We live in an era, Lost in Showbiz is pained to note, when the phrase "playboy lifestyle" has become so grossly devalued that it was recently deployed by a "close pal" of Charlotte Church's to describe the alleged drunken face-punching antics of her fiance Gavin Henson on a train journey back from a rugby match, thereby contravening the longstanding rule that the words "playboy lifestyle" and "19.37 First Great Western service to Cardiff" have no business appearing in the same celebrity news story as each other.

You might have thought that identifying Hollywood's most overpaid actor would be a simple matter. Step one: determine whether Tom Cruise has ever been paid any money whatsoever for appearing in a movie. Step two: there is no step two. The answer's Tom Cruise, isn't it?

"Want to know what your favourite stars are getting up to at Crimbo?" asks OK! magazine, leaping headlong into what might be described as the Yuletide spirit. "Prepare to get very jealous indeed!" Lost in Showbiz duly prepares itself. And yet the truth turns out to be mildly anticlimactic - because most of the stars, it seems, are planning pretty unremarkable Christmases.

OK, I know some of you have complained about my so-called "obsession" with Marc Jacobs (as if any other relationship with the man is feasible) but, I'm sorry, this has to be seen, if only for inspiration for literally the best costume ever:

It goes without saying that this column's love for Charlie Sheen knows no bounds. Hell, any man who notches up almost 7,000 websites when you type the words "Charlie Sheen" and "pervert" into the Google search engine (truly, my skill at hard journalistic research is unparalleled) is all right with us!

There will soon be nowhere on earth safe from Gordon Ramsay. He's now eyeing up the new Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 as a suitable location for a restaurant. The food is going to be 'fine dining with a New York twist'. As if going to the airport wasn't stressful enough already ...

Horrid news from backstage at the Led Zeppelin gig, as Naomi Campbell's spokeswoman is moved to confirm that madam lost her BlackBerry at the event.

She probably just left it in the back of a maid's skull, but the most obvious place is always the last one you look, isn't it?

More news of Marc Bannerman and Cerys Matthews, now, as two vertices of the I'm A Celebrity love triangle break another massively undignified silence to pose up for pictures and an interview in the current issue of OK!.

Nothing freshens dirty linen like the fragrant air of media exposure, of course, and this latest enterprise is so enchanting that it might well encourage Marc's spurned ex-girlfriend Sarah Matravers to discover another basket of the stuff herself.

And so to a new Lost in Showbiz series, in which we will aim to pinpoint the most elaborately pointless use of a celebrity in a Christmas-based capacity that our fame-narcotized culture can provide.

I should like to get the ball rolling with a feature in the current issue of Reveal magazine - in which Steven Gerrard's wife Alex Curran explains how to make Christmas lunch.

In the name of sanity, why?

At last, the reason you've been looking for to NEVER care about the Orange Prize again - Lily Allen's on the judging panel.

In what only a recent head trauma victim could bill as a coup, the 22-year-old FR Leavis manque has been drafted in this year to cast her... Jesus, what would you call it? expert eye? ... over a variety of women's fiction, because celebrities haven't wormed their way into enough corners of cultural life already. To be candid, it's a bit like the year when Jerry Hall did the Whitbread. You have to feel Seamus Heaney's victory will always be asterisked.