I've always thought of beauty therapy, 'alternative' treatments and the like as the female equivalent of brothels - for essentially self-deceiving people who feel a bit hollow and have to pay to be touched.

These women whose antics we smirk at good-naturedly in the pap-traps put themselves out there at least partly on their beauty they are in showbiz, and showing what they've got is part of their business as much as it is for male show-ponies from the Chippendales to George Clooney.

These women whose antics we smirk at good-naturedly in the pap-traps put themselves out there at least partly on their beauty they are in showbiz, and showing what they've got is part of their business as much as it is for male show-ponies from the Chippendales to George Clooney.

My dad didn't drive - the only dad I knew who didn't.

When I moved out of London 13 years ago, I found a whole other reason not to drive. This was because my new husband Dan, unlike my dad, did drive, and this became a great source of fun and adventure.

Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.

Monarchists frequently declare that without the royal family, Britain would be 'nothing.' What a woeful lack of love for one's country such statements express.

Fact is, famous people say fame stinks because they love it so - like a secret restaurant or holiday island they don't want the hoi polloi to get their grubby paws on.

The Feminist Me says that a woman's right to her own body should be inviolate at all times, free from fear of peeping paps.

The freedom that women were supposed to have found in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion things to make life easier for men, in fact.