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It was the same two papers that cranked the tale up another level, by filling their pages with speculation that the new CROW Act could see some of the Ashcombe estate downland classified as ‘open access’, and scaremongering that this could result in ramblers picnicking on Her Madge’s front lawn. Most of the stories were handfed to journalists by campaigners against the right to roam, who correctly thought that the best way to do that was by dangling the juicy carrot of celebrity under the snouts of the press. Madonna was, according to the same two papers, incandescent. In the Mail, she was quoted as describing ramblers as ‘Satan’s children’ and ‘those fuckers’, and that ‘she has even written to Tony Blair to complain about the forthcoming “right to roam” legislation, which she sees as a stalker’s charter.’

Except, it seemed, she hadn’t. No letter was received in Downing Street, and Madonna herself, in an interview with Q magazine, laughed off the words placed in her mouth by an over-eager journalist. ‘I haven’t got anything bad to say about the ramblers,’ she declared. The only truth in the report was that once the maps were published showing all the proposed open-access areas, there were seventeen parcels of the Ashcombe estate marked as such, which the Ritchies decided to appeal against. But then so did 3,173 other landowners, though they’d not gone on stage in a conical bra, so they barely scraped a mention. The hearing was held in the spring of 2004, and concluded that fifteen of the seventeen pockets of land should remain private, while the remaining two – those furthest from the house – would become open access. To The Times, the Independent and the Daily Mail, Madonna won. She lost, according to the Guardian, while the BBC and the Telegraph called it a ‘partial victory’ for the superstar. The press coverage was dreadful. Celeb-sniping swept away the facts, and the few that did make it through were often contradicted within the same article. Did the job, though. The mud stuck.

Madonna responded with an interview in Vogue designed to show that she was as much a part of the Wessex landscape as Stonehenge or discarded bottles of White Lightning. The pictures of her sporting jodhpurs and feeding chickens didn’t quite persuade us, and neither did her zealous protestations of how much she now loved England, and felt that it was truly her natural home. Her fate was sealed, perhaps, with her enthusiastic account of a recent weekend at Ashcombe. Cecil Beaton had been a previous inhabitant of the estate, and to celebrate their fourth wedding anniversary, the Ritchies had set out to re-create a Beatonesque weekend of folly and frolics, culminating in a show where all their A-list friends were obliged to do a turn. Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Martin and Stella McCartney sang a spoof version of Madonna’s hit ‘American Life’, which they rebranded ‘American Wife’. Artist Tracey Emin and former model Zoe Manzi wrote and recited a poem. Interior designer David Collins spoofed Noël Coward’s famous song with a rendition of ‘Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs Ritchie’ (accompanied by Madonna’s eldest, Lourdes), while the Ritchies themselves performed a raunchy pastiche of a Restoration comedy that had first appeared at one of Beaton’s Ashcombe fêtes champêtres in the 1930s. As if all that wasn’t enough, ‘Sting played the lute, and Trudie read some sonnets.’

Although, of course, Madonna herself has long gone from Ashcombe (the Vogue interview alone must have ensured that), I had to go and see what all the fuss had been about. I stayed the night in a nearby village pub, where the landlady airily told me over breakfast, ‘Oh yes, Madonna came in here once. No-one was much impressed.’ I can believe it. I felt like a cosmopolitan ponce there, amongst the red faces and Wurzel accents; quite how Madonna thought she might fit in is anyone’s guess.

The press coverage during the battle made it sound as though the Ritchies were