THERE was a bit of snorting about Naomi Campbell's levels of stress in the supermarket queue. The view was that she has little to be stressed about - a face and a body that are the envy and admiration of the world, the kind of money hardly anybody else earns, praise, attention, people imitating her, confidence, glamour.
What's to be stressed about?
"She can even do what she likes and get away with it without anyone saying boo to her," said a woman of around 60 with a tight perm and a pale face. She had been brought up during an era when we most definitely could not do what we liked, and when everyone remotely in authority said boo to us all the time
"She'd know what stress was if she were to have my life," said the young mother trying to wrestle the packet of sweets from the fingers of her three- year-old. The baby was asleep in the pushcar - the first good sleep she'd had for three days and three nights, according to her young mother, who was busy counting the money in her purse to make sure the contents of the basket were within the limits.
The girl totting up at the checkout said that if she looked like Naomi Campbell she would be dead nice to everyone. "If you look like that you might as well be nice, there's nothing to fight, is there, with everyone being mad about you and wanting to please you?
"I mean, what has she got to get stressed over? She never saw a fellow's eyes passing over her, not even bothering to stay for half a minute to have a second look. That's what the rest of us have known all our lives."
Mellow to the point of madness, I disagreed with them all. I thought she had a rake of things to make her stressed out. You see, I read somewhere about stress occurring when there's an imbalance between how people see the demands that are placed on them and their capacity to cope with these demands.
And the whole key to that is the word "see".
Very often there are no demands at all being placed on people, yet because they see them as existing, they do exist.
If you see something, then it's there.
If you see terrible frightening shadows which you think are attackers, then you run.
If you see yourself having a bum the size of a bus, even though everyone else says it's perfectly normal, then you starve yourself and get anorexia.
If you see your friends as Government Health Inspectors, or as people assessing your cooking for an examination, you dread having them round to supper.
These are facts of life - people are always seeing demands on them that don't exist.
Whole industries, such as violent detergent powders, eyelash thickeners odour-eaters in shoes, crinolined ladies to cover lavatory paper, are based on the fact that people see all sort of odd things - their whites are stained, their eyes half naked, their feet stinking, and the roll of tissue in the bathroom deeply offends unless it's disguised.
They think society is demanding a ludicrous level of cleanliness and care from them, that they will only be acceptable if they live up to these rules.
So is it any wonder that a beautiful girl like Naomi Campbell sees demands of the most extraordinary kind?
She will think she must look perfect all the time, otherwise the inspectors who are the media, the dress designers who hire her to model their clothes, and the public in general will lose interest in her.
She will believe that life is not a matter of getting on with it, but a perpetual catwalk where you may stumble or be overtaken. She will see, everywhere, imaginary inspectors with clip-boards, giving her ratings or marks for this or that.
You gain marks for being outrageous and in the news at a society party or a nightclub; you lose marks if some 11-year-old is rumoured to be ready to outstrip you in four years' time.
In the modelling world there's ample history of false friends, of double-dealing, of people zooming inexplicably from being media darlings to media hate-objects. Friendship is shallow, with much of the effusive greeting and hugging laced with jealousy.
THE ramp down which the models walk is only so long and so wide; there isn't room for everybody. A lot of the darlings would do anything to take Naomi's crown. And people take each other's loves and spouses. When the lady with the tight perm and I were young there was a bit of disapproval for that sort of thing, but not in Naomi's world. If it were to happen to her, the sympathy would be scant.
Today people love the racial mix that makes Naomi Campbell the beauty that she is, but this could change. It is nol beyond imagining that the next vogue could be for blonde, blue-eyed superwomen. She has already spoken of her encounters with racism.
One day Naomi Campbell will get old-looking - not old as we know old, but old as models know old, which means a line here or a tiny droop there. Then it's over. It doesn't matter how great her personality or sweet her nature, it's over.
She would have to play championship chess to know how many moves ahead you need to be in that complex world.
Should she own her own model agency?
Start her own line of cosmetics?
Marry an aristocrat?
Quit while she's winning, or stay on and outface the others by sheer grit?
And in that business, is there time to think through all the things that the rest of us had only too much time to think through at her age?
Those of us who had long empty evenings when nobody phoned might not have thought there was any benefit in having time to recharge our batteries.
How can she really know if she loves a guy or he loves her, if it's all lived out in full view of a public eager to know good, exciting news of her - but frankly even more interested in bad, confused news which will let them shake their heads and say with deep satisfaction that money and looks and success don't bring you happiness.
If stress is really the imbalance between what you think the world expects and what you can deliver, then I can certainly see why it should come knocking at Naomi Campbell's door as well as everybody else's.
They say that stress is most likely in people who are naturally anxious already. This could well be the case for her. Stress flourishes where there are few friends, and such a beautiful girl might have a thousand acquaintances and very few good friends.
Nobody nowadays dismisses stress as self-indulgence. Stressed people are not told to pull themselves together; there are clinics, counsellors, shrinks. Public awareness and sympathy has increased and improved. It would be a pity, however, if we thought it was only the prerogative of ordinary folk, and that the Beautiful People were not allowed to suffer from it at all.
If you see the future as something frightening which is going to change your face for the worse - and your face is literally your fortune, and what you think people like you for - then it's - very reasonable to get upset.