Some months ago, after waging a shameless and one-sided year-long campaign, I received a cake from Tom Cruise. The legend goes that he does this to hundreds of people every Christmas: his crews, his castmates, obnoxious journalists without any basic dignity, they all receive a large white chocolate bundt (and Christmas tree decoration) in a box.
It was a lovely gift. But something about it nagged away at me. Was it really from Tom Cruise? Did Cruise one day sprint into his manager’s office, slam down a rolled-up copy of the Guardian and yell: “This kid wrote about me eating some curry. Send him a cake! Send him two!”? Or did Tom Cruise have absolutely nothing to do with it? Did all my hard work simply trigger a Google alert in a publicist’s office somewhere?
