WHAT an absurd fuss has been made about Channel 4's documentary on the dead princess. With a tug of reluctance, we shall arrive at that topic in a moment, after exploring Kylie's publication of her private thoughts, via a note dropped "accidentally" in a London street.

The Australian singer absent-mindedly let slip this "to-do" list, which then found its way into the gossip columns of assorted national newspapers. The list was written in large, easily legible script, and covered such every-day tasks to be done as: "Acting coach numbers When Dr Who script arriving? songs to Parkinson tour next year."

This does not, you have to agree, sound much like the sort of list-to-self people normally leave lying around, saying, perhaps, "Remember to record Doctor Who proper spelling, Kylie remember never to watch tedious old Parkinson again get spag bol out of freezer whatever happened to my great life plan?" And so on.

Kylie's apparent slip into personal disclosure was nothing of the sort, but a playful bit of self-publicity, carefully managed to end up in the papers, in an example of what one Sunday newspaper columnist termed a "press release from the soul".

This term, as I understand it, refers to famous people attempting to convey something personal in an act of calculated innocence, not so much letting something out by mistake as indulging in a finely calibrated display of carelessness.

Oops! I did it again, as someone or other once said.

If the managed discovery of a "personal" list is one form of faux accidental communication, there are others, too, often involving the carrying of a book or publication intended to convey something about the carrier, usually a slightly lofty something.

So it was that Paris Hilton, who could be facing a spell in prison for violating her probation on a drink-driving conviction, was seen leaving her house carrying two books.

One was called The Power Of Now - a self-help book, apparently, a form of publication I have so far been determined to avoid - and a copy of the Bible (also a self-help book, I guess, and another one I am happily without).

Each of these books was intended to say something about Hilton, such as "I'm sorting myself out" perhaps, and "I can do piety too".

What is it with famous people, always trying to tell us something? I indulged in a sour chuckle at the examples included above. Then an image arose of a young man, 21 or 22 at a guess, attending journalism college in Harlow, Essex, with a copy of the Times Literary Supplement in his jacket pocket, folded so the title page faced outwards so it could be read by passers-by (as if they cared).

What callow nonsense was this? An attempt to convey the impression that the carrier was mightier and brighter than his companions, that he was destined for higher things - something not exactly supported by his university career, which ended in a degree of average respectability?

It was me, of course, and what a posing dunderhead that version of me now seems.

Diana, Princess of Wales, a woman who knew the low arts of manipulation all too well, pulled the same trick once when she was photographed carrying a copy of The Economist, hinting that she was cleverer than we thought.

In a sense, she's still at it nearly ten years after her death in a car crash in Paris. She haunts us still, constantly exhumed by newspapers, magazines and television. Channel 4 has kicked up the latest storm with a documentary, due to be screened on Wednesday, which is said to show graphic images of the crash. Various people have asked that the programme be dropped, from Patrick Jephson, Diana's former private secretary, to Lord St John of Fawsley, and the Conservative Party.

I'd like to add my name to that list. Not out of respect to a woman revealed in a new book, The Diana Chronicles, by Tina Brown, to have been a "spiteful, manipulative, media-savvy neurotic", but simply because I'd be happy never to have to hear another sanctimonious word about the dead princess.

It happened, it was sad at the time, especially for her poor sons, but we should be allowed to forget and to move on, instead of dragging out this inglorious royal gloom-fest.

Remind me to go and hide in a deep, dark hole when the tenth anniversary falls in August. Believe me, it's going to be hell out there in dead Diana land.