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

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.

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

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.

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

Sex, on the whole, was meant to be short, nasty and brutish. If what you want is cuddling, you should buy a puppy.

Families, generally, suck. And I say that as someone who, like my husband, had parents who proved the proverbial exception to the rule.