Feasting with Panthers: Or, the Importance of Being Famous

"Feasting with panthers" was Oscar Wilde's encoded way of referring to illicit sexual adventures in the East End of London. This is not quite what the phrase means for Peter Conrad, who here describes another way of living dangerously as he drops in on the lives of celebrities in New York, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Berlin and London. Conrad's encounters lead to insights into the relationships in our culture between fame and celebrity, achievement and image, art and money. He probes our apparent obsession with celebrities, those traders in imagery and spurious myth who sell their smells like Joan Collins, or are happy, like Robert Maxwell, to publicise their own bad behaviour. Conrad candidly witnesses Maxwell's meticulously staged tantrum, Jeffrey Archer haranguing the Tory faithful in Cornwall and Oprah Winfrey diagnosing the maladies of America on her talk show. He shares a changing room with Tom Jones, is advised on hair care by Vidal Sassoon, and sneezes violently over Joan Collins when she gives him a preview of her new perfume. Yet the panthers in question include not only celebrities who have made an art out of marketing themselves, but also true artists who have achieved celebrity in their own lifetimes. John Boorman conducts a tour of his private Celtic wonderland, while Wim Wanders looks out for angels in the overcast Berlin sky. Barry Humphries struggles to control and to contain his demons and Natasha Richardson transforms herself into a stranger in front of the make-up mirror. These characters compel reflections on the psychology of the artist, and - when Conrad watches David Hockney at work, cheering up the world by repainting it in Day-Glo colours - on the true value of art in a society addicted to fakery and simulation. Peter Conrad is a Fellow of Christ Church, Oxford, and reviewer and features writer for "The Observer", London.