“I was once rogered by by all four Baldwin brothers in alphabetical order – Alec, Daniel, Stephen and William,” Cynthia Trowel proudly tells me, as we sit in her well-appointed Chiswick living room. “Of course that was before Billy got God – or was it Stephen who became a happy-clappy? I can never tell them apart! Anyway, it was all a long time ago when people still knew who they were and having a sexual tryst with one, let alone all four, was newsworthy!” I’m here in the West London suburbs to meet some of the leading members of the so-called ‘Celebrity Shag Club’, a group of middle class suburbanites who have devoted their lives to having sex with celebrities. “This isn’t some sordid publicity thing, you understand,” fifty-two year old Trowel assures me, whilst offering me a slice of homemade fruit cake. “We’re not like those awful slappers who run off to the tabloids, selling their stories to the highest bidder.” According to the former librarian ‘Celebrity Shag Club’ is more of a private members club bringing together an exclusive group of people with a common interest. “For some people it is collecting antiques, for others its hunting big game – we simply enjoy hunting celebrities. For sex,” she explains. “It isn’t a competitive sport, but there’s no doubt that getting your end away with George Clooney in the toilets at Waterloo Station has a greater cachet than, say, taking it up the council gritter from Michael Barrymore in some seedy backstreet public toilet behind Lambeth bus station!”

The mention of bus stations and toilets highlights another aspect of ‘Celebrity Shag Club’ – that the more unusual the venue of the liaison, the better. “Whilst spending the night polishing Captain Picard’s dome in a plush hotel room might get you entry into the club, there’s just no risk attached, is there?” points out Trowel’s friend and fellow club member Arthur Hoe, who has joined us in her living room. “However, a quick knee-trembler with some barely-legal female star of Coronation Street or Eastenders behind the curtain of the fitting rooms in Top Shop would be infinitely more exciting, wouldn’t it? Plus, the unusual venue would also compensate for the low calibre of the celebrity involved in such a case!” Indeed, the club is very particular about the types of celebrity they count as providing a ‘celebrity shag’. “We’ve had people trying to join on the basis that they’ve bonked somebody who had once been on Big Brother,” retired teacher Hoe reveals, stirring his tea. “I mean, really! We’ll only consider bona fide celebrities, the likes of Sandra Bullock, say, or Dame Judi Dench – in fact they are two of the celebrities any of our members have yet to ‘bag’!”

The club has other rules: the seduction must be genuine – the use of date rape drugs such as rohypnol, are frowned upon. “That sort of thing could get you a life ban if it were found out,” declares club chairman Harry Rake. “After all, there’s no sport in slipping one to a sleeping pop singer, for instance. Moreover, even if drugs aren’t used, all sex must be consensual. We’ve no time for blighters who cheat by coercing their targets with hot irons and the like. Likewise with blackmail using incriminating photographs involving the disposal of corpses and the like. Not sporting at all!” Bizarre sex with celebrities is actively encouraged by the club. “Believe me, if you’d dripped wax on Britney Spears’ nipples whilst she was chained to an iron bedstead during a consensual bit of bondage, we’d be welcoming you with open arms,” says the silver haired company director. “Of course, it would be even better if the kinky sex was initiated by the celebrity – that would bring you some real kudos: being picked up by a celebrity for some dirty sex!”

However, so far the club hasn’t had any authenticated tales of such celebrity-initiated perversion. “I did once read on the internet about some woman who claimed that Harvey Keitel e once offered to show her the head on his handy shandy and then invited her back to his place for an S&M session, but I suspect she’d just fallen asleep whilst watching Bad Lieutenant and had a very vivid dream,” muses Cynthia Trowel. “More convincing was that tale of the chap being chained to Sharon Stone’s radiator whilst she whipped his naked bottom with a cat o’nine tails, that I heard from a fellow passenger on the Circle Line.” Nevertheless, Trowel suspects that the story is probably just the wet dream of a fantasist , like so many of the stories spun by potential members. “That’s the one thing we really won’t tolerate,” she explains. “Fantasists are not welcome here. It has got to the stage, in this celebrity-obsessed era we currently live in, that we are having to ask for proof from would-be members. You know: Christine Aguilera’s knickers or a cast of James Garner’s penis, perhaps. Or, even better, video footage from a mobile phone – but only if it hasn’t already been spread all over the internet or sold to a tabloid. We have to be discreet, for goodness sake!” Trowel confesses that she misses the ‘good old days’ when members could be taken at their word. “I’m afraid that there are just too many of the wrong sort of people in the celebrity shagging business these days,” she sighs. “They’re just motivated by personal gain rather than a sense of achievement!”

Finally, the question arises as to whether I could be a potential member of ‘Celebrity Shag Club’. “Surely with your work with such a high profile publication as The Sleaze, probing the dark recesses of politics and celebrity culture, you must have had plenty of opportunities for celebrity sex?” ponders Hoe. Sadly, I have to confess that I’ve never had such an intimate encounter with the great and good. Although, whilst I cannot claim to have been shagged by a celebrity, I did once know someone who was shagged by someone who was famous for five minutes. When I was a student one of the girls in my history tutorial group spent the night with Andrew Ridgeley (the one out of Wham! who didn’t give Ronaldo a rub down in his local public toilets). She sold the story to a newspaper for a few quid (a handy supplement to her student grant – those were the days when we actually had grants, not loans). However, such second hand celebrity shagging isn’t good enough to gain entry to this exclusive group. So, as I take my leave of the gathering in Chiswick, I’m left to reflect on the fact that I won’t be joining this club of middle aged, middle class people who like nothing better than gathering around a roaring fire to exchange celebrity shag stories the way others swap ghost stories, any time soon.