Who ate all the pies?

"I've had my 15 minutes," Edie Sedgwick and other Warhol chums would happily announce. "I'm passing it on to Nelly the cleaning lady and going off to live in a commune. Here you are, Nelly, have fun", they would indubitably declare, having enjoyed their bite of the pie of fame (which I'm picturing as cherry, but you may insert whichever filling you like into the image) and stopped short of gluttony to avoid indigestion. Yes.

Not so now, in a culture so celeb-saturated that people think nothing of scoffing down entire pies to themselves in a few short weeks, then demanding that Heat magazine bake them more.

To suggest that Jade Goody may have eaten more than her fair share of pies would, of course, be contrary to the latest pictures of her; bikini-clad and svelte, gracing the cover of some such publication this week (it may have been the Financial Times, but don't quote me on that), but you can appreciate the irony.

To rub salt into the pie (as it were), it seems that while quantity is increasing, the quality of fame is inversely declining.

While in Andy's day, the pies were largely tasty, and deep-filled with talent, probably from Sainsbury's Finest range or similar, now they are more often than not dry, limp offerings with a mere smidgen of cherry filling, purchased from economy ranges for the price of a TV audition or D-list kiss-and-tell.

Similar to Mary Poppins' memorable remark to the Banks children about "pie-crust promises", it seems that pie-crust fame is also "easily made, easily broken".

It requires no more talent than a penchant for expletives and implants, or, say . . . filling 300 words of column space with an analogy about pie. Which ends here, I promise.

The point of the last few paragraphs, other than giving you an all-consuming craving for a nice slice of steak and kidney, was to say that celebrity just doesn't have the kudos it used to.

Especially not since moving to London, which is like living in a celebrity safari park.

Instead of confined to the TV and pages of magazines, they roam the streets wild and free, and Joe Public can watch the creatures in their natural habitat.

In a fantastic example of living up to one's surname (a demand I feel more strongly than most people), Amy Winehouse's natural habitat seems to be my local pub.

A teeny-tiny, leather jacket-clad figure supporting an enormous Marge Simpson-esque bouffant of matted black hair, she rolls in with a distinct air of 'I'm completely normal and unstarry . . . but don't look directly at me, peasant', while everyone stares intently into their pint glasses and tries to pretend they haven't noticed her (or indeed just bought her album for their mum).

Last Thursday, she stole my friend's seat. Make that lady's pie of the humble variety.

The cardinal sin of celebdom, of course, is to acknowledge that so-and-so is actually famous when you walk past them on the street/ serve them in a shop/are made godparent to their first-born.