Monday

I’m sitting at the breakfast bar in my immaculate home back in Beverly Hills, eating a tofu salad, with my adorable perfect children at my feet. Putting down the celebrity papers, I call my image consultant.

“It didn’t work,” I tell him. “Everybody thinks I was rubbish.” “Sweetie,” says the image consultant. “You’re, like, killing me. Are we talking about the MTV Video Music Awards in Las Vegas?” “We are,” I tell him.

“Well,” he says, crossly. “You can’t have done it properly.” “I did,” I say. “Just like you said. I had blank eyes. I had dead hair. I wore the cheap, shiny underwear. Tart boots. I even had a little bit of belly hanging out.” “Nice touch. And people weren’t blown away?” I glance down at the headlines. “No,” I say.

My chief image consultant sighs. “Next time,” he says, “more belly.”

Tuesday

The kids and I are in a limousine. The image consultant has picked us up, for my first public appearance since the MTV appearance.

“Okay!” he says, as we pull up outside a liquor store. “Do we all have our chocolate bars? And our bumper-sized buckets of KFC?” My son, who is a toddler, starts to snivel. “Don’t worry, honey,” I say.

“Just hold it. You don’t need to eat it. We’ll get you a nice cereal bar when we get home, okay?” Through the tinted windows, I can already see the flashbulbs popping. I reach for the door handle.

“What are we forgetting?” snaps the image consultant.

I wriggle back in my seat. “Sorry,” I say, and hand him my panties.

Wednesday

A busy conference suite in a Los Angeles hotel. I’m looking out of the window. There is a tramp rooting through a trash can. I wonder if he’s happier than me.

“Listen up, people!” says the image consultant, and all my team from the record company fall quiet. “Reinvention is the name of the game!” Whenever Madonna’s career dipped, he says, she just found a new image. ‘Catholic Madonna’. ‘Porno Madonna’. ‘Earth Mother Madonna’. ‘English Country House Madonna’.

Kylie does it, too. Now the image guys have decided that ‘Slightly Sedated Trailer Trash Single Mum Britney’ is the Britney the public wants to see.

I turn from the window, and stamp my foot. “Wait” I say. “Are we sure? What do real people think? See that tramp out there? We should talk to him.” The image consultant claps his hands in delight. “Better still,” he says, “You should marry him.”

Thursday

It is to be a very short engagement. Maybe I need a new image consultant. The other day, I got a call from somebody in England who works for a guy called Pete Doherty. He had some very interesting ideas.

Friday

So I’m in the limousine again, on the way to Las Vegas for what will be my third wedding. Apparently the tramp guy (who is thrilled) turned up this morning, scrubbed and dressed and looking insufficiently trampish. The record company had him chased by some dogs, and then gave him a bottle of methylated spirit. All good now.

My image consultant is on his knees in front of me, applying fake ketchup stains and flecks of vomit to the front of my white wedding dress.

“Wait!” I say, brushing him off. “Stop the car. Do I really have to marry a tramp? There’s this guy in England called Pete Doherty. His belly is tiny. He doesn’t do any of this stuff. He just gets arrested, and writes rubbish poetry in blood. And he’s always in the papers.” “Seriously?” says the image consultant. “And people buy his records?” “Ah,” I say. “Good point. Drive on.”

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