It was only a matter of time before a celeb had a brush with polonium ...

Heaven knows Lost in Showbiz has attempted to crowbar a celebrity angle into some pretty tangential material. But occasionally, this column has to realise it'll never play in the big leagues. Somehow, it lacks the ... God, what would you call it? Ambition? Sometimes you just have to sit back and let the masters weave their magic, and secure themselves the extra hour in bloody hellfire that would otherwise have been yours. So this week, let's turn to an intro lifted verbatim from the Sun's Bizarre column, in which the band Razorlight lurch from their usual domain - stories about internecine bickering over hairstyles and which of them wrote their one adequate song - into the field of Stuff That Actually Matters. I'm afraid hilarity does not ensue.

"Rockers have a reputation for dabbling in illegal substances," begins this dispatch. "But Razorlight have had a brush with one powerful powder that even Keith Richards would be scared to stick up his hooter ..."

And with that, the sickening realisation of where we're headed with this descends. Oh, you can fight it all you please. But you know in your dark heart that we're hurtling inexorably towards a certain running story, a story thus far illustrated by that already iconic news image of a man slumped against his hospital pillows, bald from radiation poisoning, staring hollow-eyed into the camera as the life drains out of him. And we're being asked to consider: what did this mean for Razorlight?

Wait! Come back! There's nothing for you in the Guardian news pages. Even reading this far has had an effect similar to that induced by looking at Medusa's head. Your soul has already turned to stone, so you may as well continue and reassure yourself that there is no deity, because Razorlight have been given the all-clear after fearing themselves contaminated with polonium 210. And they're talking.

Piecing together the immensely detailed account with which the Sun has been provided by a source close to the band, it seems the boys recently flew back from Moscow, on a BA plane later grounded after traces of the radioactive material were found. Tantalisingly, no Kremlinologists have yet been coaxed to give their views on either this or Razorlight's new single, but the incident does serve as a reminder that celebrities should be profoundly discouraged from indulging their terminal self-regard and attaching themselves to news events of any import whatsoever.

That said, there are a few crimes against humanity that are so utterly heinous that it is permissible for a celebrity to allege a genuine connection to them. (Like when Les Ferdinand admitted it was him and Dennis Wise who did over Blue Peter's Italian Sunken Garden, back when they were kids, in an act of vandalism the mere mention of which still causes a sob to catch in Lost in Showbiz's throat. As Percy Thrower said at the time, the culprits must have been "mentally ill". They even desecrated the bronze statue of Petra.)

But, in general, such "me too" outbursts are a total no, and Razorlight's foray into the Litvinenko affair necessitates an urgent reordering of the top three least appealing instances of the genre. The boys go straight in at three, easing out Gary Barlow's ruminations on being somewhere vaguely near the July 7 bombings. There's no change in the top two, however, with Myleene Klass's announcement that she'd been shot at by the Taliban still playing second fiddle to Atomic Kitten's endless interviews on their "9/11 hell" (they were staying uptown, and I think it made getting about a bit difficult). No, that one doesn't look like being dethroned in a hurry.

Will Paris treat her children like her dog?

In a move that may throw down a more potent challenge to the concept of Darwinian evolution than any crack-brained scheme of the religious right, Paris Hilton has indicated she plans on spawning. "It's been my dream to have four babies by 30," announces the 25-year-old hotel heiress, who moonlights as the fifth horsewoman of the apocalypse. "I look after animals, so I think I'd have a lot to give my kids."

And you know, if Paris had stopped shy of that household pets reference, maybe - just maybe - we could have let this one pass. Lord knows, none of us wants to rake up the extraordinarily painful memories of Tinkerbell's "disappearance" two years ago. You think you've buried something, but then ... well, I guess we all died a little in that damn war.

To recap, Tinkerbell was Paris's teacup chihuahua, the breed of dog she and her ilk carry round in their handbags to indicate their poignantly herd-like lack of self-esteem. It's like a Chinese symbol tattoo for rich girls.

Anyways, Tinkerbell lived quite the life - VIPed for all the best nightspots, and dripping with jewel-encrusted collars. But then, one morning - gone. Within days, flunkeys were seen sticking up lost signs all over Beverly Hills. Fashioned from hot pink card, and bearing a magazine shot of Paris with the misplaced hound, their message was devastating in its simplicity. "Please help," they read. "This dog is like a child to me."

Naturally, the prevalent assumption was that Tinkerbell had been kidnapped for both ransom and the publicity her elevated position in modern American society would bring. Was she even now, like some canine version of Patty Hearst, falling under the evil spell of her captors, and preparing to rob a bank toting a small machine gun and wearing a horrifically unsparkly beret?

Briefly, no. It was eventually established that Paris had in fact left the dog at her grandmother's house - like, whenever? - and forgotten about it.

By way of a heartbreaking coda, the pair were only reunited for a short while, on account of the fact that Tinkerbell grew too large for Paris's liking, and was subsequently replaced with a younger, hotter, smaller version called Bambi. Tinkerbell now lives in seclusion at the Hilton family mansion, perhaps watching old paparazzi videos of herself solicitously lapping mommy's vomit from the pavement after another mistimed nightclub exit.

It's too bad there's no space for a full Norma Desmond analogy - or, indeed, the tale of when Paris attempted to take her pet goat on to a plane - but having established her pet-care credentials, we can only hope Paris is as fertile as she is committed to swelling the ranks of our species.

David, let's not have Elton over tonight ...

Cataclysmic news from the twin ancestral seats of Windsor and Sawbridgeworth, where the Algonquin Round Table de nos jours is reported to have been dissolved amid claims of "growing apart". The itinerant salon that once buzzed with the bons mots of David and Victoria Beckham, and Elton John and his partner David Furnish, is said to meet rather less frequently these days, when time was its members could be found crystallising the age almost weekly.

Back then, despite being an old showbiz family, the Furnish-Johns graciously accepted the parvenu Beckhams into their world, often loaning them their house in the south of France and joining them on droll-looking nights out such as the one pictured above. In turn, David and Victoria bestowed upon the couple that most precious of chalices: the godparenthood of their first-born, Brooklyn. Who better to steer him from the stint in rehab for which he might be destined under less experienced stewardship?

Alas, reminding us that we drones are always on the outside looking in, the precise reason for the alleged froideur is not known. Could it have something to do with the fact that the Beckhams have fallen upon the limo-space extended to them by new best friends Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes as though it were the last helicopter out of Saigon? No doubt all will eventually become clear in letters and unpublished epigrams released after their deaths.