I kind of love Paris Hilton. I’m not ga-ga over her, and she’d never supplant Jenna Fischer or Natalie Portman on my celebrity crush list, but I appreciate her honesty, her simplicity, her… idiocy.

Recently, she threw down the cash to head up to space in Richard Branson’s new commercial space-faring venture Virgin Galactic. When asked about it she said:

I’m very scared to do it. What if I don’t come back? With the whole light years thing, what if I come back 10,000 years later, and everyone I know is dead? I’ll be like, ‘Great. Now I have to start all over.’

That’s just so cute I can’t even criticise it. It’s just so endearingly ignorant. Obviously, it’s not right; the time dilation from the minute amount of time she’ll spend in space is negligible. Even Russian cosmonauts who’ve spent years in space “time traveled” no more than seconds. But even still, she says it — or is represented in the media as saying it — with such sincerity that you want to just kiss her on the forehead and tousle her hair a bit.

And then there’s the infamous sex tape. Yes, I’ve seen the sex tape. It’s not the best amateur porn I’ve ever seen, but it has its charms. Specifically, and this may get slightly graphic, near the end she’s giving him a blowjob and says she wants the cum on her face. The reason? “Because you’re my boyfriend.”

I know that that’s a fairly crass moment in which to find innocence and appreciation, but that’s what it does for me. Over the years, Paris Hilton has been trashed for so many reasons, and yet I’ve never really got it. Is she famous for no reason at all? Absolutely. Luckily, I don’t care about fame. And when you take that inherent aggravation out of the equation, she’s really quite endearing. Seriously.