Have gossip columns become too insipid? For a previous generation of newspaper diarists, it was an article of faith that famous people should not enjoy exclusive rights over the image they projected via public relations hirelings.

Nigel Dempster, the Daily Mail gossip columnist who died a Catholic in 2007, exemplified this attitude to the famous and infamous – so much so that he was often sued for libel or defamation.

The Guardian explained in its obituary of him: “He regarded the numerous writs filed against him as evidence that he was doing his job properly.” Dempster himself liked to boast: “Writs are the Oscars of my profession.”

On one occasion, the Daily Mirror’s crooked then-proprietor Robert Maxwell called a live TV show featuring Dempster to say no-one believed what the diarist wrote. Nigel responded by telling viewers: “He didn’t say that when he rang me from the back of his Rolls the other day to offer an untrue story.”

The financier Sir James Goldsmith once erupted during a libel case against Private Eye magazine when he spotted Dempster seated in the court. “There’s Dempster, who is responsible for all the lies written about me!” he shouted.

While Goldsmith was rebuked by the judge – “a little less theatricality, if you please, Sir James!” – Dempster scribbled a note, passing it to the tycoon. This informed him that a horse owned by Goldsmith had just won a race at Newmarket.

However, he added, “the stewards have ordered a dope test on its owner” – a line which brought a roar of laughter from the owner in question.

If a story was too inflammatory, he could take it to Private Eye, which was especially unfazed by threats of legal action. But the relationship only lasted into the 1980s, when the new editor Ian Hislop fired him for failing to check a story.

Nigel was already dying when Twitter, the social media platform on which 500 million deluded souls gossip about themselves daily, was launched in July 2006. But with his zest for public battles with the rich and famous, @nigeldempster would surely have recruited millions of new fans. He shouted at a barrister enemy leaving El Vino, our favourite Fleet Street watering hole: “That man stole my wife’s furniture!”

Might there be little public appetite now for disobliging diary columns about the famous? Libel and defamation complaints are expensive to defend. Moreover, today’s household names seem more sensitive about what is written about them.

They used to take a more relaxed attitude, exemplified by the Duke of Marlborough, who was rung up by a reporter for the Daily Express’s William Hickey column to ask about some domestic disarray in the ducal household.

His Grace roared: “What’s this about, eh?” The reporter, soothingly: “Your Grace, this is merely an interview.” His Grace: “Carry on!”

Newspapers are happy to fight over big public interest issues – the ones which win news industry prizes – but more reluctant to defend gossip column stories. And where the public in the recent past might have turned their noses up at self-promoting tosh, now tens of millions become followers of “famous for being famous” names.

The first great gossip columnist of the modern world was Walter Winchell (1897-1972), who wrote in over a thousand US papers and broadcast a punchy radio show “from coast to coast, and to all the ships at sea”. He tittle-tattled about household name actors, actresses, business types, big time gangsters and politicians.

The powerful fictional columnist JJ Hunsecker, played by Burt Lancaster in the 1957 movie Sweet Smell of Success, was based on Winchell, who was loathed by powerful, sophisticated folk but appreciated by the great unwashed.

A punchy phrase-maker – “Nothing recedes like success” is attributed to him – Winchell was in his time hugely influential and was consulted by President Franklin D Roosevelt. While his main beat was Broadway, he pushed the US into creating a “two-ocean Navy” by presciently harping on in his columns about how exposed America was to an attack on the West Coast.

In the 1930s, when he began warning America about Hitler, the rich, spoiled newspaper heiress Cissie Patterson told him at a party to give the subject a rest. Winchell told her: “Miss Patterson, find another boy” – and stopped writing for her newspapers.

When Winchell asked the then British ambassador, the Marquis of Lothian, what Britain proposed to do about Hitler, our envoy replied: “We’re fattening the tiger.” Winchell told him: “I’ve seen big tigers and small tigers. I never saw a fat one.”

We’ve never had a Winchell, but Nigel Dempster possessed his dash and cheek.

Peter McKay was the Daily Mail’s Ephraim Hardcastle columnist for 23 years

Picture: Nigel Dempster (Getty)

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