2002-12-05 - 9:32 p.m.

A minorish celebrity was arrested on suspicion of rape today �in arrangement with the police�. Famous people don�t do getting arrested the normal way, you see � they have a much more civilised time of it. The thought of calling up the rozzers and arranging to be arrested intrigues me, though:

�Excuse me, I�m a dreary presenter who has allegedly raped another dreary celebrity. Could I arrange to be arrested, do you think?�

�Certainly sir, and thanks for calling our celebrity arrest helpline. We offer a wide range of incarceration services for the busy talentless dross-about-town. If I could just run them by you��

�Certainly��

�Well, our bronze service is your basic package. You�re woken up in the night by uniformed thugs shining a torch in your face. There�s substantial amounts of actual bodily harm, you�re thrown roughly into the back of a van with assorted child molesters, crack dealers and record company executives, and there�s the option of having one of our officers plant some �gear� on you if you�re looking to �street� up your image.�

�Hmmm. No, that�s not really what I was in the market for��

�Well, our silver service entails a couple of senior officers turning up at your house at a more civilised hour, only remedial amounts of kneeing you in the groin, you get taken to the station in a squad car, sharing the back seat with an insider trader and high ranking member of a terrorist cell, and that includes unlimited refills of tea for the entire duration of your time in the nick.�

�Well, that�s a bit more like it, but is there anything better?�

�That would be our gold service, sir. You�re arrested in front of the reptilian hordes of London�s press by the chief inspector, who will let you bash him around a bit on the way to your personal squad car, just to make you look tough. There�s a walk-through check-in service as you arrive and a choice of lattes and frappucinos throughout the interview process. Our Frequent Offenders programme offers you the chance to build up enough publicity for the frenzied media to totally skew the case by its saturation coverage, making a fair trial completely impossible and allowing you to walk away with only a sullied reputation and a minor chance of being on TV again, subject to the public�s short term memory loss.�

�Oh, that sounds perfect! Could you organise for a litany of former girlfriends to be publicly discredited too?�

�Certainly sir, how will you be paying?�

�Er�.do you take souls?�