Much as it might annoy people who think it hypocritical, the fact is that for the impressionable young people who admire her, her amoral habits would have been better kept secret, as they have been for some years.I'm not saying that drug use is not sometimes problematic. Of course Ms Moss was being provocative in aligning herself so publicly with Mr Peter Doherty who himself flaunts drug use and finds himself much in media demand because of it. The relationship, and its flamboyant decadence, does suggest that they both have some troubles, and also points to increasing recklessness on the part of Ms Moss.But the public humiliation she has been put through - and the prescribed performative arc she is now expected to undertake before she is "forgiven" - is nothing but a vile modern kangaroo court.Any truly concerned citizen would have handed the video of Moss to the police, not to the newspapers. Yet Ms Moss did not ask to be a "role model" when she was recruited by an agency at 14. Instead she is a fashion model, and one with an enduringly racy image.Nevertheless, responsibly enough, she has taken reasonable care in the past to make sure that any recreational use by her of illegal drugs remains private. I bet those boys are sorry now that their vandalism has resulted in their picture being plastered all over the papers. They'll no doubt be full of shame, and not feeling remotely like bigged-up local celebrities, finally getting a horribly contorted and mediated version of the attention they crave and, as children, deserve. How did we reach such a parlous state, whereby entire neighbourhoods and their police forces are unable to control the behaviour of small children, yet appear to believe that the problem lies entirely with the children and has nothing do to with any aspect of their own voyeuristic, selfish, detached, opportunistic, petty eye to exploitation?It doesn't help that it is normal for the press to reward such behaviour, whether the pictures are of children committing crimes or adults doing so.

The pictures of Kate Moss obtained by the Daily Mirror recently are a case in point.The idea is that Moss deserves her humiliation because of her position as a "role model" who has let down her young fans. Instead, one of them pluckily dared to shoot footage of the incident and offered it to the press, which obliged this active citizen by publishing it. A shocking photograph this week showed pre-teenage children wrecking a car in a residential area, unchallenged because the watching adults were too frightened to intervene or even to call the police. Any person for whom Kate Moss was a role model is already lost - morally, spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, culturally lost But then we are all that. "Kate Moss has got to suffer," a senior lecturer at marketing at London Metropolitan University told this paper last week, "throw herself on public opinion and plead for mercy and then she can rebuild her career."Fancy that - a senior lecturer in marketing with a special interest in Kate Moss! Employed by a university! Education, education, education More from Howard Jacobson. She who rises by looking wasted must expect to fall the same way.

As for those Miss Moss has failed as an exemplar, frankly I don't give a damn. I will hope that in the case of Simon Wiesenthal Arab newspapers are just a little tardy preparing their stories But for their indifference to Kate Moss I congratulate them. She is proof of Western decadence indeed, not because she is who she is, does what she does and looks whatever it is she looks like. But because we can find a scintilla of curiosity to spare on her.The newspapers which invented her have of course their own stake in destroying her For which there can be no complaints. An exception is the Arab press which appears to be interested in neither. To the mind of a person not deranged by what capitalism decides is popular culture, the interest engendered by her fall from a grace that never was would beggar belief if one still had any But it is universal.

More of the world's newspapers have been carrying stories about what goes up Kate Moss's nostrils than have mentioned the death of Simon Wiesenthal the Nazi-hunter. With or without a stepladder.None of which helps me with Kate Moss. What with the agitation of the show, the buffetings they suffered from the designer, the pins that pierced their papery skin, the rarefied climate they inhabited up there in the clouds, the cigarettes, and the never having anything to eat - I say nothing of cocaine - their breath must have been atrocious Never kiss a supermodel, is my advice. Just two quick puffs, as though it were oxygen they were taking in, the stuff of life itself, then back down to be dressed.Every one of them the same. Out of the previous frock, semi-naked up the stairs - buttocks bonier than my fists, buttons where women in the real world have breasts - puff puff, then down again and immediately zipped into something else.

They were elongated beyond the resources of their own bodies Like giraffes Or borzois Or a cross between the two They didn't function properly They seemed to have difficulty breathing. This was partly because they were rushing to change garments. And also because, between changes, they would rush to the top of an iron staircase which gave out into a sort of courtyard, and smoke a cigarette. She would wear an Alida Valli belted raincoat with nothing on underneath except, of course, black stockings, and kiss me in the doorway on Schreyvogelgasse where Harry Lime hid in the shadows and smiled that enigmatic smile Heidi Klum would have been a good name for her. Though to have satisfied my adolescent longings she would have needed to be a lot fleshier under her raincoat than any of these supermodels And closer to my height. As a boy I went to see The Third Man three times and fantasised about falling in love with a double agent in post-war Vienna.