Some say that Cusk has no sense of humour, but expecting giggles from this writer would be akin to expecting sonnets from Benny Hill.

What sort of sap doesn't know by now that picture-perfect beauty is all done with smoke and mirrors anyway?

The Feminist Me says that a woman's right to her own body should be inviolate at all times, free from fear of peeping paps.

I wouldn't know how to fool a man any more. My deceiving days seem so long ago.

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

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.

Prostitution is the supreme triumph of capitalism. When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible betrayal of all women, for the moral tarring and feathering they give indigenous women who have had the bad luck to live in what they make their humping ground.