Celebrity synergy

It's just so hard to keep up. One minute, a 'friend' is someone with whom you've formed an emotional bond or who you've shared something with, like history, say, or alcohol, or, on occasion only and with subsequent bitter, bitter regret, bodily fluids.

And, then, whoosh, the world turns, and there's some sort of linguistic seepage and 'friendship' comes to signify the kind of relationship that is said to exist between Johnny Depp and Carol Vorderman. Yes, apparently, they're 'friends'. Johnny, it is alleged, has moved close to Carol's house near Bath and has been seen hanging out with her and chatting about private schools.

Where there used to be two major classes of friendship - male and largely sporting-based, and female and largely emotion-based - there is now a third: celebrity, based on the twin pillars of fleeting geographic proximity and rampant self-interest.

Of course, all friendship is predicated on levels of self-interest, it's just that celebrities have a way of sloughing off centuries' worth of civilisation and culture to strip it back down to its raw animal instincts. How else to explain Jade Goody's recently reported acquaintance with Prince Haji Abdul Azim, the son of the Sultan of Brunei and worth an estimated £20bn?

'The prince is an amazing friend. I've met so many people through him, like Johnny Depp and Mariah Carey,' Goody told a newspaper recently, suggesting, simultaneously, that Depp has become Now magazine's bitch and that every reference to the word 'friend' could be replaced with the word 'sucker' with no apparent loss of meaning.

When Karl Lagerfeld had dinner recently with Tony Blair in St Tropez, what precisely was going on there? Is Karl's sartorial advice on how to wear leather fingerless gloves really a fair exchange for Tony's comments on exactly how that dossier was not and never has been dodgy? And if not, who, exactly, is the winner and who the loser here?

The fact is that weird and illogical couplings crop up in celebrityland all the time - Nicolas Sarkozy-Carla Bruni, Salman Rushdie-Padma Lakshmi, Lembit Opik-Miss Cheeky - but at least sex is some sort of excuse, by which I mean an older, richer man will make a fool of himself time and again with a younger, prettier woman. But even as the basis for something as superficial as celebrity friendship, pert breasts and a neat bottom won't get you all that far.

Or will they? Flicking through a copy of OK! a couple of months ago, I couldn't help notice that as well as all the usual suspects who turned up to Elton John's annual black and white ball - Victoria Beckham, Cilla Black, Liz Hurley - there was a picture of Liberty X's Michelle Heaton. Allow me to refresh your memory - some bint from a defunct pop group created by the losers of a reality TV show long, long ago. If Heaton can be picked out of the stray celebrity shelter, then I can't see why - with the help of a plastic surgeon and a radical career rethink - we, too, couldn't be dear, dear chums.

Except, who would want to be celebrity friends anyhow? The least joyous social occasion I've ever witnessed was a birthday dinner in a restaurant for Paul McCartney, where the guests were his daughter, Stella, Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Martin, Chrissie Hynde and Bono, presumably because no one else who was famous and also a vegetarian was free that night. They sat down at eight and after enjoying two courses of healthful vegan food were done by 9.30 - which, had it been my birthday, would have sent me running out into the night to find Amy Winehouse's crackpipe.

I seem to have slightly defeated my point there, which is this: celebrities are not real people and celebrity friends are not real friends, as even Amy seems to be figuring out. Count your blessings, otherwise known as your pals, and just be grateful that you don't have to make macrobiotic chitchat with Chris Martin on your birthday.

carole.cadwalladr@observer.co.uk