But I don't want to talk about any of those things. I want to talk about the mystery of Naomi Campbell and the blood diamond.
Occasionally, a story comes along that is just so stuffed with glories it is hard to believe it's not from the pen of Chris Morris. Naomi Campbell and the blood diamond is one such story. Perhaps you have heard a whisper of this tale from a downmarket rag. Because you are a Guardian reader and your brow is raised high, it is likely you have not. Allow me to lower your brow. And then mop it.
Our tale begins one evening in 1997 in the home of Nelson Mandela, a man whose saintliness is never to be questioned. His unwavering fondness for Slugger Campbell is, therefore, one of those things that most of us are just too mortal to understand.
Campbell was spending the night at Mandela's house, as was Mia Farrow. I reiterate, it is not for humble mortals to query Mandela's social circle. The main thing is, something may have happened that night. Whether it did or not may not ever be fully known. But if it did, the UN-backed special court in The Hague would quite like to know.
Our story now fast-forwards almost a decade, and Farrow has just remembered something about that party round at Nelson's. According to her, the next morning Campbell came to her and said that in the middle of the night, some representatives from one Charles Taylor gave her a diamond. "I just thought, 'What an amazing life Naomi has!'" Farrow told ABC News.
Doesn't she just. You see, there was a small detail that I omitted about that 1997 slumber party: along with Campbell and Farrow, there was one other house guest – namely Taylor, the former president of Liberia who is on trial in The Hague for atrocities committed in Sierra Leone, including orchestrating the raping, torturing, killing and eating of hundreds of thousands of people.
Naomi Campbell, Mia Farrow and President Charles Taylor: you gotta hand it to Mandela, the man sure knows how to compile a guest list. Isn't it funny how, while Mandela is always everyone's fantasy dinner guest, he opts for the dream team of Campbell and Taylor? But I digress.
Here the story might have died, were it not for the fact that Taylor is now on trial for some really inconvenient, you know, things; and were it not also for the fact that, if Taylor did give Campbell a diamond – something that he has denied, along with many other things he is currently denying these days – it could have been a blood diamond. This is not a diamond that is covered in blood, like the ones on Campbell's phone after she embeds it in a maid's skull, but rather a diamond given to Taylor by the junta to purchase arms for the Sierra Leone rebels from South African armament manufacturers.
Campbell's spokeswoman insisted that the model was "co-operating with prosecutors". And again, there this story might have languished, were it not for the fact that Campbell's several bouts of anger management have failed to take root.
Last week, ABC News tried to go where The Hague could not by getting Naomi to answer some questions. Now is one of those times when I regret having chosen the written word as my instrument because, really, you're just going to have to put down this newspaper and get online to watch this interview, in order to see how it looks when a person's soul leaves their body and is replaced by the cold hard eyes of a killer – as is what happens when the reporter repeatedly asks after the alleged diamond. Naomi then jerks her head, as if showing small children what "in a huff" looks like, stands up and – accidentally, on purpose, who can say? – punches the camera.
This story came at a good time for me. Last week, I made what some might call "a slighting reference" to Mr Sean Penn and his occasional international rescue efforts in this newspaper. I was duly rebuked by a fellow journalist who had recently been in Haiti, claiming that not only was Penn doing lots of good there, but that he "pulled the internet link to stop other people twittering about how cool they were to be saving the world".
This was an extremely disturbing revelation: a celebrity who is not only doing good for charity, but who is not a subscriber to the Philosophy of Demi – that if a good gesture is not recorded on Twitter, and ideally illustrated with a picture of oneself holding a cute brown child in one's lap, then it is not worth doing.
For a few minutes, my entire world view went fuzzy, and every lesson I'd ever learned from Team America seemed tenuous. Wait . . . wait . . . are some celebrities OK? Are their occasional efforts at international diplomacy not entirely laughable?
To calm myself down, I turned on the TV and there was Naomi, punching a camera when asked if she was given a blood diamond by an African despot. Thank you, Naomi.
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