Dear Diary: On the rise and fall of the party reporter

In 2008, at the age of 18, I wrote an email to the editors of Tatler that makes me nauseous to look at now. I had just read Evelyn Waugh’s novel Vile Bodies, which stars a party reporter called Adam Fenwick-Symes who jollies about London writing about its Bright Young Things. It ends up with everyone either dead or mad, and it sounded like the life for me. And so I pitched a party column called ‘Mr Chatterbox’ to a lady named Fiona Kent, using phrases (oh God) like “dapperly dressed” and “Wildean wit”. Remarkably, she replied. Unremarkably, she turned me down. Perhaps I would have stood a slightly better chance had I known that what I was so ingeniously and “cheekily” (oh wow) pitching already existed – and was, in fact, a longtime cornerstone of the British press. At the age of 18, I invented the diary column. Exactly 18 years later, I wonder: won’t someone invent it all over again?