There is no smoke without fire, they say. Well there is a lot of smoke hanging over Hollywood today. A pall of thick, black, lung-choking smoke from the fires engulfing the East Coast.

Earthquakes. Gang wars. Race riots. The movie business. California is a dangerous place to live and getting more dangerous by the minute. Blazing Disaster screamed the headline of my newspaper, beneath a picture of a woman weeping as flames ripped through her home. The story began: Fifteen wildfires, whipped up by 80mph desert winds, are threatening hundreds of homes - including the mansions of Hollywood stars.

Including the mansions of Hollywood stars. I couldn't get over that. Thousands of people had already been burned out of house and hearth but the newspaper was more concerned with the potential threat to ranches belonging to (and presumably rarely used by) Tom Selleck, Sophia Loren and Robert Wagner. Hardly the Hollywood A-list, although further down the next paragraph I learned there was also a potential threat to the Malibu beach homes of Barbara Streisand and Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford.

As far as I could gather from the paper's man on the spot, not content with having consumed 15,000 of California's most desirable acres, the raging inferno was travelling relentlessly towards Hollywood and the home of one Steven Spielberg. How else to explain the news that firefighters had moved to protect the director's $10 million mansion by stationing a fire engine in his garden?

People presumably have a wide variety of reactions to news of this kind about Mr Spielberg, varying from unrestrained hysteria to complete indifference, depending on whether they are a movie executive or just a relative. My own reaction, as usual, could best be described as predatory. The column deadline was approaching once again and I hadn't the faintest idea what I was going to write about. Here it was on a hot plate. In the absence of anything as professional as a notebook, I began frantically scribbling in the margins of the paper.

I haven't told you where I was when I learned of this hideous threat to the property of the world's most successful movie maker. Somewhere over London, is the answer. It is hard to be any more exact. As far as I could figure we were stuck in a tight holding pattern around Heathrow. Outside I could see the moon, slowly travelling from one side of the cabin to another. and what seemed suspiciously like an armada of airborn blinking lights.

The Austrian pilot cheerfully announced that we would be delayed for another twenty minutes or so. Something about freak lightning and problems with the runway. "As I am sure many of you will have noticed, we are not alone up here," said the pilot.

"I'm going to die," whispered the man next to me, gulping down the last of his miniature bottle of Jack Daniels. His seventh miniature bottle of Jack Daniels. "Just when I thought I had it made."

TRAVELLERS CHEQUES

Now I don't mind flying. I try not to think about the physics of sitting up in the air in a heavy metal box. But I just don't want anybody else up there with me. The idea that a half dozen aircraft were circling around the same spot, dipping and rising to avoid each other in bad weather conditions was intimidating enough. That I was stuck next to a paranoid drunk was putting me right off my Bloody Mary. My fifth Bloody Mary.

"What's that you're writing?" my neighbour wanted to know. "Your last will and testament?"

"It's a movie column," I replied, too drunk to come up with a better story.

"This is just like the scene in Die Hard II," he said. "Terrorists have taken over the airport and they won't let anybody land. We just stay up here till we run out of fuel and then . . . " He shook his head grimly.

"Bruce Willis saved the day just in the nick of time," I replied, reluctant to get involved in the conversation but unable to pass up an opportunity to demonstrate my superior film knowledge.

"Not before they lost one 747," said my neighbour. "And besides, Bruce is probably in Beverly Hills, loading up his lawn sprinklers in case the fire decides to pass on Spielberg and go straight for him and Demi. In fact, they're probably counting on it. I mean, when was the last time you saw a director on the cover of Vanity Fair? No, this is a superstar blaze if ever there was one. It needs real headliners."

He chuckled then. The thought of a movie star being burned to a crisp seemed to distract him from dwelling on his own prospective demise. He leaned forward and in a conspiratorial whisper that reeked of whiskey, he said, "I've just come from L.A. I know what's going on. This fire's just a diversion. A smokescreen, if you like. Put that in your column."

I was about to mention that this flight was from Vienna but thought better of it. A column was a column after all. Perhaps he had taken the scenic route. "So what are they covering up?" I asked.

He snorted derisively but kept his voice low. "Heidi," he said. "Heidi!" I knew he wasn't talking about an alpine goat herd.

Regular readers may have been wondering why I have not written in detail about the Heidi Fleiss affair. Well, I figured that since she had kept my name out of the papers, I should do the same for her. But I had been following the story with interest. She was busted at her $1.5 million mansion on June 9th this year by eight police officers. "In the history of this business nobody has ever been able to do what I do," she had previously told an undercover agent.

Her business was procuring girls. Heidi was Hollywood's madam, supplying prostitutes to movie stars and executives. "You get what you pay for,", she had injudiciously told the agent. Heidi's girls cost $1,500 a pop. The cost to Heidi is likely to be several years in a federal penitentiary. The cost to some of her clients could be their careers, maybe even a few marriages.

Already one Columbia executive Michael Nathanson, who had hired Heidi's girls for his bachelor party and then charged it to the studio, has been removed from his post. Other executives are under in-house investigation for including Heidi's fees in their production bills.

On the celebrity front, the names of Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson, James Caan, Judd Nelson, Billy Idol and Oliver Stone have all been dragged into the ring. $950 worth of travellers cheques endorsed by Charlie Sheen were found in her house. What did not turn up during the comprehensive search was her little black book.

"I've got it," said my neighbour, confidently. "Fat lot of good it will do me now." He produced a small but thick leather-bound notebook from inside his jacket. "Names and numbers like you wouldn't believe. Have you got any idea what this is worth?"

DIVERSIONARY TACTICS

I said I had heard Madonna made Fleiss a multi-million dollar offer for the rights to her story but there had been rumours that some of her former clients may have offered her more to keep her mouth shut.

"They've got a defence fund going in Beverly Hills," nodded my neighbour. "The wives are holding dinner plate balls, for Christ's sake. They're pulling in more than Liz Taylor's AIDS campaign."

"So what are you going to do, publish?" I asked.

"Hell no," he said. "There's no money in publishing. Christ, you're supposed to be a journalist. You should know that! Of course that's what they're afraid of. They think the whole world is gonna turn its back on them if the truth comes out. Shit. Who cares about a bunch of millionaires using some of that excess money for high-class perversion?

"Look at Rob Lowe. Getting caught in a video orgy was the best thing that ever happened to him. Damn, if I were a movie star I would be more worried about my name being left out than included. But let's face it, they don't understand the general public. Otherwise, how do you explain The Last Action Hero?

"Blackmail, then?" I suggested.

"Too complicated," he said.

"Then what?" I demanded.

"If we get down in one piece than I'm going to take her place," he said. "What do you think the superstars are doing for sex since Heidi went down? Probably back to sleeping with their co-stars. How long can that last, eh? There's a vacuum in Hollywood, and as soon as the smoke clears I'm going to fill it."

"The smoke?" I enquired. How had we gotten back to smoke?

"Diversionary tactics," said my neighbour confidently. "Earn some sympathy for those poor, homeless moguls. Clear some prime real estate in the process. Jesus, think what that land will be worth once they've burned the low incomes out. Whoever came up with that one was a genius. They've probably already sown up the movie rights."

He gazed out the window in awe just as the plane started to bump and jolt. "What the hell is that?" he yelped.

"We just landed," I told him.

"I'm going to be rich," he said.

"I thought you were going to die," I said.

"What are you talking about? Things like that don't happen in the movies," replied my neighbour, unbuckling his seat belt as we were still taxiing in. "This is a movie column, isn't it?"

Editor's note:

Neil McCormick's whereabouts are currently unknown. This column was faxed to us from Heathrow Airport, London, in the form of a series of almost illegible notes apparently scribbled in the margins of a dubious tabloid newspaper. Our fact checkers have been unable to verify or disprove anything in his current column. there have been unconfirmed reports that a man answering his description was spotted on TV footage of the California fires, standing outside Mr Steven Spielberg's house. The unidentified man had apparently been enquiring of fire officers whether they thought, in the unfortunate event of the house burning down, this would make a good location for a massage parlour.