Chat's hot - or not: Paris Hilton at the MTV Music Awards last month. Photograph: Matt Sayles/AP
What's the world coming to when a celebrated heiress can't do a promotional tour without being hassled with questions about her supposed indiscretions? Paris Hilton came on the David Letterman Show this week to talk about her new fragrance and new film. I've seen her previous films and thought that while the performances were plucky they were dogged by thematic inconsistencies so this could be make-or-break for her acting career. Predictably though, Letterman seemed fixated on Hilton's time in prison much to his audience's glee and Hilton's annoyance. The resulting footage has now joined the archive of great chat show moments - those priceless moment in time where a celebrity's perception of themselves as infinitely important and untouchable meets the public perception of another annoying idiot plugging their latest project. It's an ever-growing compendium but these are the ones that stick in my mind:
The newly-engaged Tom Cruise appeared on Oprah high on life and three crates of green room Red Bull, punching the air, jumping on the sofa and dragging a fleeing and hugely embarrassed Katie Holmes on to the studio floor. The much loved parody of this event is scarcely weirder than the real thing.
Conflicting reports of David Icke's pronouncements circulated before his infamous Wogan appearance. Icke wasted no time in putting the record straight, revealing the almost bottomless depth of his lunacy by proclaiming himself the son of God and predicting there would be a natural disaster disaster somewhere on the earth in the next 50 years. They laughed then - are they laughing now? Yes. Yes, they are.
Russell Harty's unique piggy-in-the-middle seating arrangements gave his show an engaging intimacy that also left him vulnerable to sneak slap attacks from neglected divas. Grace Jones's subsequent performance in A View To A Kill suggested that Harty was lucky to get off with a few bitchslaps.
Bee Gees on Clive Anderson's All Talk
"You're the tosser, pal!". You could tell by the way he used his walk that Barry Gibb was a woman's man who had no time to talk. Certainly not to Clive Anderson who had needled the alpha Bee Gee with his signature snarky but essentially good-natured wit. Anderson's bemusement is shared by the late Maurice Gibb who stays put as frères Gibb prance off set before apologetically saying "I suppose I'd better join them," no doubt musing that you can pick your friends but you can't pick your family.
Who could have possibly predicted that fuelling alcoholic hell-raiser Oliver Reed with alcohol both before and during a broadcast could have caused such trouble? The smart-arse production crew got more than they bargained for though when a pissed-even-by-his-standards Reed sexually harassed Sexual Politics author Kate Millett leading to the broadcast being pulled and the show being cancelled.
I know there's more out there so what have you got? I haven't even mentioned George Best.
