Paul Thomas: Bulletproof no more - how the mighty have fallen

Opinion

It seems hotel suites are where celebrities go to self-destruct.

Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle started it. Although now a footnote in cinema history, Arbuckle was briefly one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.

A 120kg plumber's mate, he was discovered in 1913 by producer Mack Sennett who paid him $3 a day to fall on his arse and take custard pies in the face.

Four years later, having worked his way up via the Keystone Cops and supporting roles for Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Arbuckle was signed by Paramount for US$5000 a week.

The various formulae for converting this into today's money produce a range of figures, but in America in 1920 a flash car cost $500 and $5000 got you the keys to a mansion.

In 1921 Arbuckle celebrated his new contract by hosting a party in three adjoining suites at the Hotel St. Francis in San Francisco.

As documented in Kenneth Anger's underground classic Hollywood Babylon, after 40 hours of non-stop revelry Arbuckle manhandled a tipsy starlet named Virginia Rappe into a bedroom and locked the door.

Rappe died five days later of peritonitis resulting from a ruptured bladder.

Arbuckle was charged with rape and murder, the prosecution alleging that the victim's injuries were caused by "external pressure" - widely believed to mean a bottle.

After two inconclusive trials, the third delivered an acquittal.

On the courtroom steps the Fat Man proclaimed that his life "has been devoted to the production of clean pictures for the happiness of children. I shall try to enlarge my field of usefulness so that my art shall have a wider service."

Fat chance. Arbuckle might have escaped the chair, but he didn't get away with it. Paramount cancelled his contract; his unreleased pictures were junked at enormous cost to the studio; he couldn't land a part in a crowd scene. He died in poverty in 1933, aged 46.

Fast forward to 2010. Police are called to a suite at New York's Plaza Hotel where they discover a terrified porn star locked in the bathroom.

You may wonder what it takes to terrify a porn star. The answer is the world's highest-paid TV star Charlie Sheen, off his face and deeply paranoid on cocaine and booze.

The cops gave Sheen the choice of accompanying them downtown or checking into a hospital. He chose the ward.

Sheen's self-destructive antics earned him 15 minutes of hyper-fame, but this week reality bit with the announcement that Ashton Kuchner will replace him on the hit TV show Two and a Half Men.

Sheen was reportedly "destroyed" by the news, as he'd expected the producers to swallow their pride and reinstate him.

International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, now in custody for sex crimes allegedly committed in an even more expensive New York hotel suite, might be wondering how Sheen could do thousands of dollars worth of damage, get crazy on thousands of dollars worth of illegal drugs and monster a porn star, yet walk away without a single charge being laid against him despite being a serial offender in all of the above categories.

The fact is both men belong to exclusive clubs - Hollywood royalty in Sheen's case, the French political and bureaucratic elite in Strauss-Kahn's - whose members tend to think the rules don't apply to them.

Now, like Fatty Arbuckle, they're finding out there's a downside to all those years of having their excesses ignored, indulged or covered up because of who they are - they were seduced into the delusion that they could get away with anything.

If, as is being suggested by Strauss-Kahn's admirers and political allies in France, this was a set-up to eliminate him from the upcoming presidential election, he has the connections and backing to make a fight of it.

If, as seems rather more likely, the thing is exactly what it appears to be, he can contemplate a wretched existence bearing no resemblance to his previous life of privilege, achievement and responsibility.

It's been said that sex makes hypocrites of us all. While the media constructs a portrait of Strauss-Kahn as a brutish predator who regarded women as sexual objects that exist for his pleasure, it is simultaneously transforming Her Royal Hotness Pippa Middleton into a sex symbol.

This week the Daily Telegraph, house journal of the English upper class, breathlessly announced that Pippa is the bookies' favourite to take the "coveted" Rear of the Year award.

It even gave her helpful tips: "If Pippa dons a few more clingy skirts and drops her car keys every now and then, this is definitely one crown she can earn."

What more could a thoroughly modern miss aspire to?