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Handbag lady … Paris Hilton. Photograph: Excel Media / Rex Features
An extraordinary tale lands on Lost in Showbiz’s desk. Recently, a princess generously gave some gold to an Indian woman begging, only for the gold to be destroyed by the woman’s jealous relatives. The princess expressed her woe via the traditional means of tweeting a sadface emoticon but found consolation on a magic island (“I love Ibiza! About to present an award to one of my favourite DJ’s! House music forever!”) And they all lived happily ever after. Except, possibly, the Indian woman. The end.
Amazingly, this is not a Rudyard Kipling story but a charming tale called Paris Hilton Went to India and Met a Poor Person. You remember Paris, right? I think she’s Kim Kardashian’s mother.
Paris recently went to Mumbai to spread peace – I mean, promote a handbag line and take photos of herself making namaste poses in sparkly minidresses. While there, she gave a $100 note to a woman called Ishika, who Hilton presumably assumed could bloody well change it into Indian currency herself. This self-described “Model, Actress, Singer, Brand, Business Woman, Fashion Designer, Author, Philanthropist and Empire” can’t save the world and launch handbag ranges and find a bureau de change, y’know.
Sadly, the note caused problems among Ishika’s relatives and it was ripped up. Although Ishika kinda brought it on herself by not even recognising Hilton, referring to her in interviews as “the foreigner”. How can you help these uneducated people?
So Hilton went off to Ibiza and consoled herself by taking photos of herself making sexy faces in Pacha, and Ishika went back to doing, like, whatever, and somewhere O Henry wept that he died too soon to act as James Boswell to Hilton’s Samuel Johnson.
