Disenchanted with their glamorous lifestyle, Rosie packs her bags and (quite literally) heads for the hills, embarking on a personal odyssey through the majestic deserts of Africa to the fictional state of Nambula, where each day's sunrise brings a daunting challenge.

Upon arrival in the sparse refugee camp, Rosie immediately gets a sense of just how eccentric some of her new neighbors are. Muhammed, a local go-between with a flair for melodrama, the burly Irish doctor O'Rourke, and two seasoned nurses are all catalysts for the story who keep spirits alive and send emotions on a roller-coaster ride. When a carpet of locusts wreaks havoc among vestiges of the season's last crops, disease and starvation become a palpable threat that plagues the proud refugees of Nambula with fear.

But stubborn government regimes turn a blind eye to the dangers facing the village, the relief workers' pleas for food and assistance are ignored, and fever and calamity run rampant, forcing Rosie to return to London and enlist the help of her former lover and the motley crew of friends they once shared. In a final, inspired act of desperation, the former publicity flak miraculously pulls off an international appeal with results that far surpass anything she had imagined.

With a winning combination of pathos and humor, Fielding suggests that the real voyage of discovery is not simply in the quest for new landscapes, but in having new eyes to view them with. Ultimately, Rosie does find the peace of mind and passion she so desperately sought, and the success of her cause adds substance to her life and a depth to her character she had never suspected. Like the Bridget Jones novels, Cause Celeb is an easy, enjoyable read. But despite its seeming frivolity, the book paints an insightful and sanguine portrait of modern-day philanthropy. It's just that in the world according to Helen Fielding, even saving lives can be cause for merriment.

--Lauren Foster

From the Publisher

Cause Celeb - the critically acclaimed debut novel from a writer with a boundless grasp of the existential and the uproarious - has just landed in America. Deftly skewering the world of celebrity fundraising, Fielding has created an alternately comic and moving satire that straddles the glitter of media London and the horrors of an African refugee crisis.

Rosie Richardson, a twenty-something literary puffette, is in a totally non-functional relationship with an unevolved but irresistible adult male - a hotshot TV presenter who plunges her into the glitzy, bitchy, inane lifestyle of London's It people. Disillusioned with the celebrity world, Rosie escapes to run a refugee camp in the African jungle.

When famine strikes and a massive refugee influx heads for the camp, governments and agencies drag their heels. Bringing her former media savvy to the fore, realizing the only way to get food out fast is to bring celebrities first, Rosie turns to the life and man she fled to organize a star-studded emergency appeal from famine-racked Africa.

Seamlessly bridging cataclysm and farce through the insights of a modern-day everywoman, Cause Celeb crackles with insight into fame, passion, and altruism in our time.

Baltimore Sun

Incisive and sharp with smart prose and acerbic wit...Cause Celeb is fun, moving and best of all, dead-on.

Observer (London)

...a modern version of King Lear's Fool; she jokes incessantly but tells the truth and there's a bittersweet power to her comedy....

Cosmopolitan UK

A terrific achievement....the camp scenes are as moving and funny as the original M.A.S.H.

Miami Herald

...an engaging splash of satire and a solid dose of effective drama.

Sarah Dessen

The wry wit and sarcasm of her later novels is apparent, but they serve a larger purpose...here...

USA Today

...a terrific, witty story...[a] sophisticated and thoughtful novel...

People

...the laughs in this novel come from its vivid, cleverly drawn cast of characters...

Atlantic Monthly

...a deft, subtle, admirable, pleasurable book.

Boston Globe

[Fielding] analyzes London party life with the piercing eye of an anthropologist...the African scenes are reminiscent of [Joseph] Conrad.

Orlando Sentinel

[Cause Celeb] is engaging in the best sense of the word, both aesthetically and morally.

Memphis Commercial Appeal

Not since Allison Lurie's Foreign Affairs has there been as amusing a glimpse into London's intensely hedonistic world of celebrity types.

Book Magazine

Fielding's first novel (which was a hit in the United Kingdom but, until now, has never been released in the United States), tells the story of Rosie Richardson, who leaves her fast-track job in the PR world of London to do good in the refugee camps of the fictional state of Nambula in Africa. After four years, a few locusts and a civil war, a disillusioned Richardson returns to London and her sophisticated social circles. When the situation in Nambula becomes increasingly dire, the media maven harnesses her celebrity savvy to organize a Live Aid-esque event. An entertaining tale about the vacuous world of celebrity, this book juxtaposes the heroine's time in London and that spent in the camps of Africa. Even before she wrote the wildly successful Bridget Jones's Diary, Fielding skillfully wrote about the single girl's life (yes, there is a romantic interest here). This enjoyable book, more socially concerned than its follow-up though just as witty, will please the authors' many fans.
—Mimi O'Connor

Publishers Weekly

Fans of the sarcastic humor and rapid-fire dialogue found in bestselling British author Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason will be delighted with the U.S. release of her 1995 debut novel, which juxtaposes the death, disease and despair of a refugee camp against the vacuous mid-'80s London celebrity scene. Gorgeous twentysomething literary publicist Rosie Richardson travels to the fictional African country of Nambula to heal from a particularly rough breakup with a devastatingly handsome TV personality. Caught up in the allure of volunteerism, Rosie goes high profile, bringing from London 40 tons of food, a television crew and the ad hoc group Charitable Acts, an assembly of image-conscious celebrities who plan to air an African broadcast of a speeded-up version of Hamlet. Fielding's tale filled with huge egos lends itself exceptionally well to audio, and Quigley scrupulously brings Fielding's vapid, iconic characters to life with her uncanny ability to switch between accents and mood at the drop of a hat, achieving a subtler style of comedy than listeners may expect. Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover (Forecasts, Dec. 11, 2000). (Feb.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

As a publicist for a literary firm in London, Rosie Richardson aspires to the world of celebrities where she will be seen on the arm of a charming TV personality. For a while she enjoys her romantic relationship and the attendance at fundraising events to help the famine-struck people in Africa. However, she becomes tired of the superficiality and insensitivity of the people around her; she also finds the moodiness of her partner intolerable. Rosie leaves London and sets out for Africa to help in the refugee camps. In an acerbic manner, Fielding effectively contrasts the plight of the refugees and the difficulty of getting food to them with the glittering lifestyle of the rich and famous. Although the novel, read by Bernadette Quigley, doesn't have the continuous humor and spirit of the Bridget Jones books (Bridget Jones Diary; Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason), it does demonstrate the author's wit and her empathy for the single woman looking for her niche. Recommended for women's literary collections. Catherine Swenson, Norwich Univ., Northfield, VT Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

What People Are Saying

Douglas Adams
A lusciously well-written satire-witty, wise and very funny.

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It used to seem extraordinary to me that someone like Henry could actually exist, extraordinary that a person could be transported into an environment so alien to his own, and remain so utterly unaffected by his surroundings. It was as if he had been coated with a very strong sealant, the sort of thing they use to paint on oceangoing yachts.

Henry was spreading thick cut luxury marmalade from a Fortnum and Mason's jar on a piece of Nambulan unleavened bread.

"Got up this morning, didn't Boris Believe it—family of eight outside my hut wanting to move their tent nearer the river. I said to the chap, ‘I thought this was a bloody refugee camp, not a holiday camp, but you go ahead, mate, by all means. Never mind the old malnutrition—you go for the view.'"

Breakfast was taken in Safila, just after dawn. It was a quiet time, the hour before the heat became intolerable, with the silence broken only by the rooster and Henry, who was incapable of shutting up except when he was asleep. I was particularly annoyed by Henry that morning, because I suspected he had started an affair with one of our more emotionally fragile nurses, Sian. She was sitting next to him now, giving him a look you could have spread on a piece of toast. Sian was a sweet-natured girl who had joined us two months ago, after returning early from night shift to find her husband of eighteen months in bed with a Turkish minicab driver. Her therapy was being continued via correspondence.

Betty was talking about food as usual. "Do you know, what I could really eat now is a pudding. Mind you, I say that. Bread-and-butter pudding. Oooh, lovely, with raisins and a bit of nutmeg. I wonder if Kamal could do us a bread-and-butter pudding if we made that biscuit tin into an oven?"

It was five-thirty in the morning. I got up from the table, walked outside and sighed. How the tiny irritations of life filled the mind out here, keeping the big horrors at bay. I dipped a cup into the water pot, and walked to the edge of the hill to brush my teeth.

Our compound was behind me, with its round mud huts, showers, latrines and the cabana where we took our meals. Before me was the sandy basin which housed Safila camp, a great scar in the desert. The light was very soft at that time, the sun pale, just clearing the horizon. Clustered over a pattern of hummocks and paths, leading down to the point where the two blue rivers met, were the huts which housed the refugees. Five years ago, during the great mid-eighties famine, there were sixty thousand of them, and a hundred a day were dying. Now twenty thousand remained. The rest had gone back over the border to Kefti, to the mountains and the war.

A gust of hot wind made the dry grasses rustle. I was bothered by more than Henry that morning. A rumor was circulating in the camp about a locust plague back in Kefti, which was threatening the harvest. There were often scare stories in the camp of one kind or another: it was hard to know what to believe. We'd heard talk of a new influx of refugees on their way to us again, maybe thousands.

Sounds were beginning to rise from the camp now, goats being herded, laughter, children playing, contented sounds. Once, the great swathe of cries which rose to us here were those which went with starvation and death. I bit the side of my thumb, and tried not to remember. I couldn't think back to that time again. Footsteps were coming from the cabana. Henry was sauntering across the compound and back to his hut. He was wearing his favorite T-shirt, which featured a motif set out like a multiple choice questionnaire for relief workers.

Henry had ticked (b), which was a joke since his family owned half of northeast England. Me? I was a c/d hybrid and soft in the head to boot.

In London in the summer of 1985 I was afflicted by a crush, which is a terrible thing to happen to a woman. I met Oliver, the object of my rampant imaginings, at a gala performance of Vivaldi's Gloria at the Royal Albert Hall. I was what was known as a puffette: a publicist in a publishing company, Ginsberg and Fink. I wiggled around in short skirts, legs in sheer black tights crossing and uncrossing in meetings, then kept going on and on about people not being interested in my mind. Funny how at twenty-five you worry about not being taken seriously and take being a sex object for granted. Later you take being taken seriously for granted, and worry about not being a sex object.

Our company chairman, Sir William Ginsberg, liked to put together little gatherings of the arty and the talented from all walks of life, not revealing to the guests in advance who the other guests would be. For all the ill-informed like me these gatherings were a total nightmare. You feared to ask anyone what they did lest they turned out to be the author of Love in the Time of Cholera, or one of the Beach Boys.

I had been to three dinner parties at Sir William's house. I wasn't sure he remembered quite who I was. He employed several young girls and always used to invite one or two of us along because of our fine minds, presumably. I spent the evenings in a state of awed nervousness, saying very little. But I liked meeting these creative interesting people. I wanted to fit in. This was the first time I had been invited to a large-scale party, and I was most excited.

Sir William had organized a little soirée before the concert: drinks for a hundred in one of the Hall's hospitality suites; fifteen boxes hired on the company; then a sit-down dinner for a chosen dozen and the rest of us could piss off.

I arrived deliberately late at the Albert Hall, inspected my reflection in the ladies' powder room, and made my way along the deep red corridor to the Elgar Room. A uniformed attendant checked my name on a list and swung open the dark wooden door into a burst of light. The room was golden and all-a-glitter, the black-tied guests spilling down an ornamental staircase in the center of the room, and leaning on the gilt balustrades of the higher level. It was bizarre being in a room full of celebrities—you felt as if you knew everyone, but nobody knew you. I set off towards the table where drinks were being served, catching snatches of conversation as I squeezed my way along.

"Frankly, I have to say, it's not coming off the page..."

"You see the trouble with Melvyn..."

"Jerome, have you got the mobile?"

I felt a hand on my elbow.

"Mmmmm! The most gorgeous girl in the world. Oh, dear heaven, you look absolutely divine. My heart's going to go this time, I swear it. Absolutely convinced of it. Give me a kiss, my darling, do."

It was Dinsdale Warburton, one of my major authors, and an ancient giant of the English stage. Dinsdale had recently written his memoirs for us. He had a worried face, was queer as a coot, and unfailingly kind.

"But, my darling!" Dinsdale's brows were almost meeting in horror. "You do not have a drrink. But let us get you one! Let us get you one at once!"

Then his eyes were caught by something over my shoulder. "Oh! The most gorgeous man in the world. Dear boy, dear boy. You look absolutely divine. You know, I did love your whatever it was you did the other night. You looked so exquisitely clever and pretty."

Oliver Marchant was the editor and presenter of a successful and right-on arts program called Soft Focus. His reputation as the thinking-woman's man preceded him, but I had no idea he was going to be quite so devastating. Dinsdale was speaking to me: "Have you met this gorgeous man, my darling. Do you know Oliver Marchant?"

I panicked. How were you supposed to answer this question with famous people? Yes, I've seen you on the telly? No...in other words, I've never heard of you. "Yes, I mean...no. Sorry...pathetic."

Oliver took my hand. "And this is?"

"Ah. The most gorgeous girl in the world, dear boy, absolute goddess."

"Yes, but what is her name, Dinsdale?" said Oliver.

Dinsdale looked flummoxed for a moment. I absolutely couldn't believe he'd forgotten my name. I'd been working very closely with him for two months.

"I'm Rosie Richardson," I said apologetically.

"Pleased to meet you...Rosie Richardson," said Oliver.

He was long, lean and dark in a navy suit with an ordinary tie, not a bow tie, loosened at the neck. I noticed very precisely the way his black hair fell against his collar, the half shadow on his chin.

"Rosie, my darling, I'm off to get you a drink this second. On my way. You must be fainting with thirst," said Dinsdale and hurried off looking sheepish.

I turned to Oliver, to find he was now talking to a gray-haired newsreader. The newsreader had his teenage daughter with him.

"How's it going, mate?" said the newsreader, clapping Oliver on the shoulder.

"Oh, same old shit, you know. How are you, Sarah?"

Oliver spoke charmingly to the girl, who was getting even more flustered than I was. He glanced across and smiled at me as if to say, "Hang on."

"Bye-bye, Sarah," said Oliver sweetly, as the girl and her father prepared to move off. "Good luck with those exams." He gave her a little wave. "Dirty bitch," he said to me in an undertone, looking at the departing teenager. "Dying for it." I laughed. "So," he said, "are you having a lovely time?"

"Well, I find it very odd, to be honest," I said. "I've never been in a room with so many famous people before. They all seem to know each other. It's like a club. Do they all know each other?"

"You're right. I've always thought it was more of a new aristocracy, but you're absolutely right. It has more open membership. It's the Famous Club. The only membership requirement is that the public know who you are," he said, glancing disparagingly round the room.

"No, no, you're right, it is like an aristocracy," I said eagerly. "You know, the country estates and the hunting, and it's hereditary now: Julian Lennon, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen."

"It also inhabits every single first-class lounge and awards ceremony you ever pass through. But, actually, it is more like a club with its rules. You have to know the form. He who is less famous must wait to be approached by he who is more famous," Oliver said.

At this, Lady Hilary Ginsberg, Sir William's wife, interrupted him, rather knocking down his theory. "Oliver, I'm so thrilled to see you. How is the Lorca coming along?"

Oliver looked blank just for a moment. He didn't recognize her.

"Hilary Ginsberg, so pleased you could come," she said hastily, her back slightly turned to me, excluding me. "Have you met Martin?"

Lady Hilary was a tragic name-dropper. I had often bent with her over her dinner party celebrity lists, which were like a Dow Jones index of fame, with artists, actors, writers, journalists, moving up and down, depending on fashion, acts of God, or their own greediness for exposure. Lady Hilary seemed to have embraced this index as a yardstick for her entire life. I once heard her discuss, without irony, why a certain name was not a particularly good one to drop. Even her closest women friends would be invited to dinner parties with Sir William only when their value was up, otherwise it was lunch alone with her.

Oliver was continuing with the Famous Club theory. "You put two of them in a room full of noncelebs, they'll end up talking to each other, whether or not they've already met, providing...providing the more famous of the two approaches the other one first," Oliver went on. Everyone was laughing by this time. "Come on, Martin, you're a celeb, you must know it's true." As Oliver finished his sentence he turned his eyes to mine and kept looking.

Sir William appeared, booming behind us, startling everyone. "Come along, come along, heavens above, we're ver', ver' late, going to miss the trumpets," and seizing Oliver and the novelist by their elbows like an old hen, he bustled them out.

Oliver was seated behind me in the box. I spent the entire performance in a state of almost unbearable arousal. I fancied I could feel his breath on my neck and back in my low-cut dress. At one point his hand brushed my skin as if by accident. I almost died.

When the music stopped and the applause died down I daren't look at him. I stood surveying the emptying Albert Hall as everyone left the box, trying to calm down. I heard someone moving down the steps behind me. It was him. He bent and kissed the nape of my neck. At least I hoped it was him.

"I'm so sorry," Oliver murmured, "that was just something I had to do."

I looked round at him, trying to raise one eyebrow.

"I could murder a pizza," he whispered urgently. "Why don't you turn into a pizza?"

"Because I don't want to be murdered."

"I didn't mean murder...exactly."

And thus the obsession began, and a chain of events which was to lead me surely but circuitously to a mud hut in Africa. There are people, particularly in times of prominent famine, who become almost reverent when you say you are an aid worker. Actually, the reason I first got interested in Africa was because I fancied someone. That's about how saintly I am, if you really want to know. If Oliver had asked me out that night in the Albert Hall, I'd probably have never even heard of Nambula. As it was, Sir William interrupted us. "Oliver, Oliver, wherever have you got to? Come along, come along, grub's up!"

Typically, my employer ignored me. Oliver took an elegant-enough leave, but I still had to face the fact that he had allowed himself to be whisked off to dinner with the chosen few, after kissing my neck, without so much as a what's-your-phone-number.

For about a week after the Vivaldi Works Outing I was in a state of sexual overexcitement, convinced that Oliver would find out who I was and call.

But Oliver didn't ring. He didn't ring. I reached out for any form of contact possible. I started arranging an unnatural number of evenings with a friend who had worked for him four years ago. I watched Soft Focus three times a week. I rang the Soft Focus press office for the list of the next three months' programs to see if any of them had anything remotely to do with any of our authors. I went to exhibitions on Sundays. I started reading extraordinarily dull articles in the arts pages about East European spatter-print painters. No luck. Zilch.

Reprinted from Cause Celeb by Helen Fielding by permission of Viking Books, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright (c) 2001 by Helen Fielding. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Read a Sample Chapter

Chapter One

It used to seem extraordinary to me that someone like Henry could actually exist, extraordinary that a person could be transported into an environment so alien to his own, and remain so utterly unaffected by his surroundings. It was as if he had been coated with a very strong sealant, the sort of thing they use to paint on oceangoing yachts.

    Henry was spreading thick cut luxury marmalade from a Fortnum and Mason's jar on a piece of Nambulan unleavened bread.

    "Got up this morning, didn't Boris Believe it—family of eight outside my hut wanting to move their tent nearer the river. I said to the chap, `I thought this was a bloody refugee camp, not a holiday camp, but you go ahead, mate, by all means. Never mind the old malnutrition—you go for the view.'"

    Breakfast was taken in Safila, just after dawn. It was a quiet time, the hour before the heat became intolerable, with the silence broken only by the rooster and Henry, who was incapable of shutting up except when he was asleep. I was particularly annoyed by Henry that morning, because I suspected he had started an affair with one of our more emotionally fragile nurses, Sian. She was sitting next to him now, giving him a look you could have spread on a piece of toast. Sian was a sweet-natured girl who had joined us two months ago, after returning early from night shift to find her husband of eighteen months in bed with a Turkish minicab driver. Her therapy was being continued via correspondence.

    Betty was talking about food as usual. "Do you know, what I couldreally eat now is a pudding. Mind you, I say that. Bread-and-butter pudding. Oooh, lovely, with raisins and a bit of nutmeg. I wonder if Kamal could do us a bread-and-butter pudding if we made that biscuit tin into an oven?"

    It was five-thirty in the morning. I got up from the table, walked outside and sighed. How the tiny irritations of life filled the mind out here, keeping the big horrors at bay. I dipped a cup into the water pot, and walked to the edge of the hill to brush my teeth.

    Our compound was behind me, with its round mud huts, showers, latrines and the cabana where we took our meals. Before me was the sandy basin which housed Safila camp, a great scar in the desert. The light was very soft at that time, the sun pale, just clearing the horizon. Clustered over a pattern of hummocks and paths, leading down to the point where the two blue rivers met, were the huts which housed the refugees. Five years ago, during the great mid-eighties famine, there were sixty thousand of them, and a hundred a day were dying. Now twenty thousand remained. The rest had gone back over the border to Kefti, to the mountains and the war.

    A gust of hot wind made the dry grasses rustle. I was bothered by more than Henry that morning. A rumor was circulating in the camp about a locust plague back in Kefti, which was threatening the harvest. There were often scare stories in the camp of one kind or another: it was hard to know what to believe. We'd heard talk of a new influx of refugees on their way to us again, maybe thousands.

    Sounds were beginning to rise from the camp now, goats being herded, laughter, children playing, contented sounds. Once, the great swathe of cries which rose to us here were those which went with starvation and death. I bit the side of my thumb, and tried not to remember. I couldn't think back to that time again. Footsteps were coming from the cabana. Henry was sauntering across the compound and back to his hut. He was wearing his favorite T-shirt, which featured a motif set out like a multiple choice questionnaire for relief workers.

    (a) Missionary?

    (b) Mercenary?

    (c) Misfit?

    (d) Broken heart?

Henry had ticked (b), which was a joke since his family owned half of northeast England. Me? I was a c/d hybrid and soft in the head to boot.

* * *

In London in the summer of 1985 I was afflicted by a crush, which is a terrible thing to happen to a woman. I met Oliver, the object of my rampant imaginings, at a gala performance of Vivaldi's Gloria at the Royal Albert Hall. I was what was known as a puffette: a publicist in a publishing company, Ginsberg and Fink. I wiggled around in short skirts, legs in sheer black tights crossing and uncrossing in meetings, then kept going on and on about people not being interested in my mind. Funny how at twenty-five you worry about not being taken seriously and take being a sex object for granted. Later you take being taken seriously for granted, and worry about not being a sex object.

    Our company chairman, Sir William Ginsberg, liked to put together little gatherings of the arty and the talented from all walks of life, not revealing to the guests in advance who the other guests would be. For all the ill-informed like me these gatherings were a total nightmare. You feared to ask anyone what they did lest they turned out to be the author of Love in the Time of Cholera, or one of the Beach Boys.

    I had been to three dinner parties at Sir William's house. I wasn't sure he remembered quite who I was. He employed several young girls and always used to invite one or two of us along because of our fine minds, presumably. I spent the evenings in a state of awed nervousness, saying very little. But I liked meeting these creative interesting people. I wanted to fit in. This was the first time I had been invited to a large-scale party, and I was most excited.

    Sir William had organized a little soirée before the concert: drinks for a hundred in one of the Hall's hospitality suites; fifteen boxes hired on the company; then a sit-down dinner for a chosen dozen and the rest of us could piss off.

    I arrived deliberately late at the Albert Hall, inspected my reflection in the ladies' powder room, and made my way along the deep red corridor to the Elgar Room. A uniformed attendant checked my name on a list and swung open the dark wooden door into a burst of light. The room was golden and all-a-glitter, the black-tied guests spilling down an ornamental staircase in the center of the room, and leaning on the gilt balustrades of the higher level. It was bizarre being in a room full of celebrities—you felt as if you knew everyone, but nobody knew you. I set off towards the table where drinks were being served, catching snatches of conversation as I squeezed my way along.

    "Frankly, I have to say, it's not coming off the page ..."

    "You see the trouble with Melvyn ..."

    "Jerome, have you got the mobile?"

    I felt a hand on my elbow.

    "Mmmmm! The most gorgeous girl in the world. Oh, dear heaven, you look absolutely divine. My heart's going to go this time, I swear it. Absolutely convinced of it. Give me a kiss, my darling, do."

    It was Dinsdale Warburton, one of my major authors, and an ancient giant of the English stage. Dinsdale had recently written his memoirs for us. He had a worried face, was queer as a coot, and unfailingly kind.

    "But, my darling!" Dinsdale's brows were almost meeting in horror. "You do not have a drink. But let us get you one! Let us get you one at once!"

    Then his eyes were caught by something over my shoulder. "Oh! The most gorgeous man in the world. Dear boy, dear boy. You look absolutely divine. You know, I did love your whatever it was you did the other night. You looked so exquisitely clever and pretty."

    Oliver Marchant was the editor and presenter of a successful and right-on arts program called Soft Focus. His reputation as the thinking-woman's man preceded him, but I had no idea he was going to be quite so devastating. Dinsdale was speaking to me: "Have you met this gorgeous man, my darling. Do you know Oliver Marchant?"

    I panicked. How were you supposed to answer this question with famous people? Yes, I've seen you on the telly? No ... in other words, I've never heard of you. "Yes, I mean ... no. Sorry ... pathetic."

    Oliver took my hand. "And this is?"

    "Ah. The most gorgeous girl in the world, dear boy, absolute goddess."

    "Yes, but what is her name, Dinsdale?" said Oliver.

    Dinsdale looked flummoxed for a moment. I absolutely couldn't believe he'd forgotten my name. I'd been working very closely with him for two months.

    "I'm Rosie Richardson," I said apologetically.

    "Pleased to meet you ... Rosie Richardson," said Oliver.

    He was long, lean and dark in a navy suit with an ordinary tie, not a bow tie, loosened at the neck. I noticed very precisely the way his black hair fell against his collar, the half shadow on his chin.

    "Rosie, my darling, I'm off to get you a drink this second. On my way. You must be fainting with thirst," said Dinsdale and hurried off looking sheepish.

    I turned to Oliver, to find he was now talking to a gray-haired newsreader. The newsreader had his teenage daughter with him.

    "How's it going, mate?" said the newsreader, clapping Oliver on the shoulder.

    "Oh, same old shit, you know. How are you, Sarah?"

    Oliver spoke charmingly to the girl, who was getting even more flustered than I was. He glanced across and smiled at me as if to say, "Hang on."

    "Bye-bye, Sarah," said Oliver sweetly, as the girl and her father prepared to move off. "Good luck with those exams." He gave her a little wave. "Dirty bitch," he said to me in an undertone, looking at the departing teenager. "Dying for it." I laughed. "So," he said, "are you having a lovely time?"

    "Well, I find it very odd, to be honest," I said. "I've never been in a room with so many famous people before. They all seem to know each other. It's like a club. Do they all know each other?"

    "You're right. I've always thought it was more of a new aristocracy, but you're absolutely right. It has more open membership. It's the Famous Club. The only membership requirement is that the public know who you are," he said, glancing disparagingly round the room.

    "No, no, you're right, it is like an aristocracy," I said eagerly. "You know, the country estates and the hunting, and it's hereditary now: Julian Lennon, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen."

    "It also inhabits every single first-class lounge and awards ceremony you ever pass through. But, actually, it is more like a club with its rules. You have to know the form. He who is less famous must wait to be approached by he who is more famous," Oliver said.

    At this, Lady Hilary Ginsberg, Sir William's wife, interrupted him, rather knocking down his theory. "Oliver, I'm so thrilled to see you. How is the Lorca coming along?"

    Oliver looked blank just for a moment. He didn't recognize her.

    "Hilary Ginsberg, so pleased you could come," she said hastily, her back slightly turned to me, excluding me. "Have you met Martin?"

    Lady Hilary was a tragic name-dropper. I had often bent with her over her dinner party celebrity lists, which were like a Dow Jones index of fame, with artists, actors, writers, journalists, moving up and down, depending on fashion, acts of God, or their own greediness for exposure. Lady Hilary seemed to have embraced this index as a yardstick for her entire life. I once heard her discuss, without irony, why a certain name was not a particularly good one to drop. Even her closest women friends would be invited to dinner parties with Sir William only when their value was up, otherwise it was lunch alone with her.

    Oliver was continuing with the Famous Club theory. "You put two of them in a room full of noncelebs, they'll end up talking to each other, whether or not they've already met, providing ... providing the more famous of the two approaches the other one first," Oliver went on. Everyone was laughing by this time. "Come on, Martin, you're a celeb, you must know it's true." As Oliver finished his sentence he turned his eyes to mine and kept looking.

    Sir William appeared, booming behind us, startling everyone. "Come along, come along, heavens above, we're ver', ver' late, going to miss the trumpets," and seizing Oliver and the novelist by their elbows like an old hen, he bustled them out.

    Oliver was seated behind me in the box. I spent the entire performance in a state of almost unbearable arousal. I fancied I could feel his breath on my neck and back in my low-cut dress. At one point his hand brushed my skin as if by accident. I almost died.

    When the music stopped and the applause died down I daren't look at him. I stood surveying the emptying Albert Hall as everyone left the box, trying to calm down. I heard someone moving down the steps behind me. It was him. He bent and kissed the nape of my neck. At least I hoped it was him.

    "I'm so sorry," Oliver murmured, "that was just something I had to do."

    I looked round at him, trying to raise one eyebrow.

    "I could murder a pizza," he whispered urgently. "Why don't you turn into a pizza?"

    "Because I don't want to be murdered."

    "I didn't mean murder ... exactly."

    And thus the obsession began, and a chain of events which was to lead me surely but circuitously to a mud hut in Africa. There are people, particularly in times of prominent famine, who become almost reverent when you say you are an aid worker. Actually, the reason I first got interested in Africa was because I fancied someone. That's about how saintly I am, if you really want to know. If Oliver had asked me out that night in the Albert Hall, I'd probably have never even heard of Nambula. As it was, Sir William interrupted us. "Oliver, Oliver, wherever have you got to? Come along, come along, grub's up!"

    Typically, my employer ignored me. Oliver took an elegant-enough leave, but I still had to face the fact that he had allowed himself to be whisked off to dinner with the chosen few, after kissing my neck, without so much as a what's-your-phone-number.

    For about a week after the Vivaldi Works Outing I was in a state of sexual overexcitement, convinced that Oliver would find out who I was and call.

    But Oliver didn't ring. He didn't ring. I reached out for any form of contact possible. I started arranging an unnatural number of evenings with a friend who had worked for him four years ago. I watched Soft Focus three times a week. I rang the Soft Focus press office for the list of the next three months' programs to see if any of them had anything remotely to do with any of our authors. I went to exhibitions on Sundays. I started reading extraordinarily dull articles in the arts pages about East European spatter-print painters. No luck. Zilch.