Why every celeb needs a babysitter

Britney Spears, so we are told, has finally taken to the bottle. By Britney standards this probably means she's had a couple of Coronas at the weekend, but it's right and proper that her people should be concerned.

After all, it is at moments like this (the bingeing has supposedly been triggered by the break-up of her relationship with Justin Timberlake) that we are all at our most vulnerable and, given that celebrities do things bigger, this represents a potential life crisis for the American pop phenomenon.

Fortunately, though, Britney's stumble coincides with a fantastic new breakthrough in celebrity life management that seems so darn obvious you can't believe you didn't think of it yourself. The latest essential for the A-list star who has everything, and quite often too much of a good thing, is the live-in "sober companion" aka "minder" or "clean-living assistant".

This kind of minder, as opposed to the Giant Haystacks style of minder Britney has hitherto been associated with, will, for a cool $5,000 a week, monitor and support you in your endeavours to keep your hands out of the cocaine jar, your lips off the tequila bottle or even your hand off the fridge door. In Hollywood there is talk of little else, and some box-office big names are said to be investigating the potential of sober companions for the already sober, so determined are they not to miss out on the biggest news in lifestyle management since personal nutritionists.

And can you blame them? These minders are totally focused on keeping your head together for the duration of a project (or longer if you can afford it). Typically, their brief includes rising with the star in the morning and then meditating together, accompanying the star to appointments and supportgroup meetings, and being their walker/minder for social functions, while steering him or her clear of "slippery places" and people. What celeb could ask for more?

Plus, in contrast to the meatmountain-style of minder, these are sympathetic people by and large. Richard Cole, former manager of Led Zeppelin, was Robert Downey Junior's minder during the filming of Wonderboys, and Dallas Taylor, a former drummer with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, now runs a network of sober companions in Santa Monica. Britney might not have heard of Tony Blair but she could surely find some common ground with a fellow musician.

We've had the housekeeper, the personal chef, the personal trainer, the personal stylist, the life coach and the shrink, so really the job of lifestyle minder is long overdue. Oh, please! You might say. What next? Bottom wipers? Getting-off-with-groupies-facilitators? But while, on first impression, this might seem like the latest manifestation of La La silly culture, dig a little further and you discover that the "sober-companion" movement makes sound, not to say crucial, business sense.

The San Francisco-based Fireman's Fund Insurance Co, which underwrites more than half of all films produced in the US, says that as many as 20 per cent of the films they have insured since last summer included a high-risk artist with drug problems, who was therefore required to be officially monitored. Increasingly, film companies need to come up with packages to guarantee cast insurance, and these might include sessions with a substance-abuse counsellor, roundthe-clock surveillance from a "motivational helper" or, who knows, maybe the good old padlocks and blackout blinds treatment.

The point is that temptation is everywhere and the stakes, for the investors, are higher than ever. Gone are the days when your Larry Hagmans could be half-cut during filming, and now even mildly high living is seen as a potential threat to the final product. Matt Damon, Summer Phoenix and Casey Affleck have been on a strict party ban since they arrived in London last week to rehearse for their new West End show, This is Our Youth.

There's no suggestion that they need to be protected from themselves, just that business and that kind of pleasure no longer mix.

What makes you want to kick yourself that you aren't at this moment running a team of sober companions out of a phone-box on Rodeo Drive is not so much the everexpanding market of people who could use an SC (Robbie might like one, Naomi could do with the extra attention, even Anthony Hopkins, who has seemed a bit misty-eyed of late about his old friend the bottle, might benefit from an SC). No, what's really galling is the fact that no one understands better than the English the advantages of a resident nanny. The entire middle class is bolstered by au pairs, nannies, cleaners, all of whose duties include running their employers' lives to a greater or lesser extent. There isn't a nanny who doesn't play emotional counsellor to her employer now and then, a cleaner who hasn't nagged about the piling up of empty bottles, or an au pair who hasn't been delegated to buy, and then administer, the hangover cure. It should have been blindingly obvious that, for the people who have everything, the only thing missing was a grown-ups' babysitter.

There's no question that this trend is wasted on recovering addicts and rich people spiralling out of control. Whose life wouldn't be improved by someone wagging a finger when you reached for that Marlboro, clearing their throat tactfully as you accepted the invitation to the Old Skunks drinking party or reminding you, as you wrestle to get your jeans on, of that box of chocolate eclairs you said you were "bloody well going to eat so mind your business" only the night before? Come to think of it, maybe Britney's had one all along.