I have every intention of hating LA. Admittedly we only see a small part of it (namely, Hollywood) but I love what I see. The myth about all the women being surgically enhanced and full of silicone is bollocks. I don’t see anyone bizarre-looking the whole time we’re here. Just lots of perfectly normal looking women with big arses and droopy tits and weak chins - just like anywhere else. And neither do we see anyone famous. Not one. And it’s not for lack of trying. We do see some fantastically sexy cars, though.

We are staying at Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard. This is Chateau Marmont:

We are such lucky bastards.

John Belushi choked on his own vomit and died at Chateau Marmont. McCauley Culkin is shooting a film around the pool while we’re here. There are lots of people sitting around the pool who look like they might be musicians or models. It is a legendary Hollywood hotel. It is the essence of discreet LA chic. We love it.

Our friends Ant and Anne live in LA. They come and see us at our hotel, to have a gander at how the other half live:

Beautiful models flirt with Oliver in the pool and he flirts back:

Then Oliver pretends to be a film star in an attempt to get even more attention.

Ant was headhunted from London to work for the William Morris Agency. The William Morris Agency is the Big One. Huge enormous and vast. Hence people who work for the William Morris Agency can get in anywhere. You need a friend who works for the William Morris Agency when you're in Hollywood. Ant and Ann get a babysitter for the night and take us to the Ivy for dinner and then to the Sky Bar for drinks where I accidentally give our waitress a fifty percent tip. It’s all very exciting but we still don’t see anyone famous.

The following morning we go round to Ant and Ann’s apartment to watch the World Cup final. Oliver finds it gripping:

Afterwards Jascha attempts to look like a hotshot movie mogul on the balcony:

And then we decide to go to Universal Studios as Ant and Anne have season tickets that are about to run out. It’s very hot and very expensive (mainly because we’ve bought ‘Front of Line’ tickets which means just what it says. You get to go straight to the top of every queue you encounter and swan right in. I can feel myself turning into a diva). Here I am with a friend who I thought might make me look feminine and petite but actually makes me look like a very short shot-putter:

A day at Universal Studios is totally knackering, especially with a baby, so we say goodbye to a completely drained Ant, Anne and Oliver and have a quick lie-down in our chic and stylish cottage at the Marmont (it even has a tiny little kitchen -more of a gigantic mini-bar, really). Ant has told us where to get the best sushi in town so we ask the concierge to book us a table (I know, I know - who do we think we are?) and head over there in a cab. Matsuhisa turns out to be a branch of Nobu. Now, I've never been to Nobu, and I've always wanted to go to Nobu and I'm a complete sushi freak so imagine my joy on discovering that not only is it a branch of Nobu but it’s where Nobu actually lives! It’s his shop, and there he is, swanning around the place, table hopping, doing the maitre d’ bit. He's the most famous person we’ve seen so far.

We order the Toro extravaganza menu, which is wickedly expensive but if you've ever eaten Toro you’ll understand why. Yum yum:

After one of the best meals we’ve ever had in our lives, we take a cab to the top of La Cienega and walk back to the hotel along the mayhem that is Sunset Boulevard on a Saturday night. It’s our last night in LA and we want to soak up the atmosphere.

*

Today I finally feel famous. I've got one last gig to do, a pre-recorded TV interview for Connie Martinson Talks Books. Jash offers to accompany me (quite a sacrifice actually as he could have spent the morning admiring starlets by the pool) and a car comes to collect us from the hotel at 12.15. I can hardly contain my excitement when I see what is inside the car:

M&M’s and the LA Times. How Hollywood is that?! We’re driven up into the Hollywood Hills and I can sense that something’s wrong when we turn into a small residential road full of slightly jaded looking detached houses. We find the address I've been given and I ring on the doorbell. Someone shouts at me through the door in Spanish. I shout back, ‘Connie Martinson, please.’ ‘No,’ a small Mexican woman heaves open the door and shouts at me. ‘No Connie Martinson. No. She not here.’ ‘Well, where is she?’ She shuts the door in my face. Me, Jash and the driver look at each in puzzlement and go back to the car to double-check our paperwork. We've definitely got the right address. I try the door again. This time she lets me in, gesturing angrily with her hands around the spartanly furnished house that there is categorically nobody there. She doesn't speak any English at all. I have no choice. I have to utilise some schoolgirl Spanish. It’s excruciating but it works. She gives me a number for the studio, I speak to Connie’s daughter/producer and we’re off again.

I can't help feeling that this is all slightly downmarket stuff for the driver. I wonder who else he’s driven around in the back of his beautiful M&M filled car and feel woefully inadequate.

Connie Martinson is a truly lovely woman with nail polish all over her fingers - it looks like she painted them in the back of a moving car - and scuffed shoes. She is shambolic-looking and totally un-LA but she has really read my book and gives me my favourite interview so far, asking me lots of probing questions about my characters, my inspirations and my life. I feel like a real writer for once, and not just another member of the Chick-literati who only ever gets asked about the size of her advance.

Back on Sunset Boulevard, we have lunch at a restaurant with a bucking bronco in the middle of it. I have soup with tortilla chips in it and Jascha has chips with chilli beef all over them:

And then we check out of the gorgeous Chateau Marmont and get a cab to Hollywood Boulevard, where we pick up a hire car. Tonight, we’re driving to Las Vegas.