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.

Contrasting British servicemen and women with the appeasers, it is hard not to laugh. Are these two sides even the same species, let alone the same nationality? On one hand the selflessness and internationalism of the soldiers; on the other the Whites-First isolationism of the protesters. Excuse me, who are the idealists here?

It may be a cliché, but it's true - the build-up to Christmas is so much more pleasurable than the actual day itself.

Surely being a Professional Beauty - let alone an ageing one - is one of the most insecure and doomed careers imaginable.

Presley sounded like Jayne Mansfield looked - blowsy and loud and low.

The truth of the matter is, beauty is a specific thing, rare and fleeting. Some of us have it in our teens, 20s and 30s and then lose it; most of us have it not at all. And that's perfectly okay. But lying to yourself that you have it when you don't seems to me simple-minded at best and psychotic at worst.

As I get older I think, contrary to modern assumption but in line with the old Lerner and Lowe song, that it would actually benefit both them and society if - to quote Professor Higgins - a woman could be more like a man.