As I said to Gwyneth last year, it's all very well having a house in town, a house in the country and a house in another country or two, but why can't you put all that property together and just have one big space? That was before Madonna, then Jamie Oliver, bought the properties next door to their houses and knocked them through, creating superhomes - and now I hear Gwyneth's doing it, too. Natalia drove past her house in Belsize Park a couple of weeks ago and spotted the builders at work.
Seeing as Gwynnie's stopped speaking to me since I called her blog, Goop.com, a pale imitation of my weekly column, I had to chat up one of her labourers on his lunch break to get him to spill the beans. Apparently, removing the connecting walls will create eight rooms on the lower-ground floor, six on the upper ground, five on the first floor and eight on the second floor. Oh, and they're doing a two-storey extension at the side to add a gym.
"She's really stolen my thunder," I huffed to Natalia. "But at least she hasn't created the same massive roof terrace that I'm planning. I just need to get rid of Nigella and Charles from next door - just think of the parties I can have up there."
"Darling," Natalia said, giving me her serious look, which, since she can't move her face, is all in the finger-wagging, "don't you think you've been overdoing it lately? Ever since we got back from St Tropez, you've been partying nonstop. You know, I read on that wonderfully inspirational website Goop.com," - I gave her a steely stare - "that staying in really is good for the soul."
If even Natalia is attempting to raise her immovable eyebrows at your late-night activities, you know you need to be worried, but I assured her I'm only doing it for the love of the job. After all, I need material to write about each week. It's not that I enjoy jetting around, but I do it because I know that you, dear reader, would never get invited yourself. I'm the Robin Hood of the party circuit, spreading news of the wealthy to the ears of the poor. Is it my fault that everything fun involves champagne?