Is It time up for Lady V?

For Lady Victoria Hervey it was a deeply humiliating moment. At the Givenchy couture show in Paris a week ago, the self-styled It girl would have expected a front-row VIP place alongside other celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow.

"Imagine Victoria's shock as the seating people from Givenchy shook their heads and guided her to the fifth row in the Musèe de Decoratif at the Louvre," says one onlooker. "While Gwyneth Paltrow was invited backstage after the show, I hear Victoria didn't get so much as a look-in. It was a bit of a comedown, especially as she's a terrible snob."

So it seems. On a couple of occasions recently the six-foot, 25-year-old sister of the Marquess of Bristol has reportedly flounced out of London parties, declaring they're not smart enough for her. At one Mayfair dinner she was heard to opine: "What's an A-list person like me doing at this C-list gathering?" before her own mother, ex-secretary Yvonne, told her to sit down and shut up. And at the Berkeley Hotel's Blue Bar in Knightsbridge to celebrate the new book of bestselling author Wendy Holden, Lady Victoria - nicknamed Brains - sailed through the door ignoring the very person who had invited her there.

"She cruised past Wendy towards the champagne without so much as a good evening. Embarrassingly, Wendy was completely blanked and left with her hand in mid-air. Victoria either couldn't remember what party she was at or now believes she's so superior that everyone who wants to speak to her is a hanger-on," recalls a guest.

It's the type of behaviour that gives It girls a bad name. But then Lady Victoria, who took over where the likeable and refreshingly honest Tara Palmer-Tomkinson left off, has never had a massive fan club. And it seems to be getting smaller and smaller. In the backbiting world of the London party set, the word is that she's had her day.

"The trouble is Victoria is very arrogant," says a society-watcher who knows her well. "At one posh dinner where she got invited because of her It-girl status, she spent the whole time sending text messages on her lime-green mobile phone. She didn't speak to anyone else around the table until finally a well-connected PR man leaned over to tell her to stop being rude and start singing for her supper.

"One night a group of my friends were hanging out in a club Attica, I think. They were drinking champagne and having a really nice evening. Then up stalked Victoria Hervey. She told them their table was only for VIPs like herself and tried to get the bouncers to throw them out."

But what exactly fuels her apparent self-belief that she's someone who matters? Even her weekly column in The Sunday Times Style section was quietly dropped a few months ago after only a year. It never lived up to the previous one by Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, with whom there is no love lost - "I think Victoria is cringey and tragic and I don't care who knows it. She just tries to emulate me," declares the latter. However hard they tried, her editors apparently couldn't present her as someone the readers either liked or cared about.

She isn't exactly renowned for her sense of humour. While posing for an anti-smoking campaign last year, for example, she walked off in a huff when one of the photographers jokingly called her Tamara.

Even her venture into shopkeeping with friend Jane Blight (their relationship has now somewhat cooled), ended in tears. The Belgravia shop, Akademi, selling T-shirts at £100 and insanely impractical mohair boots at £300, went belly-up owing £350,000. Eight months after its bankruptcy, the upmarket shop has reopened on the same site, this time as Ajanta, with 25-year-old Lady V taking a backroom role as consultant and director. While previous investors must be pulling out their hair at her impudence - she only lost £20, the amount of her original investment, when the first enterprise collapsed and designers including Scott Henshall, Louise Barthes and Miguel Adrover were left out of pocket - Lady Victoria is busy trying to get the new venture some publicity.

Some cynics claim that this is the reason she has been spotted canoodling with Top of the Pops presenter Jamie Theakston recently. "They spent the whole evening in the corner of the bar, so engrossed they wouldn't have noticed if a bomb had gone off. Jamie kept whispering in Victoria's ear and she was giggling at everything he said. She looked like the eyelash fluttering champion of the world," reported one of the guests at a Versace party in Paris 10 days ago. Afterwards, Hervey is said to have asked if a photograph had been snapped of them together.

But as Lady V's status slides from A to Z list, who can she turn to for comfort? Friends of Hervey are harder to find than spiteful anecdotes. Jemma Kidd, the 26-year-old society make-up artist, is often snapped at her side, as is Rocky Mazzilli, 20, of the members only Voyage fashion boutique. "Away from the limelight she's very sweet," he argues. "I think she may now go on the stage; she'd like to act. Or even open a club."

But despite the title, looks, walk-on part in Ab Fab, the high-profile column, the invitation to every party in town on the arms of eligible men, including racing driver David Coulthard, property tycoon Damian Aspinall, Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall and millionaire restaurateur Mogens Tholstrup, Hervey has let real success slip through her fingers. There have been too many ill-thought out appearances: in a small pair of knickers and huge pair of sunglasses on Page Three of The Sun; in a tiny diamantè-studded triangle bikini at the opening of Hamptons International's Barbados division at the Mandarin Oriental hotel, and sporting a slinky red dress for a lad-titillating magazine spread in The Sun, under the headline Top Toff Totty.

And although she shares a London agent with Frankie Dettori and Vinnie Jones, hopes of becoming a Hollywood superstar - said to be harboured by her ambitious mother Yvonne, who was secretary to the sixth Marquess of Bristol before becoming his third wife - now seem far-fetched to say the least.

"Victoria is on the right side of pretty and most of the time dresses very well indeed," points out one former lunch companion. "She's incredibly smart. But she's not very good company. She rarely asks any questions and discourages anyone else from asking her questions too. She only seems interested in herself, and that has put so many people off her. When Tara Palmer-Tomkinson made mistakes she was forgiven, but not Lady Victoria Hervey."

So what now for the bright girl who left Benenden with three A-levels and gave up a place at Bristol University to take up modelling? "I'm not like those It girls of five years ago when it was just party, party, party. If you think of those other girls - and I'm not going to name them - they never had a proper job. I do," insists the aristo. It's just that nobody knows what exactly it is.