Yes she’s suffered, but I can’t sympathise with this MeToo diva

Former actress and Harvey W einstein’ s accuser- in- chief rose mcGowan bowled into London this week, where she found disobliging locals less willing than in America to indulge her self-appointed aura of noble sainthood. Good!

on Wednesday, my colleague Sebastian Shakespeare reported that prior to her arrival for an interview at ITV’s Good morning Britain studios, staff were shocked to receive a phone call from mcGowan’s representatives making demands such as: ‘She must be met by someone of stature at reception. Don’t refer to her as a star — she knows this and sees no reason to have this brought up. No eye contact. No direct questions. Don’t stand too close.’ Hang on, there’s more. miss mcGowan’s minders further insisted that ITV should ‘not offer any refreshments or engage in any small talk. When departing you may thank her for her time, but only if she requests that conversation’.

Priceless, don’t you think? Here is a Hollywood woman calling for equality and blaming a powerful man for abusing his power by abusing her, yet using her own freshly hatched power-by-proxy to be demanding and difficult herself.

From the moment she first accused disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of raping her, mcGowan (inset) has taken noisy pride in becoming an outspoken campaigner for the good of all women.

Yet the first chance she gets, here she is lording it over other women (and men), appearing to think they are several grotty fathoms beneath her. Not worthy of even looking at her!

I worked in the entertainment industry for enough years to recognise a blossoming messiah complex when I see it. And rose is in the grip of a monstrous one.

Her journey from survivor to activist to self-appointed saviour has always been a slightly queasy progression to witness.

Is she serious?

Rose the shavenheaded deity would be more believable and ten times more convincing if she wasn’t so glutinously pleased with herself all the time.

When news leaked out about her diva demands, our girl went berserk, accusing the mail and other newspapers who ran the story of being a ‘factory of filth’.

Hysterical nonsense, of course; whipped- up hype from yet another celebrity who uses the echo chamber of social media as a responsibility-free platform to extend personal commercial interests and pet peeves under the guise of a good cause.

That is why she is here in the UK, on a visit to promote her book, Brave — which chronicles her difficult life growing up in a cult in Italy and then her appalling alleged attack by Weinstein.

(Brave? Surely that is for others to judge, not her?)

mcGowan was lionised at the Hay Literary Festival last week, and she is going to be the key speaker at the edinburgh Book Festival in August.

She has become a poster girl for Hollywood sexual oppression, the # meToo figurehead, the leader of the payback pack. She shaved off her hair because she no longer wanted to look like a ‘fantasy f*** toy’, but seems unsure today if she is a victim or a warrior.

In the end, she settles on an unhappy combination of both. Yes she has been wronged and yes she has suffered, and I don’t argue that terrible things were done to her by awful men.

my only worry is that she is making everything worse, not better for women in Hollywood — and elsewhere.

For example, those who dare to ask a question miss mcGowan doesn’t like are roundly abused or dismissed as stupid.

In an American documentary called Citizen rose, she visits a feminist collective in Italy, where one woman asks her if she had sex with Weinstein because he had offered to ‘open the doors of Hollywood’. She responded by storming off the set and sulking in a corner, like a toddler. Why? It was a perfectly legitimate question. Here are two more legitimate questions, sure to be asked by defending counsel should she ever testify in court against Weinstein. Why did she accept money and stay silent for 20 years, thus enabling her alleged abuser to carry on abusing? And why was she subsequently photographed with Weinstein with his arm around her on many occasions? rose always has an answer. Her management stopped her from coming forward. The money was ‘ the only way I could put the pig on notice I was not oK with what he did’. She wanted the money for therapy, to donate to a rape crisis and to buy a billboard proclaiming what he did.

I am sure she suffered terribly — her descriptions in Brave of Weinstein’s ugliness spare no pockmarked detail, but surely it shouldn’t have mattered what he looked like?

He IS a beast who deserves what is coming, but in the end I am not sure I can entirely sympathise with rose, who demands total, utter respect for herself, but treats others with utter disdain.

She says she is not really interested in having her rape claims tested in open court — that’s a system biased against women, doncha know? — but she says she would love to testify against Harvey Weinstein. Well, we shall see.

In the meantime, the truth is that she has become the worst kind of Hollywood diva, a celebrity who won’t even allow people to look at her.