Best Ski Resort For: Celebrity-Spotting

Sun Valley, Idaho, US

Celebs seem to have become more sophisticated. Gone are the days when a week in Gstaad would mean you were bound to end up sharing a chairlift with French crooner Sacha Distel or former James Bond Roger Moore. You might still run into current top fan Mrs Thatcher in the Co-op if that's any consolation, but Moore has moved permanently to Crans Montana in Switzerland. In Courchevel you can no longer be certain you'll have to share a table in the busy mountain restaurant with electro-pop maestro Jean Michel Jarre or renegade film director Roman Polanski. Chances are you'll be fighting over a bar stool with a member of the Danish or Spanish royal families instead and won't even realise it.

Of course a week in Klosters still virtually guarantees that you'll end up sharing a T-Bar with Prince Charles, while Arnie Schwarzenegger is forever hanging around leading Austrian ski areas, particularly his old home town of Schladming. Similarly, if you're ever in Moscow make sure you stop off at Shukolovo ski hill, one of two dozen around the capital and the favoured weekend slope of President Vladimir Putin. A very keen skier, Mr Putin will happily sidestep his bodyguards and discuss downhill technique and probably world peace with anyone who cares to say "hello" according to Russian TV reports. But none of the Beatles are ever known to have returned to Austria's Obertraun where they filmed the ski scenes for the Help! movie.

For the true A-list you still have to head west to find resorts packed full of past US presidents and Hollywood stars. Although Vail and Aspen have the reputation for glitz, they are really more wannabe destinations mistakenly chosen by bankers and other lesser mortals who don't realise that the true crème de la crème are buying up real estate near more stunning destinations such as Telluride (Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise) and Jackson Hole in Wyoming (Uma Thurman, Harrison Ford).

But the resort that has maintained its celebrity heaven status from the start is Sun Valley in Idaho. Over the years Ernest Hemingway, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, Judy Garland, Paul Newman, Brooke Shields and Marilyn Monroe have stopped by. Clint Eastwood is one of the current superstars who has a home there, and Arnie Schwarzenegger turns up here too. You can be sure he'll be back.