Pippa Middleton is in the news again.
This time it is not concerning her derrière, acknowledged by most connoisseurs in this particular field to be her most pronounced asset, but her ability to command an advance of £400,000 from Penguin to write a book about how to throw a great party.
One could say that publishing has always had a penchant for minor celebrities going back even to the days of Mr Teasy-Weasy, whose publisher was rumoured to have suffered financial turmoil as a result of the large advance they coughed up.
I hope that Penguin will take heed and think again in these difficult times before embarking on this perilous adventure, when most people can ill afford the luxury of throwing sumptuous parties and are instead going on a general strike to highlight their struggle in surviving this monstrous recession.
But then again publishers are usually the last people to learn from the mistakes of others.
