Sentence:  Now all this was very fine, but not at all in keeping with the Celebrity's character as I had come to conceive it. The idea that adulation ever cloyed on him was <WSD>ludicrous</WSD> in itself. In fact I thought the whole story fishy, and came very near to saying so. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  Idiotic or unthinkable, often to the point of being funny.