THE FRIARY NEWSLETTER: Elemental mingling is the best therapy for her

This week Tim Panally, head of Reconstructive Social Programming, writes:

WE CALL IT The Margin. It's a good name. Someone will probably pinch it for a movie any day now - The Margin, starring Keanu Reeves in sunglasses. I came up with the name about 10 years ago, while we were treating the baroness, when she was still PM. Geoffrey Howe's little speech and the party revolt that followed were still years off, but we knew she'd already crossed The Margin pretty conclusively. Crossed it, landed on the far side, burnt the boat and stamped off into Barmyland. Only a hefty programme of Messiah Complex Therapy, along with some voodoo spells and electrified bath water, enabled her to continue running the country.

The Margin hardly needs explanation. It's what you cross when you're so famous that you leave the ordinary world behind. You think everybody you meet - that is, everybody who isn't famous - must be an awestruck fan or a silent handmaiden, and will not speak approach you unless asked. You get the syndrome with ageing actresses, elderly pop stars, Upper House politicians and It girls.

So a big welcome from us all to Diana Ross, who sneaked back to Blighty on the q.t. after that unpleasant business at Heathrow - the triggering of an alarm, a bit of a frisking and then arrest after getting her own back. She will be treated for Incredibly Superior Person Syndrome in our G Wing - where The Margin is located, complete with flashing lights and Stars In Their Eyes-style dry ice.

Role playing is centrally important to this therapy, as we try to persuade stricken celebrities that they can be touched or spoken to by ordinary people without being violated. We'll probably start Ms Ross off with some elementary Common People Interfacing.

She will be importuned by beggars, then addressed with joshing flirtatiousness by workmen in the street ("Allo, darlin'. Wot you good at then?"), and brushed in to by window cleaners and impertinent tradesmen. We'll move on to Intermediate Community Mingling, in which Ms Ross will be made to stand in a bus queue and listen to inane conversations without summoning a bodyguard. Finally, she will have a day or two of People In Uniform Endurance, being ticked off by scornful policemen and measured for bespoke clothing by female shop assistants in overalls.

All being well, she'll be back from The Margin within a few days, and able to stand being frisked by strangers, or even having her hand shaken by aspirant mayors of London.

Lots of you have been wondering about the high incidence in the modern cinema of movies about psychiatrists who have Mafia villains as patients. The Sopranos came first, now there's Analyse This, with Bobby De Niro and sweet little Billy Crystal swapping wisecracks. Thanks to them, everyone now thinks it's all beer and skittles down in the Friary's world-famous Godfather Shrinkage Unit.

Not a bit of it. We get the worst dregs of organised mob gangland in here, and we try to send them home happier people, but I'm telling you, it's a strain. They always want to know the same thing: "Tell me the truth, Doc - am I a bad person? I mean fundamentally, as opposed to behaviourally?" And it's so difficult to make much headway when you're lying to your patient.

These people talk in strangulated voices about their mothers and they all appear to have lost male siblings in frightful angling accidents ("Tonight," they tend to whisper, "my brother sleeps with the fishes ..."). They also respond negatively to suggestions that they stop trying to sell cocaine and open rackety nightclubs, and instead get a job in software design.

I don't mind a little robust discussion with patients on the road to social realignment, but I do object to having my head wound into a vice and my eyebrows torn off with pliers. My shouts for help, I'm told, could be heard as far away as the Frankie Fraser Memorial Orthodontics Unit ...