Perez Hilton doesn’t expect to be forgiven for his Noughties career as the world’s most notorious gossip blogger. His business was the demolition of celebrity reputations. Other people’s career problems, heartaches, eating disorders and substance abuse were all just content for him — something to be written up and published, with ads running alongside.

When Lindsay Lohan was arrested for drink-driving in 2007, Hilton updated his website 60 times in one day. As Nicole Richie got dangerously thin, he said that she was doing it for “attention” and posted about her “zombie hands”. And in the months before Amy Winehouse’s death, when her problems with addiction were obvious, he nicknamed her “Crackhouse”.

Almost no one, though, was a bigger target — or a better