Lauren Booth: Should Cherie do a Tony and appear on Graham Norton? I don't think so

There goes Kate Moss, shimmying across our peripheral vision again, looking at once both louche and immaculate. Kate drives me mad: it's hard to rationalise the irritation that rises in my craw about a stranger who seems happy to snub me from the front page. You see, when Kate refuses to talk at length about her life, that means she's refusing to talk to me. Now, this probably means that I've bought into the celebrity culture we're all supposed to loathe and have therefore lost all perspective. Then again, it's more likely that the Diva of Denim actually likes her privacy and feels that we, the leering, stalking public, have no damn right to know anything about her beyond which function she attended midweek.

Such photographic-only fame creates hazards for the celebrity-fan relationship. On the one side there's us, watching Kate silently tug on her fag and yearning for her to tell us all about her failed relationship with Johnny Depp. On the other there's her, thinking, "God, I wish you'd all just piss off and mind your own business". It's a classic case of celebritus interruptus.

Thanks to our diet of paparazzi snaps and revelations about Anthea Turner, Victoria Beckham and Vanessa Feltz, it has become difficult not to view publicity shots as a kind of fame-foreplay. First we're tantalised by illicit snaps, then teased by little quotes here and there, and finally we are satiated with a double-page spread about the star's "secret sex life".

This system works pretty well on the whole – you have only to ask Max Clifford – except where a tiny group of super-celebrities is concerned. These are the type of über-beings who could claim to be "too busy" to visit the Dimblebys and whose work is studied at university level. The Queen and the rest of the Windsors would once have belonged to this group, but no longer. Ever since Liz let the cameras into her life and then admitted on telly to having an "annus horribilis", we've feasted our eyes on her family's dirty linen and found it every bit as soiled as our own.

No, I'm talking about the sacred, silent triumvirate of: God, the Pope and Cherie. For these power players are above our approval and beyond our voting whims. Aside from the odd Latin soundbite, they can stay silent until judgement day and still remain influential and internationally adored.

Actually, scrap that, because even God agreed to interviews with biblical biographers in order to avoid being misquoted. And, when the general public started to ignore him altogether in favour of the golden calf, he quickly organised a series of publicity stunts to grab their attention and brought in apostles and prophets to spread his word far and wide. By contrast, our first lady's wannabe biographer, Linda McDougall, didn't even get Ten Commandments to help her.

As tabloid editors groan at the prospect of another picture of Mrs Blair alongside, well, no direct quotes whatsoever, they know damn well how right she is to stay shtum. Knowing her bathroom routine, her favourite type of pasta and her exact words when she found out she was pregnant could only tarnish this worthy (if aloof) brand. Those confident enough to hold on to their privacy are small in number.

Luckily for Mrs Blair, even if she wobbles and thinks about doing a Tony by going on an evening chat show with, say, Jonathan Ross or Graham Norton, then Downing street advisers have the truest of truisms at the ready: a) it's a very thin line between love and hate; and b)absence makes the heart grow fonder. Just look how much we've come to loathe Anthea and Vanessa, and to marvel at Blair's approval rating after his long sojourn in the Muslim states.

If only the Queen had trusted her instincts and remained icily silent for the past 50 years, we might all be looking forward to her Jubilee now. Instead, come June we'll be preoccupied with where Cherie's going on holiday and whether or not she's bought a bikini.