Good old Jennifer Lopez. It’s the changing behind the towel that really did it. Seeing J-Lo struggle to maintain a modicum of decency while wriggling out of a wetsuit during the annual Malibu triathlon was surprisingly heartening. It’s good to know that even if you’re a multi-award-winning recording artist with an estimated personal wealth of $110m you aren’t too grand to do that awkward bra-knickers-towel dance on a crowded beach and hope for the best.

It was Lopez’s first attempt at the charity event, and while she did appear to have someone on hand to help her with what’s known as the “transitions” (the bit when you move from swimming to cycling to running), it’s fair to say that for someone with a reputation for outlandish demands, J-Lo did a pretty good impression of being a perfectly normal woman.

Not only did she muck in alongside everyone else (no security or motorcycle outriders followed her) but she completed the event in a not-at-all shameful two hours 23 minutes and 28 seconds. In the US, a classic triathlon such as this starts with a half-mile swim (800m), followed by an 18-mile bike ride and a four-mile run (of course, this

being California, the bike ride was along the Pacific Coast Highway and the run was along the footpath of Malibu’s beautiful Zuma beach, but still it’s hard not to be impressed).

“Her time is not the quickest but it’s respectable. We’d expect the top guys to do it in an hour, but she got around the whole course so that’s great,” says Andrew Bell of the British triathlon federation. Perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised. Although this was Lopez’s first triathlon, she was on the athletics team at high school: “I won maybe 70 or 80 medals and trophies over those years,” she told reporters earlier this year.

Lopez even managed a very un-diva like punch in the air as she crossed the finish line. Joined by the likes of X-Files’ David Duchovny and Desperate Housewife Felicity Hoffman, Lopez was one of more than 3,000 participants in a sporting event so celebrity-heavy it makes the London Marathon look positively plebeian. What I’m really wondering is whether she peed in her wetsuit to keep herself warm. Everybody does it, don’t they Jen?