Snorting stars

A little while ago, I went to see a Harley Street surgeon about a breathing disorder. (mine, not his.) "I see," breathed the surgeon in his special calm voice, as he scanned the notes which had been sent on from my GP, "that you are a journalist and broadcaster." I must advise you, with your condition, to avoid taking cocaine." But I don't!" I protested. The surgeon raised a special surgical eyebrow, and returned to his notes.

It used to be that everyone in the media took charlie. But things have developed: now, everyone in the media takes charlie and everyone knows that they do.

The doctors know. The cab drivers know. The hairdressers know. The only people who seem taken aback by Angus Deayton's little habit are the top brass at the BBC, and they're so shocked they fired him for it.

Meanwhile, as the general public nodded wearily at tabloid photos of John Leslie rolling up a £20 note, his fate was sealed by the bosses at Granada.

But of course they take it! We are talking about celebrities here. These are people who want to be recognised in the street. They want to earn money in short, giant bursts. They want excitement, bright lights and fast pleasures. Who, in heaven's name, would believe that they don't also want the quick-fix, bright-light, arrogance-boosting drug?

Personally, I am no fan of the cocaine crowd. To the amazement of my doctor, I actually don't use it myself. I once had it rubbed on my gums by a minor celebrity - not Michael Barrymore, but watch this space - and felt an unpleasant oral numbness as though I was about to get a filling. I never tried it again, so I allow myself the quiet pleasure of feeling superior to those who do.

Ian Hislop seems to feel much the same about Deayton's sexual antics - but Ian Hislop is a happily married and church-going father of two. I'm not, so I keep my own counsel about the sex stuff. On the coke charge, I treat myself to a little smugness.

I don't believe that anybody should be fired or jailed for taking cocaine, I just believe they should be laughed at by me. It is a drug which gives people an over-inflated sense of how entertaining and important they are, and it seems to be taken by people whose sense of that is overinflated anyway.

For a fishmonger, there's no excuse. But for a television performer, you can understand it. What a strange thing to do for a living: infiltrate people's homes at night on the weird assumption that your conversation is more interesting than theirs. I'm almost more disturbed by the TV stars who can have that self-belief without cocaine.

Don't kid yourself that the BBC is really shocked. They know perfectly well that many of their regular performers are drug-users. They're just hoping that the others can be more discreet about it - if they fired everyone who had a snort, there'd be nothing on TV except cartoons. And possibly Ian McCaskill, who, frankly, doesn't need it.

You can't be a television executive and unaware of the prevalence of cocaine in the industry. Not for more than your first couple of months in the job, anyway.

My friend Janine Gibson, media editor of the Guardian and possibly the only other person I know who has never snorted coke, says: "When I first started in media journalism, I was very naive. When people disappeared to the loo and came back telling me very quickly about their personal lives, I just thought I'd made some new best friends. But you soon figure out that they're not just feeling suddenly close to you." Perhaps the reason that TV bosses have to clamp down on drug use is that this is against the law. But celebrities also park on double yellow lines and break the speed limit - they believe that they are special and not bound by the usual restrictions. If they didn't believe they were special, what would they be doing on TV?

You might wish that every famous person was faithful to his wife, drank only water and took quiet holidays in Cornwall. But you might just as well wish that every soldier in the army was peaceful, politically correct and faintly Buddhist about the sanctity of human life.

The fact is, certain people are drawn to certain professions and the reasons are not always pretty. Perhaps we should be sympathetic about the stars' need for coke; perhaps we should wonder if we ourselves could take the pressure of a medium which demands supreme confidence, exaggerates every weakness of the mind and adds a stone in weight to the appearance.

It is surely inevitable that some performers will develop eating disorders and some will "need their medicine".

At the Edinburgh festival one year, I saw a television journalist taking cocaine before he went to sleep.

When I expressed amazement, he explained: "I need it. Otherwise I dream that I°m really boring, and nobody wants to hear me any more."