Greta Gerwig fangirls and Billie Eilish’s new gold accessory: My surreal night at the Vanity Fair Oscar party

I’m standing in between Usher and Emily Blunt, who is telling her husband, John Krasinski that she’s cold. Not too far ahead, I spot Jennifer Lawrence chatting to a friend. Then I see Sydney Sweeney. And Kim Kardashian. All of us are in a queue. Not just to get into the Vanity Fair Oscar party but to have our photos taken on the red carpet that currently stretches between us and its entrance. It takes longer than it should for me to realise that nobody needs to take any photos of me. So I tiptoe past everyone trying not to look too much like the Pink Panther until I reach the door, where I wind up having to wait because Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake are getting a photo with the Haim sisters.

Tina Brown, doyenne of the magazine industry and former editor, that a journalist should always “feel like an outsider”. Nowhere does that sentiment feel more appropriate than