Monday My new personal assistant, wearing a crash helmet and holding a riot shield, brings me my legally permitted rubber-coated mobile phone. I have clothes strewn across my bed. Mops. Mops. Today I am starting five days of community service at the New York department of sanitation. I need to call somebody about mops.

Nelson Mandela won’t be up. Elton John isn’t answering his telephone. I suppose there’s Victoria Beckham. There’s always Victoria Beckham.

“Daahling?” I say, holding some floaty puce chiffon against myself, in front of the mirror.

“Daahling!” says Victoria. I roll my eyes. She’s so pretentious. “Listen, daahling. You were common for longer than me. What do you know about mops?” Victoria tries. That’s the wonderful thing about Victoria, she always does try.

“Squidgy? Accessorised with a bucket and some soapy water?” she suggests. I throw down the puce chiffon and pick up a turquoise, fur tank top. “Yah,” I say. “Yah, OK. But what colour are they?”

Tuesday I’m having a fag break with this old guy on my community service programme. Darrell has been showing me how to use a mop. It seems mops are beige.

“I’ve got a lot of shit to work through, man,” I tell Darrell.

“I mean, I’m friends with Nelson Mandela, yah? I am a beautiful, black, confident woman. I’ve had problems with drugs, sure, and when I do, the newspapers write about it. So invasive! They’re even writing about this. And all I did was hit somebody with a cellphone. Like, what’s that about, yah? Haven’t I got any human rights?”

Darrell has been addicted to glue for 35 years. He’s in here because he had a manic episode and beat up his mother with a kitchen stool. The newspapers don’t care. Nobody does. Not even his mother. She’s still in a coma.

Darrell and I agree that he is the luckiest man in the world.

Wednesday I’m scrubbing a wall, next to a woman called Janet. Janet is 67. She poisoned her neighbour’s dog.

“I suppose you know why I’m here?” I say to Janet.

Janet doesn’t. “I hit my maid with a cellphone,” I tell her. “I have anger management issues. I suppose you know about that?” Janet doesn’t.

For a while, we just scrub. “I suppose you know,” I say, eventually, “that I’m friends with Nelson Mandela?”

Janet doesn’t know that either.

Thursday They’ve changed the mops. They aren’t beige string anymore. They’re Day-Glo blue fabric. And I’m wearing a pink satin shirt. This is awful. My assistant has to bring me a change of clothes. I grab Janet’s cellphone.

I wake up four hours later. Nobody has ever shot me with a Taser before. They really work. I must get one to use around the house.

Friday Finally, after hours of trying, I get through to Nelson Mandela.

“Nelson!” I sob. “I’ve been mopping and scrubbing, and the mops don’t even match my clothes! They won’t even let me use a cellphone. I don’t know if I can take it.”

Nelson chuckles softly. “My child,” he says, “under the apartheid Government I was imprisoned for 27 years. I served hard labour on Robben Island. I wore only shorts. I had minimal rations. For 18 years my days were spent breaking rocks with a shovel.”

“Thank God,” I say. “So you know what it’s like.”

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