Never would I have thought of coupling together the unlovely figure of the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine with the Celtic beauty of Catherine Zeta Jones.

The idea of the Scottish lawyer and the Welsh actress having anything remotely in common seems absurd. Except perhaps that he is ennobled and she has been embraced by Hollywood aristocracy.

But bound together they are - by their shared pomposity, insensitivity and their sheer nastiness.

It is hard to conceive of two more unpleasant human beings so out of touch with the world around them - victims of the wealth and privilege they enjoy.

In spite of his greed and determination to live a sybaritic lifestyle at the taxpayers' expense, how did Lord Irvine think, for a single moment, it would be acceptable to have a pay rise of £22,700 on top of his current £180,045 salary?

Who, of all the sycophants around this hugely influential man, was stupid enough to suggest to him that the increase - more than four times the rate of inflation - would be an honourable thing to receive?

Not only did the decision cause rage and embarrassment in both Downing Street and the Labour party, it came at precisely the moment when Chancellor Gordon Brown was giving the sternest warnings about the need for any public sector pay increases to be linked to productivity.

No surprise then that it was Gordon Brown who verbally boxed Lord Irvine's ears, forcing him to think again and curb his greed.

Small wonder that a select committee will now examine Lord Irvine's dual roles as a senior cabinet minister - for which, incidentally, he is unelected - and head of the judiciary.

As for the now unbelievably grand Ms Zeta Jones, it is only a few years since she was just another out of work actress. After the British TV success of The Darling Buds Of May, little happened until she headed for Hollywood.

The Americans recognised her talent, celebrated her beauty and as film producers tend to do in these circumstances, poured millions of dollars into her bank account.

Add to all this her marriage into one of the most powerful families in the film industry and Mrs Michael Douglas was transformed into the most obnoxious example of the "nouveau riche".

Her haughty insensitivity in the High Court during her privacy action against Hello magazine over snatched wedding photographs should have been red inked out of her script at the first rehearsal.

Her '£1m is a lot of money, maybe, to a lot of people in this room but not to us' displayed a sneering nastiness that put her beyond the pale.

Her 'I felt violated' and 'something precious has been stolen from me' was the whining of a spoilt brat.

While there is nothing new about this kind of behaviour, it is always nauseating to see it so publicly displayed.