Rebecca Tyrrel: 'Few people can surely know that Sharon Stone owns an Aga'

Who knew that if Sharon Stone's house were to catch fire, the first thing she would save would be her Aga? Who, indeed, knew that Sharon Stone had an Aga? Unlike a pair of knickers, which she sometimes doesn't have, depending on her most basic instinct on any given day, few people can surely know that she owns a vast, cast iron four-wheel drive of a cooking machine, which comes in all sorts of colours from heather through aubergine to duck-egg blue.

But the image of saucy Stone mutating into California's answer to Camilla Parker Bowles, who definitely has an Aga, is certainly surprising, although whether more so than that of the Duchess of Cornwall not wearing pants in a police interrogation cell is hard to say. A close call there.

According to the Duchess's foodie son, Tom Parker Bowles, this mastodon of cookers is an "...iconic part of British life". Which seems only right for a device invented by a blind, Nobel Prize-winning physicist from Sweden. So, given Sharon's Nordic blondeness, she has every right to one. A four-oven Aga that pumps out heat round the clock comes in handy in the icy wastes of Beverly Hills.

How she would save her Aga, she does not say. Dragging 64 stone of searing-hot cast iron to safety seems a big ask for a 5'7" woman weighing eight stone, but people find extraordinary strength at times of crisis, lifting cars to free their trapped children (her own three sons will be frying in the upper stories of the dwelling, presumably, while Sharon and the Aga make their escape).

Post-fire Sharon would put the saving of the Aga down to karma. It was karma, she said, that caused the 2008 Sichuan earthquake – which makes her half Glenn Hoddle, half Duchess of Cornwall. It is no wonder the Dalai Lama denied Ms Stone's claim to be his close friend.

Or perhaps it was bad karma that the Aga had, not good karma for Sharon. For all that it provides a warm kitchen hearth for Labradors on a wintry night, it does guzzle fuel. George Monbiot, don't know if you know him Sharon, calls Agas monsters. The next model, which will include integral iPad to enable remote switching on and off, is long overdue.