Courteney Cox, the incredibly tough, glamorous editor who cruises around Los Angeles in a sports car in Dirt, is very good at capturing a magazine boss's focus and determination, but I found it hysterical that she was juggling three or four enormous stories a week. You'd be lucky to get even one of those in a six-month period.

I'm afraid magazine journalism is much more boring than Dirt suggests. The show is a parody. It's all the worst things you've ever heard about tabloid reporting, and reminded me of the image I had of newspapers and magazines when I was a trainee.

The reality of life in an editor's office is a bean bag, a filing cabinet and a mountain of proofs to get through. The fact that Cox has so much time to run around is not credible, because in her position you would be nailed to your desk dealing with the grind of running an office. I was also amused at how she can chat away to all these celebrities, calling them up, inviting them round to her house. In the real world, there are many burning hoops you have to jump through just to get an arranged telephone call with a celebrity.

What they do get right is the importance of pictures, and the fact that magazines are basically about advertising. That's the kind of geeky detail I was expecting them to overlook. As the show recognises, celebrity journalism is just a game. Celebrities want publicity, and publicists want it for their clients, but only if it is packaged in a particular way, which isn't always the best story. It's not a question of morality because everybody is part of the game.

· Julian Linley is the web editor of Heat magazine (heatworld.com). Dirt is on Five US on Mondays