Ever since her rise to fame on the international party circuit, the debate has raged in the gossip columns from Los Angeles to London. Is the heiress Paris Hilton really the most air-headed socialite the world has ever seen? Or, as her supporters claim, is her dizzy bimbo act so outrageous that it can only be a deliberate, if off-beat, self-marketing ploy?

Now, it seems, a leaked transcript of a legal statement she made in private may have proved the prosecution case beyond doubt. Her responses to a series of lawyers' questions reveal that the heir to the Hilton Hotel fortune admits not knowing some of her friends' names, thinks that everyone in Europe speaks French, and believes that London is not in the United Kingdom.

Her comments came when Hilton, 24, responded to a defamation lawsuit brought by the film actress, Zeta Graff, who has accused her of planting untrue tabloid stories about an alleged fight the pair had in Kabaret, a London nightclub, last June.

From her witness statement emerges a picture of a rich, spoilt jet-setter, who finds herself bewildered and lonely despite her ritzy surroundings. Asked to remember who she was with in Kabaret on the night, she tells her perplexed lawyer, Larry Stein: "I meet so many people. I don't even know some of my friends' names."