IT is always a low point of my week when I emerge from the newsagents, furtively clutching the lower-end of the celeb gossip glossies. Forget Horny Mamas 3, this stuff should come in a brown paper bag it’s so shameful.

Ooh! Look at a picture of Kate Moss smoking a perfectly legal cigarette! Wow! Amy Winehouse hasn’t made a miraculous recovery in the last 24 hours! Oh! Excuse me while my brain turns to mush, dribbles out of my ears and I throw up the last vestiges of my self respect!

There’s probably some sort of scientific correlation between a country’s collective intelligence and the quality of its celeb mags.

I bet this never happens in France, where, I imagine, copies of Le Tittle Tattle are filled with an immaculately dressed Carla Bruni-Sarkozy musing about Proust. Or what about Italy, where torrid affairs and rows big enough to register on a seismometer are such a common occurence that devoting a magazine to them would be pointless — so everyone just reads Vogue.

We, on the other hand, gobble down a constant diet of Kerry Katona’s toenails and Jordan’s plastic pink knickers. And then wonder why the country’s going to the dogs.

However, this week, Heat came close to fulfilling an important social function and containing responsible journalism.

Settle down — the piece in question was based on quotes pinched from Elle magazine — but in a glorious irony the magazine responsible for fuelling many a young female celebrity’s self-loathing reported that “bubbly singer” Jessica Simpson had been speaking out about lyrics on her new album that suggest a less-than-happy past.

Apparently the lyrics on her new tune, Remember (we haven’t been lucky enough to hear it yet), “reveal”: “It doesn’t matter how he hurts you/ With his hands or with his words/ You don’t deserve it/ It ain’t worth it/ Take your heart and run.”

Perhaps Jess, who couldn’t be drawn about the exact meaning of the lines, could set herself up as some sort of LA agony aunt, dispensing wisdom to troubled starlets.

Certainly the interview comes at a happy time for discussions about domestic abuse, after an overhaul of the law decreed that women who killed abusive partners may escape a murder conviction Whether we accept it or not, we still live in a society where the balance of power between men and women is frighteningly off-kilter. The number of women killed every year by a jealous husband, or one who is simply “sick of their nagging” is frightening, and every woman will have a story about a friend who once dated someone who knocked her confidence, belittled her or even turned to physical harm.

Whether it’s through important changes in the law or simple messages about self-respect in pop songs, attitudes still need to be changed. Hurray for singers like Jessica Simpson who are brave enough to put a little bit of themselves into their work.