The Rebel Wilson affair reveals just how inadequate the humble columnist is in the celebrity god’s new empire

“Notice every little mannerism, taking notes on how we sit, stand, talk and even move. And all in that awful, derogatory, corkscrew English.” — Tracey Lord, The Philadelphia Story

A confession: I love a good gossip columnist.

I trained as a reporter among the best of them, and they horrified and captivated me in equal measure. The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald housed an impressive salon of deeply unfriendly writers whose name alone could chill a room colder than the imported sparkling water they favored.

There was Lawrence Money, who nicknamed celebrity hairstylist Lillian Frank “Celebrity Barber”; and Chris Webb, one of the weirdest cats you could ever meet, who has written a cool, archaic analysis of the business world.

There was Peter Smark, whose capacity for bitchyness was breathtaking and was the writer everyone feared; and the delightfully evil Richard Ackland, gossiping on the slightly higher level of the legal world, a place no less naughty or horrid than any other.

What these brazen and shameless writers taught me was that you had to hide yourself damn well and not give a damn what other people might think of you.

They had to choose to live in discomfort and shame — and resign themselves to making some people’s lives hell every time they opened their newspaper with trembling hands.

The tone could indeed be derogatory, as Tracey Lord reminds us, but the English was often quite brilliant.

The ethics of coming out, a blockbuster and where it all went wrong

So to get to the point.

It was perfectly clear that the Sydney Morning Herald and gossip columnist Andrew Hornery wanted the news – a massive reveal of a celebrity’s sexuality – as he forewarned actor Rebel Wilson that he had the news of her first open relationship with another woman .