The Britney Spears Allure story has attracted a fair bit of attention but I was slightly gobsmacked to see this admission in one comment piece:

Britney, pop star and mother-of-the-year candidate, apparently agreed to pose for the cover of Allure and to sit for an interview with writer Judith Newman.

For four days Newman chased the pop princess around Los Angeles. On the first day Newman was in a cab on the way to an interview location when a last-minute call from Spears’ publicist postponed the interview and re-scheduled it for the next day.

The next day Spears ditched Newman again. And so it went for the frustrated writer. She never did get the cover interview and had to fake her way through a long piece on how she didn’t get the interview.

I’ve been there. I once had to fake a story on supermodel Cindy Crawford after her obnoxious publicist ended our interview three minutes after we started.

These fake stories can be fun to write, particularly if you are allowed to vent your hostility toward the interview subject, and the Allure writer did an exceptional job. Her prose wasn’t nearly as angry as mine would have been after four days of trying to nail down the elusive and inconsiderate Britney.

Check out the last two paras…