Now all this was very fine, but not at all in keeping with the Celebrity's character as I had come to conceive it. The idea that adulation ever cloyed on him was ludicrous in itself. In fact I thought the whole story fishy, and came very near to saying so.

Partly as a 'screw you' to all the people who treated me so badly, to be honest. Show them the ugly duckling has morphed into a swan, that kind of thing.

Softblocking is not a built-in function, but a strategy. There are a few ways of doing it, but the idea is to create a sort of inverted mute.

to sweep the heavens with a telescope