Actually, she reckons there's a hundred ways to avoid publicity. Well yes, we know there are stars who live amazingly secretive lives, with secret entrances to their homes, dark-windowed limousines, heavy disguises, decoy doubles......and they only go out at 4.00 a.m.

The problem for someone like Britney is that she doesn't want to be like that, and doesn't see herself as that. She wants to be a normal person who just goes out of her house in broad daylight when she feels like it, drives her own car, walks into stores and buys stuff and so on.

The kind of life Liz recommends wouldn't help Britney adjust properly to the world around her, get maturity, become balanced and learn how to look after herself without going crazy. It would perpetuate the overprotected bubble she used to live in, cut her off from exposure to the full range of human experience, and inhibit the development of her lifeskills. She needs to meet normal people and hang out with them. Even if there are paparazzi circling in helicopters overhead or hiding in trees.

OK, she could go on trying to live the life of a recluse for the rest of her days - and perhaps that would keep her safe to some extent. But Liz's experience is of the movie star life, where you only ever have to be on set, at home, or on the red carpet. That's a strange, unreal, dreamlike existence. It produces people like Norma Desmond, the delusional lady in the movie "Sunset Boulevard".

Performers like Britney have to go out into the wider world and face their public. It's better that she learns how to do it than to hide away in darkened rooms.

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