The following correction was printed in the Observer's For the record column, Sunday June 26 2005.  The article below said British artists Gilbert & George had turned to computer technology two years ago 'when Ilford, which made their photographic paper, went out of business'. We should clarify that Ilford has been continuously producing photographic products for 126 years, despite a period of receivership at the end of last year which culminated in a successful management buy-out.  To my eternal shame, I have never visited the Venice Biennale before. I have been in Venice when it was on (it lasts from June to November), but never bothered to shlep down to the Arsenale or Giardini to see it. I can't now imagine why, except perhaps I was put off by the idea of an 'art Olympics' with national pavilions, as if there was some ghastly element of patriotism involved.  But everyone agrees it is by far the best art jamboree in the world and, moreover, that this is the best Biennale for years. Of course, if you want to see the art, you don't necessarily go to the opening week - in fact, you almost certainly don't go to the opening week - but I admit I was lured by the prospect of all the parties. I wasted a lot of good art time unsuccessfully trying to wheedle myself an invitation on to Octopus, a yacht belonging to Paul Allen of Microsoft, which is rumoured to carry two helicopters and a submarine.  Apparently, until a decade ago, the Biennale parties were decorous affairs consisting of a few curators getting tiddly on prosecco. But now, perhaps thanks to BritArt in the Nineties, they are all-night raves with, this year, music by Rufus Wainwright, Jarvis Cocker, Kraftwerk and Björk. I cunningly equipped myself with Johnnie Shand Kydd as my photographer because he knows everyone in the art world and, like Tracey Emin, seems to have a truffle nose for parties. My only fear was that he would spend so much time partying that he would forget to take any photos but, as you can see, that fear was groundless.  The official opening was on Saturday but the 'VIP' opening was the previous Wednesday, so naturally I went to that and hurried to the British pavilion, starring Gilbert and George, the minute it opened. It is a stunning show, brilliantly planned to fit the rooms, with a recurring motif of gingko leaves. Gilbert and George were doing the honours, talking in antiphon and, as always, exquisitely polite. They said they were delighted to be finally representing Britain -they have always been more honoured abroad than in the UK. 'We have a vast following among the general public,' George told me, 'but the Establishment had a problem with us.' Maybe, I suggested, because of all the turds in their art? 'No,' George countered politely, 'because we didn't suck off any members of the Establishment.'  They told me they made the entire show - 25 works - since Christmas, but then, as Gilbert says: 'We are always working; we never play.' And, nowadays, they can work faster thanks to computer technology. Everyone assumed they'd used computers for years, but actually, Gilbert told me, they didn't; they only learnt to use them two years ago when Ilford, which made their photographic paper, went out of business, so they decided they'd better rethink their working methods.  'Now we don't have to climb up ladders any more,' says Gilbert, 'and it feels more inside our heads.' The only trouble, I feel, is that it makes their art look a bit too easy, especially when, as George tells me, they never reject anything - 'If we do it, it's fine. It's rude to choose, as Nanny used to say.'  Our conversation is interrupted by the arrival of one of those mysterious parties of rich Americans who seem to infest the Biennale. They are wearing the entire contents of Pleats Pleez and all demand to have their photos taken with Gilbert and George. Suddenly, George darts over to me and says: 'I want you to meet my mother.' My heart almost stops with excitement - I am always trying to learn more about their individual biographies - but it turns out he means the curator of the exhibition, Richard Riley, who tells me that G and G have been 'an absolute delight to work with and unbelievably efficient, professional and experienced'.  The only thing they asked him to do was to reduce the light level from its daylight average of 2,000 luxe to a museum level of 200 luxe but, apart from that, they prepared the whole show themselves.  The commissioner of the Australian pavilion says I must meet Ricky Swallow, who, at 30, is the youngest solo artist in the Biennale, so we go over to the Australian pavilion to admire his work. Unfortunately, it is in raw carved wood, a medium I hate, but it is brilliantly done - trompe l'oeil still lives, a skeleton, a cactus and a crash helmet crawling with rattlesnakes.  Swallow looks even younger than 30 and started doing wood carving about four years ago; he says his whole career seems to be a search for slower and slower methods of working. Moreover, he moved to London, 'which was a bit of a challenge, trying to outdo Grinling Gibbons'. He is obviously quite canny about publicity because he got his friend Cate Blanchett to open his show, thus ensuring maximum television coverage.  The other pavilions are of variable interest; some of the South American ones remind me of Crouch End Craft Fayres. The best in my view, and in the judges', because it won the Golden Lion, is the French 'Casino' by Annette Messager, which achieves astonishing magical effects with billowing red silk. It is accompanied by a text of the purest bilge - 'I didn't find Pinnochio, he found me' etc - but you can ignore that.  The other great show is the Biennale committee's selection of international work called The Experience of Art. Again, the text is baffling but the show is brilliant, including everything from a roomful of Francis Bacons to a deliciously filthy trailer for the film Caligula by Francesco Vezzoli, and a witty compilation of film stills called Mother by South African artist Candice Breitz. But the thing that really moved me was Mark Wallinger's video, Sleeper. If I say it is two-and-a-half hours of a man in a bear suit wandering round the lobby of a bank at night, you might not think it sounds very alluring; I can only say see it.  The parties kick off with a reception at the Museo Correr to launch its Lucian Freud show with a good line-up of Freud daughters but, alas, no Lucian. This is a brilliant show, but a mouldy party, which left me thinking, "Huh, if this is what Biennale parties are like, I could do better in London." But then we went to the Gilbert and George bash in a most beautiful palazzo, the Pisani Moretta. (One of the many delights of the Biennale is that you get to see inside palazzi that are normally closed to the public.)  Jay Jopling, who was hosting it, had been in bed all day with food poisoning, but he put on a brave face and a wonderful party. It was great because it had more artists than art bureaucrats - Gilbert and George, of course, and Sam Taylor-Wood, Wolfgang Tillmans, the Wilson twins, Jenny Saville, Mario Testino, Grayson Perry in his frock - and Rufus Wainwright singing at the piano. Tracey Emin turned up with Ronnie Wood - he had flown her over in his private jet - plus his wife, Jo, and son, Tyrone, who plans to be an art dealer. Wood, I noticed, listened attentively to the music and made a point of congratulating Rufus Wainwright at the end; he is such a nice man.  Thursday's party programme started with the premiere of Hussein Chalayan's The Absent Presence, not in the Giardini, because Turkey doesn't have a pavilion, but in a beautiful palazzo on the Grand Canal. His work was a multiscreen video about (I think) genetics, with Tilda Swinton in a lab coat staring interminably into a tank of liquid. I kept hoping it would bubble and produce some scary monster from the deep, but it wasn't that sort of film.  The real Tilda Swinton was there, looking far more beautiful and interesting than in the movie, but it was a very stiff party, with lots of Turkish bigwigs, even generals in uniform, so we headed off to the Louise Blouin MacBain reception at the Guggenheim Museum.  I almost skipped this one; thank God I didn't. Louise Blouin (pronounced as in 'just blew in') MacBain is a brand-new arrival on the art scene but a deeply, deeply cherishable one. She is a 46-year-old skeletal blonde from Canada who was barely heard of a year ago and has already taken over half the art world with plans for the other half. She publishes 165 arts magazines and is constantly buying more. She is spending £11 million on building an arts centre in London and has given a grant to Cambridge scientists to identify the 'creativity gene'.  She has started a website called Artinfo.com, 'which will provide regularly updated information on cultural trends, on the economics and economic impact of the arts and on relevant research and activity at the art/science interface'. She believes creativity is the way to bring about world peace; one of her projects is solving the Sudan's problems by teaching its children to appreciate opera.  Anyway, her party at the Guggenheim drew a frighteningly distinguished crowd - curators of this, directors of that, Sir Norman Foster, Sir Nicholas Serota - so I was pleased to bump into Janet Street-Porter wearing her necklace saying 'Cunt'. But there was not much time to chat because Mrs MacBain almost immediately started making speeches. First, there was one for the press, who were allowed to peek for 20 minutes, then there was the big one - and I do mean big - which seemed to last several lifetimes because it was translated into Chinese. She told her audience of top museum directors, art historians and connoisse urs that China was a very old civilisation; that Rome was not built in a day and that the French have a saying: 'Vive la difference'. She explained that the mission of the Louise T Blouin Foundation is to develop culture and bring about world peace.  Then she presented an award for something or other to a Chinese official who duly spoke for several hours in return. (She likes presenting awards: she has given them to King Abdullah of Jordan, President Bill Clinton and Elie Wiesel among others.) An American woman staying at the palazzo next door told me that Louise MacBain had rehearsed the speech, with microphone, 27 times in the course of the day and that everyone in the neighbourhood could recite it by heart.  Naturally, I begged Mrs MacBain's PR, Helen Scott Lidgett, to let me interview her, but unfortunately Helen knows me and laughed cruelly: 'Never in a million years!' However, she couldn't stop almost everyone I met telling me their Louise MacBain stories. But the oddest story is that she had a walk-out with Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew! One could just about accept Prince Edward, but the idea of Prince Andrew ambling off the golf course to chat about the art/science interface boggles credulity .  After the MacBain bash, there was a serious dilemma of which party to go to next. Sarah Lucas's dealer, Sadie Coles, advised that the Australian party would be hot, but the Frieze party would be good, an epigram that meant nothing to me until I attended both and discovered she was absolutely right. The Australian party was held in an old granary on the Giudecca and promised Cate Blanchett and Nick Cave, but the only famous face I recognised was, oddly enough, Baroness Helena Kennedy, who seemed to be holding court in the chillout zone.  Meanwhile, hundreds of partygoers milled about on the quay. I was wondering how to get away when Tracey, Ronnie Wood, Mrs Wood and Master Wood, plus bodyguard Leo, arrived on Ronnie's boat. He immediately started posing for photographs with Ricky Swallow and his mum - he seems to pose for photos whenever he arrives anywhere, the way most people say hello - while Tracey hissed: 'Is this party any good?' No, I told her, so in less than 10 minutes she had herded the Wood family plus me back on to his boat and we were zooming across the lagoon to the Frieze party. Honestly, that girl is wasted in art: she could be running a small army.  The Frieze party was in the 17th- century Palazzo Zenobio on the Dorsoduro and there was a terrible crush of people trying to get in. I waved my invitation and was ushered through, turned round to say something to Tracey and saw her and the Woods being held back by heavies at the gate. It turned out that I was the only one of our group equipped with that most bourgeois of accessories - an invitation. I was thus finally able to achieve my youthful fantasy of saying: 'He's with me!' about a Rolling Stone. Actually, this didn't work and it was Leo the bodyguard who eventually got the Woods in because the other heavies recognised him.  This was a magical party in a palazzo with the ultimate Venetian luxury - a huge garden - so that if you didn't want to listen to Jarvis Cocker DJing in the courtyard, you could wander out into the scented night and sit under rose bowers. I was surprised to bump into Nicky Haslam - he has never shown the slightest interest in contemporary art - but he explained that he is in Venice doing some design work for the Bauer Grunwald hotel, which used to be dowdy but is now being fabulous-ised under his aegis. The party was going strong until about two, when the wine ran out and the waiters started doling out rum and Coke. I hitched a lift back to my hotel in an American's water taxi (there is a special breed of preppy American, I have discovered, who can never say no if an older woman asks them to do something) but Tracey and co partied on.  Next morning, I went over to the Lido to have breakfast with Tracey at the Hotel des Bains. She chose to stay there because she thought being on the Lido would prevent her getting drunk; in fact, it just made it more difficult for her getting back, drunk, after parties. We spent the morning lying by the pool while Tracey's assistants, Kelly and Laura, filled her in on what she'd been doing the night before. She was fine until the wine gave out at the Frieze party, but then switched to spirits, with disastrous results. She had dim memories of an Icelandic party where she chatted to Björk and everyone was dressed as chickens.  Tracey's Venice is so different to mine. I know all the Blue Guide stuff - the churches, the scuolas, the Accademia - but had never been to the Biennale. Tracey, on the other hand, has been to countless Biennales but has never been inside St Mark's. She said the highpoints for her this year were flying in on Ronnie Wood's private jet, then seeing the Gilbert and George show, which she thought was truly outstanding ('It made me proud to be British!'). And she was pleased to have finally made her peace with the pair because they live on the same street in Spitalfields. She accused them of always calling her the Slag, but they assured her that they only ever called her the Super Slag and she was appeased. She said wistfully that she would love to be chosen to represent Britain at the Biennale.  On Saturday, thanks to Johnnie, I was invited on a private jaunt to Naples to see the dazzling new Museum of Contemporary Art. (Yes, I know it does seem odd, but this type of junket is absolutely standard in the art world. A couple of weeks ago at a dinner of Tracey's, the man opposite me asked if I was going to the Basel Art Fair and I said unfortunately I couldn't spare the time, whereupon he offered to fly me there and back in his private jet in a day. When I asked Tracey why he would do that, she shrugged: 'He's a collector'.)  Anyway, back to Naples. The party was mainly for German and Italian curators, but also included Mona Hatoum, Michael Craig-Martin and Norman Rosenthal. A boat whisked us from the San Marco landing stage to the airport, then a private plane flew us to Naples. At Naples, we were ushered on board a topless sightseeing bus. How undignified! I thought, but then realised that the bus was accompanied by a team of police outriders, blaring their klaxons to clear traffic and trying to prevent the street-corner kids pelting us with waterbombs.  The high point of our visit was supposed to be seeing Francesco Clemente unveiling his new murals at the museum. Blow me, who should be standing in front of the murals giving a speech to camera but Louise MacBain, talking for all the world as if she'd painted them herself; poor old Clemente only got a tiny walk-on at the end. (Apparently, she has a portrait of herself by Clemente over her bed in London, for which she paid £500,000. I would love to see it, because the women in his Naples murals are all naked hags with splayed legs and target symbols in their vaginas; I doubt the MacBain portrait is of this ilk.)  For me, Louise MacBain was the great discovery of the Biennale. I suspect she is a sort of Widmerpool - we'll all laugh our heads off until one day we find she is running the world. She is clearly one of those people untroubled by self-doubt or any glimmer of a sense of humour. Her great tag line, repeated in every interview, is: 'Culture is the ultimate democracy. We believe that culture can enhance creativity, which is the nervous system of society.'  What does it mean? Obviously she is someone who likes networking and giving speeches, but I think there must be more to her than self-publicity - I just can't work out what. I spent hours studying the 'mission statement' of her foundation trying to get some clue to her intentions, but it consists of endless statements like: 'The foundation will seek to position itself as a primary hub in a global network of key organisations and individuals who share its core belief in the inspirational and economic importance of culture and in the boundless potential of the human mind', which could mean anything at all.  On Sunday, Venice was suddenly deserted because the art world had decamped to the Basel Art Fair, where all the serious dealing goes on, and I finally did what I should have done all along - went to the Arsenale. It is a truly fabulous, astonishing, eclectic show, with young artists' work from all over the world housed in a great, echoing hangar in the old naval dockyard, haunted by feral cats.  To see the show properly would take several days and I was furious with myself for leaving it until my last day in Venice. How silly to waste time on parties! Honestly - go. I know it seems perverse to go to Venice to look at contemporary art, but the Blue Guide can wait - you will never see a show like it. And if it ever palls - which it won't - you can always fall back on the Frari.
Of course the Venice Biennale is about art, but as first-time visitor Lynn Barber discovered, if you tag along with Tracey Emin, parties take priority over pictures.