Shoe fetish....

My palms sweat. I begin making calculations of how I could pay these off in about 2037... I touch them, try them on, stroke the fine leather, marvel at the delicate curved heel. Then I step away. Move away from the amazing shoes Crummymummy - the ones you cannot afford and even if you did, you aint got any place to wear them to.

I blame the fact I worked on a fashion show in '97 - back in the day when London was officially swinging - Patsy and Liam graced the cover of vanity Fair magazine and I interviewed (moody) Kate Moss at the grand old opening of London Fashion Week, where she wore a union jack Clements Ribero jumper and the paps kept asking her to sit on the steps so they could try and get a photo up her skirt.

During a Vivienne Westwood show I spied Manolo Blahnik and I vaulted over to him, full of enthusiasm for his artistry and hoping that at some stage he'd offer me a free pair. Did he heck. He was generous, warm and entertaining even if he did look at me like I'd arrived from Mars. I couldn't have given a stuff about the clothes - frock after frock draped on half starved pre-pubescent girls didn't rock my world - but what was on their feet did.

I covered - sorry, I lied my way into - Stella McCartney's first ever collection show in Paris - Sep 97. Christian Louboutin designed the shows. In fact I have to thank him for helping me to get in; see I interviewed him just before the show, at his Parisian studios. I stroked about a million shoes, I may even have licked one, and he looked amused, if somewhat unnerved. I asked him if we could be his plus one at Stella's big show but he refused, giving me a small post it note with the name of the head of Chloe on it. I brandished this post it at the bouncers on the door - both the size of houses - as if my life depended on meeting 'Patrick De La Tour.' I breezed in, my camera man set up his legs, camera and boom - the show started with Helena Christiansen swinging her hips down the catwalk. Afterwards, delighted by my coup, I was startled by one of said bouncers pointing his chubby finger at me and saying 'Follow me - now!' He parted the sea of photographers and hangers on like Moses and the red sea and marched me (hanging on to my camera man with my umbilical cord mic) up to a tall greying Frenchman. It was Mr De La Tour. He looked at me as if to say 'who in god's name are you?'

I managed to make some banal small talk about what a wonderful show (think I said darling a few times in true fashion speak) before rushing over to grab the first post-show interview with the very lovely Stella McCartney. I remember she dedicated the show to her (then alive) Mother Linda and was wearing a fitted grey suit. I pranced off, feeling somewhat high at my audacity.

But no shoes. In all my seasons on that wretched fashion show, working for a wizened old bitch in her late 30s who hated anyone younger and more talented than her (easy to do on both counts) and tearing round lying my way into shows, as if I would die without filming a fucking jewelled bit of tat by some coked up fake tanned asshole designer - I never got one freebie. Not one.

Bitter? Moi? This weekend I am off shopping and will I indulge in something sexy and high and impossibly glam? If it is under £70... maybe!