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

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

Big women do themselves a disservice when they attempt to become the Righteous Fat (the Righteous Thin are bad enough, all that running around and sweating, somehow believing it means anything).

Blakes Hotel in South Kensington was a particular favourite of mine during what I affectionately think of as my Restless Years.

Show me a frigid woman and, nine times out of ten, I'll show you a little man.

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.

Intersectionality may well sound like some unfortunate bowel complaint resulting in copious use of a colostomy bag, and indeed it does contain a large amount of ordure.