Myleene: a hero for these lawless times

Time now for Lost in Showbiz to train its tractor beam on Myleene Klass, the gimlet-eyed girl next door who must surely be acknowledged as one of the hardest-working operations in showbiz.

I say operations, of course, because behind every third-tier presenter is a team of agents and publicists working tirelessly to ensure their client is in the right kind of headlines – and you have to say that this week, Myleene's operation has been a tour de force. There might conceivably be the odd member of a remote Amazon tribe who is still unaware that Myleene saw two teenagers acting suspiciously in the garden of her Hertfordshire home last Thursday night, but such benighted individuals are very much a minority of Earth's population, and the tale is expected to have full spectrum dominance by noon today.

But what makes this story so leggy, my darlinks, is that – according to her account and that of her agent, Jonathan Shalit – Myleene brandished a knife at the trespassers from behind her french windows, and when the police arrived on the scene they admonished her for this action, explaining "you are not allowed to protect yourself" and that "the law did not allow her to defend herself in her own home".

Immediately, shadow home secretary Chris Grayling decided to make a comment about what the incident "showed", and it was when David Cameron joined in by calling the situation "ridiculous" that Hertfordshire police seem to have felt moved to make a statement in which they denied issuing a warning about the knife. "The story, based on quotes from Ms Klass's publicist and interpreted by some national newspapers, does not reflect the events of that night in an accurate way," they said. "Ms Klass was treated with respect and sympathy by the police officers who came to her home." The force has since pointed out that no reference was made in the incident report to use of a weapon, countered that the law allows householders the proportionate use of defence to protect themselves and their property, and added that "words of advice were given in relation to ensuring suspicious behaviour is reported immediately".

Why was advice on prompt reporting given? Having bothered to establish the chain of events, Lost in Showbiz discovers that the initial call to police was not placed by Myleene but by a man believed to be her agent or publicist, to whom she was naturally on the phone at the time. Truly, the fourth emergency service. It was one or other of these men who called the Met in London, who then passed the matter on to the Hertfordshire force who attended Myleene's address in the small hours of Friday, by which time she had also been in touch with police. As for the story's appearance in the Sun the very next day, Hertfordshire police state: "We believe the media found out about the incident following a phone call from Ms Klass's publicist to Emma Cox from the Sun."

Alas, despite having given copious quotes and assistance on the story all week, both publicist and agent declined to discuss this yesterday, so we shall simply marvel at the manner in which Myleene comes to embody any number of hot-button issues.

There's an unsatisfactory NHS, which she tackled in a 2008 interview – the Sun again – used to promote her new show and range of baby clothing. "I am very, very fortunate, but I just wanted to be treated like everybody else," Myleene explained of the birth of her daughter, before claiming, "I used a false name, Angela Quinn, when I gave birth." Must have been an awkward charade, what with the medical records. Anyway, all this happened in the private wing of St Mary's in Paddington – the hospital tells me no one could possibly ever keep their real name off their patient notes – but back in the NHS system after the birth, Myleene claimed to have been unable to get a midwife to make a home visit until she used her real name. At which point "I had two midwives on my doorstep immediately. But what about all the other Angela Quinns out there?"

Mm. Then, of course, Myleene was "targeted by the Taliban", as the Sun had it, during a visit to Kabul in 2006. At the time, this column questioned that "targeted", wondering whether a crack team of insurgents really had lain in wait in the inhospitable desert climes for weeks, allowing hundreds of military aircraft to pass unhindered above them, before finally getting a positive ID on the craft whose precious cargo was Myleene Klass and putting their fiendish assault into action. Still, the RAF scrambled a fighter jet to escort her plane, according to Myleene's obligingly full quotes on the matter.

Finally, I'm reminded by a Guardian commenter of the story the illusionist Derren Brown tells of bumping into the charlatan Derek Acorah, whom he naturally holds in righteous disdain, but found himself unwilling to harangue in person. As Derren puts it, "my own apparently strong feelings gave way to the simple social code of being nice." And yet, according to a report that subsequently appeared in the Sun, "The pair started rowing but Myleene Klass, Derek's co-host for the new series of Ghost Stories, stepped in. The insider said: "Myleene told Derren to leave Derek alone. She said, 'You're obviously threatened by him.'"

What a heroine she is – and with such frequency. Whether Myleene is being styled as a new generation celebrity Conservative remains unclear, but we shall continue to watch her fastidiously charted progress with interest.