Rebecca Tyrrel: 'Phobics crave celebrity endorsement. Coulrophobes have Johnny Depp...'

Who knew that Pamela Anderson has a fear of mirrors? Eistoptrophobia is the technical term for what is a pretty uncommon fear among the non-pin-up public, let alone for a first-class glamour beauty such as our Pammy. But don’t be deceived into thinking that this is a case of a celeb looking for sympathy by falsely claiming an inconvenient phobia. This is not the Anderson version of an eistropt fable.

When she revealed this frailty, fellow sufferers picked it up and ran with it just as Pammy and her life guard chums picked up their orange plastic floats and ran along that LA beach with them, in very slow motion, during the 1990s heyday of Baywatch.

You can hardly blame the eisoptrophobes for their joy at the shock revelation, because phobics crave celebrity endorsement. Most fears are much better served. Coulrophobes (fear of clowns) have an embarrassment of A-list riches, from Johnny Depp via PDiddy, Daniel Radcliffe to Homer Simpson. And hydrophobia has too many victims to name, though a shout-out must go to another Baywatch belle, the courageous Carmen Electra, who once told Sky News that being anywhere near water can induce a panic attack.

Was it harder for Pamela or Carmen, though? Imagine heading out there on to the beach, to all those cameras and bystanders and most of all that Hoff. Even if you weren’t going to see your reflected self in that cheese-cutter of a swimsuit, the Hoff would. But what was the alternative? There would be Carmen screaming at the sea and Pamela coming over all unnecessary in the vicinity of a looking glass. It must have been chaos on those Baywatch sets. And surely there were days when the Pacific was so still that the water doubled up as a mirror. Result: perfect storm, absolute directorial nightmare.

How a single episode ever came to be made is one of the miracles of the medium, on a par with the continued employment of Vernon Kay. But 242 were made, and according to the Guinness Book of Records, Baywatch was the most watched TV show of all time. Not that Pammy, who named her breasts Pancho and Lefty (which is a non sequitur, but interesting), ever boosted the viewing figures herself. After confessing her loathing of mirrors, she added: “And I don’t watch myself on television. If anything comes on … I leave the room.”