"She has a reputation as a diva"
Picture the scene: I was driving through Beverly Hills this afternoon in a brand new ice-green Aston Martin Vantage convertible, Prada shades on, Aerosmith blaring, heading for the America's Got Talent studio - where everyone is celebrating because the show is currently topping the TV ratings (beating Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen by a wider gap than Cherie Blair's lips).
I arrived at the studio, got waved through by beaming security guards ("Loving the show, Piers!"), and arrived at my special parking bay, where a sign read simply: CELEBRITY. I emerged from the car, signed a couple of autographs, and strode confidently to my dressing room feeling like Lyle Lovett must have felt when Julia Roberts first went to bed with him - the jammiest man alive.
And then it happened. A family of British tourists in tonight's audience passed by, and one of them - a young woman in her twenties - stopped in her tracks, shrieked with excitement, and uttered the words to her mother that would instantly - and comprehensively - wreck the moment:
"Oh look Mum, it's Jeremy Kyle!" My black mood only lifted with the arrival of Mariah Carey to pre-tape a performance of her new single Obsessed. Mariah's the wife of our new host, Nick Cannon, and it was not difficult to see why she is the most successful solo female recording artist in history.
She's such a perfectionist that we were all in the studio until nearly midnight as she planned her three-minute appearance, right down to the detail of lighting, sound and camera angles. And work with producers in the editing suite apparently continued to 6am until she was absolutely happy.
Mariah has a reputation as a bit of a diva. But like most other divas in musical history - from Piaf to Whitney Houston, Diana Ross to Madonna - that's primarily because she'll do whatever it takes, however long it takes, to get things as good as they can be. Which is why she has sold 200 million albums.
"I don't think anyone knows as much about what's right for me as I do," she once said. A pretty good maxim to have in showbusiness. Every time I've been persuaded to do something my gut instinct told me not to do, I've regretted it. (Piers Morgan in Mail On Sunday)
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