Russell Brand's podcast, Lily Allen's MySpace, and Peaches's Facebook. Celebrities get their instant right to reply

Some celebrities, it's fairly well established, will take themselves off to the opening of an email (oh, hai! I updated ur metaphor). And thanks to this plentiful supply of micro-celebs with famous surnames and silly first names, it's starting to become the norm for tech PRs to fork out for a few quid to get some of them to show up at their product launches. I've yet to witness the delights of one of these events, but I have had the pleasure of hearing about them the next day from hungover members of the Shiny team.

And because I heard a first hand account, I was able to spot the fibs in the gossip page accounts of one particular event. I've long heard celebs complain that journalists make stuff up, but hearing them insist that two celebrities spent the night joined at the lips, when in fact the Shiny girls had witnessed that particular skinny-trousered goth detective dancing with his long term girlfriend all night, left me feeling faintly put out.

But this is the age of microblogging, when every last thought or feeling can be logged in a matter of seconds, and any celebrity work his or her salt has an online celebnode in which to store thoughts, photos and details of the next celebrity appearance. So now, whenever a paper makes up some gossip, you can bet that the next day that same paper will be reporting what the celebrity in question said on his or her blog about the article. The whole thing is getting so out of hand that if Lily Allen didn't have a blog, at least 3 newspaper gossip pages would go out of business.

At one point, Russell Brand spent that best part of his weekly radio podcast going through newspaper articles featuring the latest kiss and tells about him, pointing out which parts were true and which parts were false, and Peaches Geldof's Facebook profile is a source of enormous fascination for all gossip writers as they try to glean even the skimpiest of stories from her profile updates.

For some reason, I can't help feeling quite pleased about this turn of events. I'm not some mindless celeb groupie, and I couldn't give a toss what Lily Allen had for her tea, but I do quite like the instant right to reply. Lazy journalists are now having their fibs exposed for our amusement, and celebrities are having their chance to communicate directly with their fans.

It won't be long before Lily, Peaches, Russell, and all the rest of the London party crowd start up their own gossip mailout telling us who they snogged last night and how much booze they consumed before taking to the stage. I for one, can't wait.

Katie is the Editorial Director of Shiny Media, and she can wait really.