Simon Hoggart&#39;s week: In Kerry Katona&#39;s world, hacking is a help

Staying in the news is vital for celebrities who are only known for being famous

?Daniel Boorstin, the American writer, said "the celebrity is someone who is known for his well-knownness". I thought of this when reading about Kerry Katona, who's been on Celebrity Big Brother. She says her phone was hacked by the News of the World which made her feel "violated", but she admitted the material they'd got had revived her ebbing fame. She may be the only person to acknowledge that being hacked was a good career move.

Have you heard of Kerry Katona? She used to be a pop singer. She is nothing now except a celebrity, a husk whose only property is her well-knownness and her private life. She probably won't have another hit, she certainly won't score for England, or appear as Ophelia in a bold new production of Hamlet. If people don't know what man she's seeing, how much she is in debt, or what drugs she's on, she has no existence at all.

When her role in the TV show ends, she will disappear like a wraith, until she crops up in OK! or Heat, talking about a new man, how much she is in debt, or how she ended her drugs hell. What an awful life.

?Brung, brung! It is Barry Cryer, the nation's gagmeister-general, obligatory clearing house for all jokes. He is just back from Edinburgh.

"Did you hear about the bloke who bought a bottle of liquid Viagra?" he inquires. "He drank Tippex by mistake, and woke up with an enormous correction."

?I ask him about the spat between Boris Johnson and Bob Marshall-Andrews about who owns this gag. In version 1 Marshall-Andrews is in a cab to Heathrow. The driver keeps looking at him inquisitively in the rear-view mirror, and finally asks: "Aren't you going to give me a clue?" Marshall-Andrews says: "All right, I used to be an MP, I'm sometimes on television?"

"Nah," says the driver, "Which terminal do you want?" In version 2 Boris tells the story about himself, and Marshall-Andrews feels he has nicked it.

The yarn can't be true, since the terminal is the first question any driver asks. And Barry confirms that it is a truly ancient joke. I expect it was popular when Holmes and Watson were in a hackney carriage and the driver kept bending down to peer at them. "I work as a detective, and have had some success," says Holmes.

"No, sir, which platform at Paddington do you want?"

?To Ely on business, and a chance to see again the fabulous cathedral, visible from miles around, as its great towers dominate not only the small market town but the fens that stretch round to the horizon. It even dominates the overarching East Anglian sky.

So of course they hold their annual "rave in the nave" there, a party for Christian and possibly convertible yoof. They're already advertising next year's bash. It includes top bands, "Wii dancing", a giant pillow fight, a "mechanical rodeo bull rider", an "interactive spirit zone", and a series of lectures entitled Live2totheMax talks for young people. For those for whom this hectic excitement is not enough, there is to be a Christian bookshop.

I left, slightly depressed, wondering if the monks who lived and worshipped on this site 1,300 years ago ever fretted about "getting down wid da kidz". Possibly not.

?I go to two or three sports events a year, and last weekend found me at the Oval, watching Ian Bell almost reach 300. There I had the misfortune to sit behind the Stander. He attends everywhere and finds it very hard to stay seated. As soon as he arrives, he is on his feet scanning the nearby rows for his mates. "Oy, does your missus know you're out, hurr, hurr?" he bellows. "'Ere, worrabout that pint you owe me, Dez?" He always has a reason to stand, if only to scratch himself.

When the match begins it takes nothing to get the Stander up again. This doesn't much matter in cricket, since the event ? a four or a wicket ? has already occurred by the time he has spotted it. But at football or rugby it's lethal, as he blocks your view of the penalty area or the brilliant run for the try line. And if the ref makes a decision he dislikes, he is up again, as if the extra height means the wretched official will be able more readily to benefit from his screeched advice. Powerful electric shocks may be the only answer.

?I love book festivals, but I think some of them are beginning to have a laugh at the expense of the writers. They warned me in Edinburgh that they proposed to charge for my wife to share our hotel room, but when the 570 tickets for my turn sold out and nothing was said at reception, I assumed they'd changed their minds. After all, no other festival would dream of being so mean.

But two days ago Barclaycard informed me that �70 had been deducted from my card. Since the festival must have taken nearly �5,000 on the door for my talk (the fee is tiny), this struck me as incredibly tight-fisted. Naturally I won't ever go back, so this tightwad attitude will cost them much more than they save.

?Labels: Brian Palmer bought a Breville electric toaster. "Do not immerse in water," it warns. Amanda Wragg saw in a butcher's in Holmfirth: "Pensioner-sized chickens" ? big enough to feed an entire old folks' home, I'd guess. Paul Walsh found a pack of Chinese-style spare ribs in an Iceland store: "Warning, contains bones," it says.

Lindsey Lockeretz of Surbiton was puzzled by the local Chinese buffet. "Adults �9.95. Child up to 1.45 metres, �4.95". Do they have a measure on the wall, and do dishonest parents dress their children in baggy trousers, so they can covertly bend their knees?