[Ruth]

"what's a gynaecologist?"

"does that mean you work in the big room with the green seats?"

"What was it George said about me?" she tries to remember. "He said I wasn't as stupid as everybody thought. I was sharp as a something - a tack? Yes, a tack!"

I don't think she's stupid...I know she's stupid.

"Do you think I'm stupid?" she asks. "Maybe I am, but I don't think I am. I just don't see why you need to know what capital goes with what country. Why would you need to know that?

"Or politics. Boring. Who cares? Does it make me stupid if I don't want to have opinions about that? Does it?"

Yes, it does make her stupid.

Her place on the red carpet was consolidated when she married her Big Brother colleague Preston, from the band The Ordinary Boys. They were paid £600,000 to "share" their wedding with a celebrity magazine. Almost inevitably, the marriage was in trouble within days, and over ten months later, but no matter, Chantelle was already famous.

In short, in a world increasingly obsessed by celebrity - however pointless and shallow - she had succeeded. She had become an instant poster girl for a generation for whom fame for its own sake has become a goal to be pursued with almost religious fervour.

Now, after her own experience as an instant "star", Chantelle has "revealed" the depths of her private agony for another tidy sum. There have been claims of her bulimia and "inner torment", which would all be quite tragic had we not heard it all before quite so many times, and from people like Jade Goody, who really do have car crash lives beyond compare.

Still, Chantelle is doing rather nicely from her misery.

Indeed she is - and I'd be interested to know ANYTHING she has actually done to earn the adoration of her fans. She entered a relationship with a man who was already in a long term relationship. They sold their wedding, then she sold the stories of their break up, then she sold stories of her bulimia (which sorry, but I find extremely hard to believe) - she has been lying about her marriage almost since the ring was on her finger, and she's been paid to tell those lies. More amazing still, is that people will pay their money to buy those rag mags in which she told her lies. More fool them.

When we meet, I'm fully prepared to hear a familiar tale of woe about how reality TV ruined her life, but I get nothing of the sort. She's positively fizzing. "Big Brother was the best thing I ever did. It's got me exactly where I want to be.

"Of course bad things have happened, but what is there to complain about? I'm on the cover of magazines. I've got a lovely new house. I've just bought a Queen-sized bed. It's French antique, but not old."

Big Brother has got her exactly where she wants to be...this is the problem with Big Brother in recent years. It makes celebrities of people who don't have the talent or intelligence to actually earn their fame.

Antique but not old? Sheesh, she gets worse.

Er, Chantelle, aren't you supposed to be heartbroken and distraught?

"Oh yes, I have down days. I did go home to my mum and cry for weeks. I loved Preston but we just couldn't make it work. And the bulimia thing was terrible. It was my way of coping, I guess.

I imagine the money she got paid by the trashy mags to sell 'exclusive' interviews about her bulimia has helped her cope remarkably well. It's an insult to people who are actually suffering terribly with such conditions.

"I probably need therapy, but to be honest I probably could have done with therapy before I went into Big Brother," she says, twirling one of those hair extensions round her finger. Really? Why would a 23-year-old who says everything is mostly sunny need therapy?

"Oh you know, bullying and stuff, childhood things. People resenting me. Therapy is always good because you have to talk."

You mean the sort of things that happen to thousands of people, who can't make thousands of pounds for it years down the line?

But Chantelle does talk - about every single aspect of her life - and always for money. Before she entered the Big Brother house she sat her mother down and told her "every single terrible thing about my life that she might hear".

Well, of course. She has to earn her living somehow, and she doesn't have the brains to do much else, does she?

Now she looks back on that disaster of a marriage - she knew on the third day that she'd made a huge mistake because "I realised then that marriage was permanent" - and wishes someone had stopped her from getting hitched to a man she met in a bubble, and could barely have a conversation with.

"I said: 'Mum, why didn't you stop me. Why didn't you take me to one side and say, Chantelle - no!' Mum just laughed and asked if I would have listened. No, of course I wouldn't have.

"I don't know why I did it now. I just got caught up in the whole thing. He asked me to marry him and I went: 'Yes!' I'd forgotten that I didn't ever want to get married. I didn't want to have children. Now I've reminded myself of that again. I can be a bit indecisive, me."

I thought she had fallen out with certain members of her family precisely BECAUSE they tried to stop her marrying him?

She screws up her dainty little nose, and paints a hilarious picture of dinner with the in-laws. "They sit round having dinner, drinking red wine and talking about stuff. It was sooo weird." What sort of stuff was discussed, and why was it weird?

She looks bewildered, as she clearly did then. "I dunno really. Politics, I suppose. I can't honestly say because I didn't understand. I'd just sit there thinking: 'My family don't do this. What's it all about?'

"When Preston came round to my mum's house, he had beer and a curry, and nobody asked him what he thought about anything.

"I'd just sit there looking at my plate, usually. If they asked me directly about something I'd just say I wasn't interested enough to have an opinion about it."

And she can't see the irony in this?

she and Preston felt the need to share their wedding with the world. Did it ever occur to them not to? "Actually, we did think about it, but not for very long. The way we saw it, we got together in Big Brother, watched by the whole nation, so we really felt it wouldn't be fair to deprive people of the moment we got married."

How vain can you get? And how stupid does she think people are? Would they have given their wedding to OK! magazine if there was no huge fee involved? Of course not.

The same is true for the day they split up, the time she threw a fit and trashed their living room, and so on.

My point exactly.

I ask if she feels she has made some sort of pact with the devil - she gets her publicity, but she has to hand over her life for it - but she simply doesn't see it like that.

"I don't mind it. Actually, no I like it. Even if it's bad stuff, I don't think I would mind. I'm in the magazines, aren't I? That's what matters.

"The only thing that does annoy me is when people say Preston and I only got married for a publicity stunt. That's horrible. I mean, if it had all been a publicity stunt we wouldn't have got married so quickly, would we? We would have strung the engagement out, and got even more money, wouldn't we?"

The highlighted part says it all really. Fame in exchange for not having to do anything except sell the stories that most people would consider scared.

Eh? Since she's getting ridiculous now, I decide to join her. If "her" public was let down by a union that lasted only ten months, wasn't she morally obliged to give the £600,000 back - rather than demand equally giddying sums for the divorce "exclusive"?

Hahahahaha. ROFL!

She wonders if she was too working class for Preston, then confesses: "I don't know what class I am. Am I working class?"

I'd have to say no, since she doesn't seem to have any interest in actually working.


Come on you fans of this bimbo. Surely there are people more worthy of your time and money?