Gluttony and idleness are two of life's great joys, but they are not honourable.

The latest twist on the pampering concept is spa parties, where a group of friends take over an entire spa.

Make no mistake, most women are well aware that they've never had it so good; when they enter a spa or salon, it is purely a hair/nails thing, a prelude to an evening of guilt-free fun.

Being a child is horrible. It is slightly better than being a tree or a piece of heavy machinery but not half as good as being a domestic cat.

When I started at the Guardian, though, I couldnt think of anything we saw eye to eye on, except feminism, and even this would soon be arguable as Guardian writers queued up to drool over Eminem.

A wedding is a funeral which masquerades as a feast. And the greater the pageantry, the deeper the savagery.

I know that Brighton is famously a mixture of the seedy and the elegant, but in the summer of 2001 seediness swamped elegance hands down.