Photograph: Nick Potts/
PA
There is a point in so many lives when a person switches on the news, and suddenly thinks: Of course! Religion is the answer, not the problem! It's time I thanked God for his healing gift of faith, currently responsible for so much harmony in our tight-knit world!
For Robbie Williams, who heads up the list of Brits In LA For No Good Reason, that moment appears to have come in the middle of last Thursday night. The former Take That singer, to whom we refer as Ziggy Starbucks on account of the fact he spent a month in rehab to beat an espresso habit - truly, it was the celebrities that got small - took to his website and posted a video message suggesting he has found God.
"God came in the sunshine / He showed me a lifeline," he sings tunelessly. "What a day, Jesus really died for me / Yeah Jesus really tried for me."
Jesus indeed. In terms of depth and craftsmanship, it's a lyric second only to a certain former Spice Girl's "It's heaven and hell / Being Geri Halliwell".
Still, assuming he's not back on the caffeine, Robbie's sermon would seem to represent a progression from earlier requests for assistance from the other side. Tattooed on his right shoulder is the invocation: "Elvis, grant me serenity." (Because Elvis is just the person to ask for serenity. He died on the loo with a nappy round his ankles.)
Were the echoes of Spinal Tap's hilarious visit to Elvis's grave not insistent enough, we learn that Robbie's last major video communique was about visiting the grave of Dean Martin. Lost in Showbiz now finds it impossible to shift the image of Robbie standing over Dino's tombstone and attempting singlehandledly to do all the harmonies on That's Amore.
Nevertheless, the Almighty has pulled in quite a celebrity haul over the past fortnight. Robbie may now be added to a list of new converts including Lindsay Lohan and our beloved Paris Hilton, a strike rate that recalls that bit in the Bible where Jesus says, "I will make you fishers out of, like, morons and stuff?"
As far as Paris goes, Lost in Showbiz can world-exclusively reveal that the celebutante recently did time in prison - prison! - where she found God. Lindsay . . . well, Lindsay recently extended her stay in an elective wellness programme at the Promises clinic in Malibu. But according to her wastrel father Michael, "She's going to church."
Normally, we'd give the same credence to one of Daddy Lohan's statements as we might to sightings of Rio Ferdinand at a Royal Society conclave, but the Mean Girls star was recently photographed carrying a copy of a book called God's Promises, thus conforming with the trend for celebrities to ostentatiously flash their reading material as a way of communicating Where They're At.
It all started with Geri Halliwell, who, shortly after quitting the Spice Girls, was pictured engrossed in M Scott Peck's agonisingly tedious personal growth tome, The Road Less Travelled. Since then, all manner of stars have signified their state of mind via the prominent display of works purchased from the Mind Body Spirit section of bookshops. (Incidentally - Mind Body Spirit? Surely the entire bookshop is effectively packed with product that will enrich one or more of the three? Can we please get rid of special sections for people too lazy to get anything out of the vast array of books available in the rest of the store?) We've seen everything from Paris with The Power of Now to actress Jessica Simpson flaunting Dealing with People You Can't Stand.
The medium will finally eat itself when a celebrity is snapped carrying a book entitled Why Someone Else Is Responsible for All My Problems. Until then, "In God we trust/ . . ." (Robbie is invited to complete the rhyming couplet.)
