WHAT happened to the unspoken rule about euphoric meltdowns being confined to the winner’s podium? With no Oscar on the horizon, Tom Cruise has decided to let rip with his own unbridled joy anyway. The occasion is his still-warm relationship with Katie Holmes, and it is about as comfortable to watch as a Halle Berry acceptance speech. “I swear I’m in love with her.”

Cruise’s sofa gymnastics on Oprah Winfrey’s show have swiftly passed into pop culture infamy. “Doing a Cruise” or “doing the Tom” is already accepted shorthand for any form of jumping up and down that resembles a pubescent chimpanzee with his first erection.

The ABC News columnist Heidi Oringer has weighed in with a bold prediction to explain Cruise’s new extrovert approach to his private life. Namely that “there is going to be some very damaging information about Mr Cruise that will be exposed in the very near future”.

The shift in tactics is certainly due in part to Cruise’s sister, Lee Anne DeVette, who took over as his publicist a year ago. His previous publicist was Pat Kingsley, an old-guard mother hen whose catchphrase to any inquiry for more information was a warm, friendly, helpful “no”.

Kingsley was said to be especially resistant to Cruise talking about Scientology, whereas his sister is a fellow member of the Church. Hence the unprecedented eruption of Cruise interviews this past year in which he denounces psychiatry as “criminal”, attacks fellow actresses such as Brooke Shields for taking medication and declares to stunned television interviewers that he cares about every person in the studio “and their children. And that is not just words.”

The ominous conclusion to be drawn from this is that private jets and one’s own restaurant are no longer sufficient status symbols. Hot stars now have to head their own church.

But the Cruise-Holmes pairing has proved a total misfire in terms of publicity. Most tabloid readers have voted it “hype”. Radio hosts and gossip columnists routinely refer to it as the Cruise-Holmes Hoax, prompting threatening letters from Cruise’s legal camp. But the parodies keep coming.

At a New York gala, the host of Saturday Night Live fist-pumped the air, gushing, “I love this woman. This woman is so hot!”, then slapped herself, shouting, “Oh my God, I’m so gay”.

An obscene spoof of the song Candy Shop is on liquidgeneration.com featuring cartoons of Cruise and Holmes. The least sceptical of its lyrics runs: “We’ll tie the knot/ To show we’re not/ A publicity agent’s plot.”

Even if their love is real and lasting, Cruise might bear in mind Cary Grant’s advice to Peter Bogdanovich, when he was telling the world about his romance with Cybill Shepherd. “Will you stop telling people you’re in love. And stop telling them you’re happy,” said Grant. “Because they’re not in love and they’re not happy.”

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