'Stress' was the catch-all every pamper-pedlar I spoke to used to explain why healthy women feel the need to be regularly patted, petted and preened into a state of babyish beatification.

It shouldn't come as any surprise that those who choose acting as a profession are phonies who live in a fantasy world. What is surprising is how many of them are blissfully unaware of it.

I wouldn't know how to fool a man any more. My deceiving days seem so long ago.

What sort of sap doesn't know by now that picture-perfect beauty is all done with smoke and mirrors anyway?

Now the whole dizzying and delirious range of sexual possibilities has been boiled down to that one big, boring, bulimic word. RELATIONSHIP.

What I find most upsetting about this new all-consuming beauty culture is that the obsession with good looks, and how you can supposedly attain them, is almost entirely female-driven.

I didn't cry when I left free-booting, smash-and-grab papers that would have appeared to be far more natural homes for me and, at the risk of being vulgar, paid far better for my services.