Confessions of a celebrity addict

Marilyn Monroe

I answered my office phone to the sound of gargling.

‘Catarrh,’ explained a small voice. ‘This is Ray from the postcard fair. Friend of your dad’s.’

I remembered him now from my teenage years: a short dealer with a white mullet. He fished around inside cardboard boxes to retrieve his wares – old theatre programmes, posters, somebody’s wartime schoolbooks – before spreading them out in a six-inch wedge across his stall.

‘I’ve got an autograph book with Marilyn Monroe in. Thought you might be interested.’ Interested? Monroe was on every autograph-collector’s want list.

‘But has she signed in red ink?’

Red ink meant fake. You usually saw it on photos; the neat,