Mariella, meet God.

I don’t like to drop names, but I met Richard Dawkins when we were both doing the Sky Book Show with Mariella Frostrup, told him I was writing a book about God (well you would mention it, wouldn’t you?  What else were we going to talk about, the rumours about his personal life?) and he put me on to Mr Deity. Mr Deity is a whole series of very LA takes on God and is hilariously funny. It made me a little nervous at first, in that it occupies some of the same territory as There Is No Dog. But there turns out to be lots of room in the “let’s look at religion from a bizarre new angle” genre. So thank you, RD, I loved it.

Which leads me to the question of why people find name-dropping so addictive. I wouldn’t dream of mentioning in public that Francesca Simon asked me to dinner with Simon Russell Beale and Miranda Richardson (we talked about dressage — the strangest people are horse obsessives) a few weeks ago. Or that this week I found myself wedged between Roy Hattersley, Shirley Williams and Samuel West on Night Waves.

I mean, does anyone seriously think that hanging around with famous people is at all impressive? That it rubs off somehow?

Tragic.

Me, I just adore being the person everyone looks at quizzically and says, ‘and what sort of books do you write?’