Tabloid Girl by Sharon Marshall Sphere, HK$112
Tabloid Girl is a memoir written for chick-lit fans about Sharon Marshall's 10 years spent writing kiss-and-tells. The book is a speedy read that is even more quickly forgettable - just like the (often false) stories the hack wrote for a living. Sex ruffles the pages from start to finish: with a colleague, she attends and reports on a celebrity orgy and on her own she does something even more scary - doorstep aggressive television journalist Jeremy Paxman to ask: 'Are you having an affair?' Marshall is shown the ropes by old hand Mark Crump, who educates her about tabloidese: no one just has sex; they have romps or sizzling romps or 'sordid nights of spanking orgy shame'. Or, in the case of Lemmy, of metal band Motorhead, a seven-day sex and bondage session; Marshall's interview with his lover, Julie Wilson, is one of the book's highlights. Probably because her editors persuaded her to do it, she includes episodes in which she gets too close to the story. After an alcohol binge at a hotel, she wakes up in a king-sized bed and thinks, 'Blimey. That's that bloke off the telly.' Marshall has done her time. This is her way of getting her own back - by leaping from obscurity to fame.