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

And call me a pig, but isn't it brilliantly refreshing how early the Dutch eat dinner? When they're still laying out the cutlery in achingly hip Barcelona, they're hanging the Closed sign on the restaurant doors of old Amsterdam.

When actresses jump on the anti-Iraq bandwagon, they often combine down-home momism with an ignorance of Islamist intent which is truly awesome.

Amsterdam has more than 150 canals and 1,250 bridges, but it never seems crowded, nor bent and bitter from fleecing the tourist.

I've never been nostalgic, personally or politically - if the past was so great, how come it's history?

If you want sex, have an affair. If you want a relationship, buy a dog.

When did women whose looks are not their living start conducting themselves like the simpering inmates of an Ottoman empire seraglio?